Iraq: The Quick and The Dead by Robert Manne The Age 12:03pm 7th Apr, 2003   April 7 2003    For both opponents and supporters of the present war against Iraq the greatest challenge is to keep one's moral balance - that is to say, neither to exaggerate nor to minimise the setbacks experienced or the injustices perpetrated by either side.    At the outbreak of the war, while many supporters seemed certain that it would be over in a matter of days, opponents warned of the dangers of another Vietnam quagmire. At the beginning of the second week it looked, for a moment, as if the war's opponents might be right. By the beginning of the third week, however, it seemed more likely than not that the war would indeed be over reasonably soon.    The meanings that have been attributed to these minor ebbs and flows of fortune have been genuinely instructive.    There exists in most of us a powerful temptation towards the idea that might is right. This is a temptation which must, I believe, be resisted. It is hard to think of a more unjust war than the Nazi invasion of Holland in May 1940, which caused the Dutch to surrender in five days. And it is hard to think of a war more just than the Anglo-American counter-attack on Nazi Germany, which was launched in June 1944 but was not ultimately successful for 11 months. Concerning the question of the justice of any war, the speed of victory is obviously irrelevant.    Concerning other questions, however, timing matters a great deal. From the humanitarian point of view, the sooner the coalition triumphs the better. Given that its victory has always been inevitable, the many thousands of intervening deaths seem horribly futile.    On the other hand, from the strategic point of view, a too-swift and easy coalition victory may actually substantially increase the risk of future wars. The present invasion of Iraq was based on the new US strategic doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against non- conventionally armed "rogue states", outlined with great honesty and simplicity by the Bush Administration in 2002. If the war on Iraq is generally seen as a vindication of the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz world view, what will prevent President Bush from turning his military attention to other rogue states - North Korea, Iran and Syria?    Before the war began, opponents warned of the possibility of massive civilian casualties. For their part, supporters claimed that, because of precision weaponry, such casualties could be almost altogether eliminated. As it has turned out, at present the truth seems to lie somewhere in between. While it is certainly true that the coalition commanders have, thus far at least, gone to great lengths to minimise civilian deaths, very significant numbers of such casualties have occurred. These deaths are particularly sickening because of the original, almost discretionary, coalition decision to resort to armed force.    Moreover, although there have been no estimates by either side, it is certain that the number of Iraqi combatant deaths is already very high. According to coalition sources, in the very brief battle for Baghdad airport, more than 300 Iraqi soldiers were killed. This is more than half the number of Australian soldiers who died in the entire course of the Vietnam War. According to another coalition estimate, in the first incursion into central Baghdad, more than 1000 Iraqi soldiers died. In neither of these encounters was a coalition soldier killed. Even though the protection of one's own troops and the destruction of the enemy is an inescapable dimension of waging war, the deaths of so many young Iraqi men, in such technologically uneven battles, seems to me tragic and pitiful in the extreme.    Because of the unequal, even quasi-colonial, nature of the combat, it is not surprising that Iraqi men and women have resorted to suicide attacks upon coalition troops. Nothing has been more hypocritical in this war than Western moralising about the cowardly terrorism of such people. Far from being cowards, the Iraqi suicide bombers are extraordinarily, indeed fanatically, brave. Nor can than they plausibly be described as terrorists. Even according to the narrowest official Western definition, terrorists are those who, in pursuit of a political cause, wantonly take the lives of innocent civilians. Unlike the Palestinian suicide bombers, these Iraqis are targeting not civilians but the soldiers of foreign countries who have, as they see it, invaded and occupied their land.    When the coalition forces entered Iraqi it was generally anticipated that the people would welcome them as liberators from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. With the exception of the Kurds, so far this has not taken place. The attitude of the Iraqi people to the coalition forces is perhaps the most intriguing still-unanswered question of this war. It is possible that many Iraqis are indeed waiting for the collapse of the regime before enthusiasm for their "liberators" is expressed. It is also possible, however, that no matter how deep their hatred for the tyranny of Saddam, an even stronger political emotion now gripping many Iraqis is the fierce desire to defend their homeland from an invading force.    Only when the collapse of the current regime is complete will the answer to this puzzle be supplied. If among the majority of the Iraqis the Anglo-American forces are seen as liberators, the political future of Iraq might be reasonable bright. If they are seen overwhelmingly as invaders, a nightmare future beckons - where the territory of Iraq might be transformed into a vast and smouldering West Bank, and where the Iraqi politicians, handpicked by the Americans to share in government, might be seen as nothing more than the puppets of an imperial occupation force.    Unless the Western public has been the subject of a massive dose of disinformation, as a consequence of the invasion of Iraq, throughout the Muslim and Arab worlds, America and Britain are now more widely and deeply hated than ever before in recent history. In the end the point of the present war is to try to restore to the American and British people the kind of security experienced before the shattering events of September 11. The idea that genuine security can be attained by an act certain to incite the hatred of a large part of humanity seems to me close to madness. Yet is precisely such a thought that lies behind this war.    Since its outbreak, only one incident has struck me as even remotely amusing. Late last week Rupert Murdoch delivered a speech to the Michael "Greed is Good" Milliken Institute in Los Angeles. In the spirit of Machiavelli's advice to the Prince, Murdoch pointed out to the citizens of his adopted country that it was better to be respected than to be loved. He also pointed out that the present problem with the American people was what he identified as their "inferiority complex".    Let Murdoch's words act a timely warning to the world. When the Americans finally become self-confident, take a firm grip on your hat.    Robert Manne is professor of politics at La Trobe University. Visit the related web page
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