What is preoccupying thoughtful people in England is that the experience that we've had in Northern Ireland in the last 25 years (still unresolved!) which has caused several thousand civilian and military deaths will be repeated in Iraq. Once American-British troops start occuying large cities such as Baghdad, Mosul and Basra, the NI experience is likely to be magnified many-fold because there are not just two factions in Iraq as in NI (Protestant and Roman Catholic Nationaists), but three main ones (Shia, Sunni and Kurd) and many other tribal ones. It's an immensely more complicated Afghanistan -- and that, as we know, has already descended to warlordism again except for a flimsy American control of Kabul (which surely cannot last for much longer).
That's the real fear which, as I've written recently, is petrifying Blair at the present time. However, this fear has been dressed in rather more formal clothes by the idea that when America defeats Saddam and Iraq in a formal military sense then it's just about possible for the occupation to be acceptable so long as it governed by the UN, not America. America will have none of this because under no circumstances is it going to lose control of the country at large until it has established a curtain of steel around the 'Oil Lozenge' of the Tigris Valley (which in future years might probably be extend it downwards into Kuwait, the Emirates and northern Saudi Arabia). Whether the Americans establish a free market open to all oil corporations or not, we can be certain that American oil corporations will feature largely in this set-up. So when Blair meets Bush tomorrow at Camp David he will be forced to argue for UN control of the occupation from day one. If Bush disagrees, then although Blair might argue back home within the Labour Party that this will be a benign occupation, I think it likely that Blair will be forced to resign. Either that or the Labour Party will split or disappear as an electoral force. In this case, then a General Election will have to follow, and this is likely to be a simple Pro- or Anti-War Election. Already, Anti-War candidates, including my son-in-law, are proposing to stand in the Local Authority Elections to be held in early May. Keith Hudson ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
