Keith and UPS,
Fascinating discussion!
War seems inevitable, whatever may go on at the UN. Something occurs to me.
As you know, enormous areas of the desert are due to be barbed wired as prisoner-of-war camps - complete with toilets! The most important thing to happen in those early days is for them to be filled up with scores of thousands of Iraqi conscripts. This will be magnificent propaganda for the US as to the unwillingness of Iraqis to fight for Saddam, if the people in Baghdad and elsewhere are exposed to it.
On the other hand, the strategy of Saddam should be to pull his troops back. However, with luck, he'll do a Hitler and insist his troops fight to the last man - which ploy should fill the camps.
A problem with two different armies is logistical. You'll recall the British casualties from friendly US fire in the earlier Gulf War. I would expect that the Brits will be given the job of surrounding Basrah and protecting the oil fields across the border from Kuwait. (Actually the same oil field with the border crossing it.)
There have been some stories of British tanks not doing too well in desert conditions, which again might be reason not to send them across the desert like cavalry. Shiites in Basrah have been hammered by Saddam's boys and might give support to taking Basrah. (Though they must have memories of how we let them be slaughtered last time.
We might get a surrender without urban fighting which is eminently desirable.
We'll know about it before too long.
Harry ---------------------------------------------------------
Keith wrote:
Hi Arthur,
Let me nip down to USP's comments on the possibility of a National government in the UK.
At 17:18 11/03/03 -0500, UPS wrote: (UPS) <<<< . . . . (By the way, what would be the result if he defies a significant part of his caucus, and joins with Tory suppporters to sustain a decision on Iraq? A few years ago I read Kingsley Martin's older biography of Harold Laski, and got more insight into the crisis in 1931, when the Labour cabinet split on unemployment benefits and the Prime Minister broke with his party to form a National Government with Baldwin's Conservatives. This was seen by Laski, and a majority of the caucus, as a "great betrayal." . . . . >>>>
The chappie concerned was Ramsay MacDonald. He'd been heading a Labour Government (the second of the L.P.'s existence) on 23 August 1931, couldn't bring off a massive curtailment of high government spending because of internal opposition, and resigned. Instead of heading fast for political oblivion on 24 August, when a Conservative-Liberal administration was expected to be announced by those invisible "fix-it" people that surrounded royalty in those days, up he popped with a proposal for a National Government and, before anybody could say "Jack Rabbit", he was Prime Minister again -- sometime between supper one day and lunch the next.
However, although he was a very personable, able man, who'd built very good connections with the rich and powerful (rather like Blair today), he faded rapidly from then onwards. He'd already had a long political life. He'd lost his original socialist fire of the 10s and 20s and was slightly more interested in taking afternoon tea with the gentry than achieving any solid social reform.
A much better analogy for Tony Blair today is Lloyd George's National Government of 1918 (apart from the fact that Lloyd George was far more articulate than Blair is -- without doubt the most intelligent and able Prime Minister of the last century bar none). Lloyd George was able to combine the less-queezy element of his Liberal Party that had supported the war (as he had done as Munitions Minister), the "Old Labour" part of the Labour Party (that is, the trade unions which had done very well out of the war, thank you very much, rather than the Fabian-type Bloomsbury Socialists) and the modernistic elements of the Conservative Party (that is, including the industrialists who'd also done very well out of the war).
Loyd George had an overwhelming electoral triumph in 1918, but there were too many other stresses just under the surface (the rise of the Irish Republican Army and the establishment of the Irish Free State, rising unemployment and many national strikes by workers, etc) and Lloyd George was very much a Prime Minister at bay. He tried to re-create the sort of jingoisim of the 1914/18 war by almost declaring war on Turkey in 1922, but neither the left or the right within his administration would have any of it, and his government collapsed.
Now it's well known that Tony Blair hankered after a close association with the Lib-Dem six years ago when he became Prime Minister and well-nigh offered a Cabinet seat to the leader, Paddy Ashdown. He never quite pulled it off because there was big opposition from almost all sides of the Parliamentary Labour Party. He couldn't possibly associate with the Lib-Dems over the Iraqi afair because they are agin it to a man, but the Tories might be a different matter. In the current Iraqi situation, it's highly likely that Blair will need Tory votes when they debate the proposed second resolution in the House of Commons in a day or two. Indeed, Blair might be quite tempted (given his admiration for Thatcher's economic ideas, not to say her ability to make rich friends) to join forces with the Tories. After all, the Tories have a pretty pathetic leader, a failed Army career Captain (or perhaps Major) with hardly any credentials or experience or jobs worth speaking of in real life, so, maybe, your average Tory MP might jumpt at the chance of a real living-dancing leader and not a cardboard cut-out.
But the previous two attempts at National Governments don't auger well. I don't suppose Blair has read much history -- he's not that sort (though he'll have read hundreds more books than Bush no doubt!) -- but one of his high-level advisors will steer him away from this, I'm sure.
At the moment it's looking as though the clever British amendments for the second resolution will be a bit too clever for everybody else and the US will drop back to 1441. In that case Blair will need Tory votes in the House of Commons to "authorise" British troops to go in ('cos he's promised a debate and vote), and get them. But whether there's a resolution or not, and Blair goes in with the Bush, then there's still the big problem that the Labour Party in the country will be hemorrhaging badly. If the war then starts going badly with many civilian casualties then he'll probably resign quickly. He can do so fairly gracefully by saying that George Brown has waited long enough. But I suppose what will be important is that George Brown will have had to have shown anti-war credentials, but he's been supportive so far. So he'll have to be a quick-change artist fairly soon after the invasion.
It's all a bit of a mystery what will happen. One thing is for certain and this is that cynicism about politics and government will have increased greatly during these months. One of the trends that politicians have worried greatly about in recent years is that young people have not been joining political parties or voting. The recent anti-war demos have shown that young people still care, however. But they're probably going to be even less inclined to vote after the war than before it.
And then yours faithfully will then be back on his favourite FW hobby horse -- that the nation-state is falling into dereliction and that new political processes and new type of governances are in the making. (And certainly one of the result of the Iraq affiar, I'm sure, will be a make-over of the structure of the UN, with particular reference to its own police force/army.)
Keith Hudson
A similar development, with more fatal consequences, occurred over the same issue in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Center Party (a Catholic party), which had been in coalition with the liberals and some Social Democrats, to provide a stable government in the mid-1920s, split the coalition when issues of the social safety net arose. By 1931, Chancellor Bruning (a left-wing Center Party politician, who had started in the Catholic trade union movement) was dependent on the right-wing of his party (including von Papen, who had earlier been ousted from the caucus, but re-admitted) and the nationalists; eventually, von Papen took over, was ousted by a political coup, tried to come back again and brought in Hitler as a coalition partner.)
Last point. I don't think I indicated that I had any illusions about political leaders being idealists. On a plain reading of what I wrote earlier, I thought that I clearly indicated that normally, for quite self-serving reasons, they act to save their own skins, and don't persist in kamikaze tactics (unless they are fanatics). Thus, I concluded that there would have to be something worse that Blair was trying to avoid if he persisted in this kind of self-defeating situation. In general, one doesn't take these risks of loss of power or position simply for the sake of a hypothetical gain (a slice of Iraqi oil, as tempting as that might be) or the expectation of a golden parachute when one loses office (that is a consideration, but it is expected, from one quarter or another, if you lose power; in the meantime, exercising power is preferable, in most circumstances).
Regards,
(You can post this, if you like, with the usual safeguards for my anonymity). UPS would be a satisfactory anonyme < as long as nobody expects me to go around, delivering parcels.)
I feel that the situation has changed greatly and that unless there is a suitable out, Blair could be either ousted or hamstrung, and the U.S. opposition against Bush could mount significantly (particularly if there are problems on the way to Baghdad, one could begin to see some stirrings of the "let's impeach the President" concept (a 5% chance right now, but who knows what could happen). I don't have any great liking for Bush. But I don't want to see a major domestic political war in the U.S., nor do I want Saddam and his supporters to realize how effective their brand of psychological warfare can be in the age of the "wired world" and to be able to claim victory.
I think the Bush approach could have been successful if they hadn't farted around with international approval to start with, and moved as quickly as possible on the basis of the right of self-defense. What they did, in an age of instantaneous communication, is to give their opponents a huge amount of time to mobilize against them. Is this the way that wars will increasingly be fought, i.e., international mobilization of opposing governments and populations?
****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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