Mea culpa, that's what we want
02/06/2004

George Galloway
Wednesday June 2, 2004
The Guardian

 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1229483,00.html

The only professional heads to roll in the whole Iraq imbroglio - Davies, Dyke, Gilligan, Morgan - tumbled into a basket marked "media". And the loud splashes currently being heard, of rats deserting a sinking ship, are of heavyweight newspaper columnists jumping overboard.

Some try to get it over with quietly. Super-heavyweight war-trumpeter David Aaronovitch told Guardian readers: "we thought Rice and Powell ... would do things right ... mea culpa, if that's what you want". Well, yes Dave, I do want.

David Rose, who attacked the anti-war movement in the Evening Standard, the pro-war Observer and across reams of Vanity Fair, now says he was duped and feels "like one of those Tommies running cheering on to the troop ships headed for the front in 1914". Alas, many of those were running towards their own deaths; unlike Rose who merely helped stampede us towards the slaughter of others.

"Mr Macho" Tony Parsons, one of the most gung-ho of the laptop warriors, who wrote that he "despised" those of us marching, now says he was "hoaxed" by Bush and Blair. Poor fool.

But where are the tumbrels for those who actually voted for war, dispatching other people's sons and daughters to kill and be killed on a hoax? No minister on either side of the Atlantic has lost their job over the war or the subsequent shameful conduct of the occupation. Not a single British parliamentarian who voted for it has said, like Aaronovitch, "Mea culpa, if that's what you want".

This is why next week's elections are so important. If our politicians are so unrepentant we must punish them. Not just because people should be punished for mendacity, incompetence, or crimes and blunders as big as this, but because if they are not they or future generations of leaders may do the same again.

Condign punishment for Blair will ensure that neither Brown nor any other New Labour leader will venture down this path in future.

On the campaign trail around the country it is evident the Labour rank and file have no stomach for the fight. What can they say about the issue still dominating every front page more than a year after that "Mission Accomplished" photo-opportunity?

I predict that next week will see the worst election result in Labour history. Then significant numbers on the Labour benches will be staring down the barrel of their own personal general election defeats. Thus the British are the most powerful people in the world on June 10. Give Tony Blair a hard enough slapping and they can bring him down. And umbilically connected as they are, Blair's defenestration would surely be the last straw for Bush's already fading re-election hopes. Only then will it be possible to "draw a line" in the blood-stained quicksands of Arabia and withdraw from the swamp of shame into which the two war-leaders have dragged us.

Many will stay away from the June election - the least effective method of protest. Others will be fooled by the Liberal Democrats' pose as an anti-war party. It's true Charles Kennedy marched with us, but when the shooting started he fell in, saluted the colours and "patriotically" backed our boys. A war he said was immoral before it started suddenly had to be supported once it began. And Kennedy recently told David Frost that British forces must stay in Iraq - even, if the general staff requested it, sending thousands more. This, the sacking of Jenny Tongue MP for expressing her "understanding" of the depths of despair of Palestinian "suicide bombers" and Simon Hughes's somersaulting between attacks on Muslim youth and telling the United Jewish Israel Appeal he was "a lover of Israel" must cause some unsteadiness in the thin yellow line.

Greens have a better war record; they have opposed the invasion from the start. But they too, inexplicably, support the continuation of foreign military occupation of Iraq, though with countries other than those who invaded doing the soldiering under "blue helmets".

Quite apart from the unlikelihood of any such volunteers stepping forward, this misses the point that the UN is hated in Iraq - thanks to more than a decade of murderous sanctions - almost as much as the current "coalition". Blue helmets would be as likely to be shot at as any other.

In any case, a vote for the Lib Dems or the Greens can have many meanings - from endorsement of the former's plan to deregulate the pornography industry to the latter's policy on free-range eggs. Supporting Respect, however, can have only one unambiguous meaning: no more war, no more occupation. That's why we go over the top into no man's land next week full of hope. And this time we are determined to overrun the enemies' lines.