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| Tuesday, 20 July 2004 |
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When personal agendas masquerade as principles By Lynn Ockersz
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's recent insistence that he was right in being instrumental in removing former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, not only betrays the degree to which the war in Iraq has been personalised by the big powers of the West but also helps revive some fundamental issues in relation to the purportedly responsible and transparent nature of Western "democratic" governance. These questions come to the fore in the wake of an official inquiry report that the Blair government's claim that the Saddam Hussein regime was in possession of "weapons of mass destruction" at the time of the US-led military invasion of Iraq in March last year, was "less well-founded than was stated at the time." Apparently, British intelligence had made an erroneous assessment of the nature and extent of the weapons arsenals owned by the Saddam Hussein regime and this, in turn, was fed to the British government. While Blair is on record as taking full responsibility for this seeming intelligence blunder, he has no reservations about the correctness in helping to dislodge Saddam Hussein from power. "For any mistakes made, as the report finds, in good faith, I, of course, take full responsibility. But I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all", Blair was quoted saying. While the Blair government couldn't be said to have "lied" to the British public on the weapons of mass destruction issue if it, indeed, was acting on an erroneous assessment by British intelligence on this matter, it opens itself to the criticism of waging war on another sovereign state on the basis of a personal prejudice of its Prime Minister. For, Blair has made it abundantly clear that seeing an end to the political personality named Saddam Hussein, was a prime motive in his decision to join the war against the Saddam regime. A poser which the British public needs to ask itself against the backdrop of this development, is whether such decision - making measures up to its notion of responsible, democratic governance. For, a vast amount of public resources, including military personnel, could be said to have been used to satisfy Premier Blair's personal need to see Saddam Hussein ousted from power. This also begs the question: doesn't this decision smack of the misuse of high political office for the satisfaction of a personal prejudice? Besides, it must be remembered that the British public was in no way united behind the Blair government's decision to wage war.
A considerable section of the public was opposed to the war and the British government could be said to have been acting in bad faith towards this vital strand of opinion in particular by personalising the war in Iraq. Waging war against another state, merely to oust a prime political personality in it from power, in fact, stands the concept of self-defence of a state on its head and severely trivializes the notion of non-interference in each other's affairs, on the part of sovereign states. We are seeing here the spectre of the arrogance of power on the part of the principal Western powers - who in fact are moulding influences of the current world order. The dismaying reality has to be accepted that these big Western powers are manipulating the current global order on the basis of their interests, many of them selfish. As mentioned in this column earlier, the current global order is both unstable and highly risk-laden. It will be so until countervailing powers to the current prime players of the system evolve fully. |
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