Relax. It's over. Mr Bush is too smart to risk another war
hat our troops of 42 Commando, Royal Marines, discovered in Saddam's Basra palace must have shocked even the most modish liberal opponents of this war — especially, the most modish liberal opponents. Gold-plated lavatory brushes! Gold taps, and other gold features, on the lavatories themselves, and indeed on the bidets! Had Saddam no taste at all?
The place had all the hallmarks of some de trop entrepreneur or rock star trying to get on to that American television series, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. At a stroke, the revelations from Basra meant that he must have forfeited all hope of his place getting into the more tasteful House and Garden. The more our forces uncover about Saddam's regime, the more dreadful it becomes; the more unacceptable it is to Belgravia and the wider world of Kensington and Chelsea beyond.
Saddam's error of strategy was not to have deployed Mr Nicky Haslam or Miss Nina Campbell as his interior designer. They would have won him hearts and minds in Belgravia and wherever men and women of goodwill stay the weekend in Wiltshire. The Daily Telegraph's man on the spot reported that, as well as all that gold in the bathrooms, there were, in the Basra residence. 'French-made ornate lamp-posts entwined with climbing ivy . . . moorish screens carved from teak and giant marble-clad columns. There were vaulted ceilings, and stained-glass windows.' My dears!
Who would have thought that a man like Saddam, who was always going on about Iraq being one of the world's oldest civilisations, would have been so, well, quite frankly, nouveau riche? Had they known, London society would not have opposed this war. To be fair to its members, though, they never really approved of Saddam. The way to their heart is for a dictator to announce that he is for land reform, or for equal opportunities for women and gays. Saddam never really did that. The reason he amassed so many of the well-connected against the war was that his enemies were the dim President Bush, the hubristic Mr Rumsfeld and the disappointing Mr Blair who, when the moment came. turned out to be as pro-Republican America as Mrs Thatcher was.
There is no ill that central London will not believe of Republican America and Mr Bush. Plenty of us, who are of a Tory disposition, are no particular admirers of Mr Bush. But we do not believe that he is energetic enough to constitute the American theocracy, and resultant aggressions, which liberal opinion suspects him of contemplating. True proAmericans do not approve of him for harbouring such designs. Britons who are true pro-Americans do not think that any American president could realise them. We think that Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Wolfowitz and Mr Perle will be disappointed.
Now that Baghdad has fallen, on to Damascus, on to Tehran! the latter may cry. Or at least they may think that the introduction of democracy to Iraq, which is now going to happen for a few years and perhaps longer, will result in Syria and Iran adopting by example, not by force of American arms. But the Iraqi army, when the time came, ran away. There can be no assumption that the armies of Syria and Iran will similarly flee. Yet in this respect. American neo-conservatives and the British/European liberal-Left share the same assumption: that of overwhelming American power.
Last week, the English National Opera staged the British premiere of The Handmaid's Tale by the Danish composer, Poul Ruders. The opera is about a United States that has been taken over by a Christian fundamentalist coup. Mr Pout Ruders, who wrote the words, has a programme note which says:
By the time the production is open and you read this, we will almost certainly be at war. If this war is anything like the last attack on Iraq, then around 85,500 bombs — the equivalent of seven Hiroshimas — will be dropped; there will be systematic and predominantly unreported massacres like the one on the Basra road lin 1991]; armoured bulldozers will be used to bury wounded Iraqis alive in their trenches . . . all this in the name of -moral coalition between a born again Christian president and a committed Anglican Prime Minister. The world of the opera feels horribly close, unbearably real.
The tale of the American armoured bulldozers burying wounded Iraqis alive in 1991 is akin to that of the German soldiers tossing Belgian babies on their bayonets in 1914. No one has come forward who saw it, or who even claims to have seen it. Nor has it been shown why bulldozers are the sort of vehicle which the United States army sends into battle against troops who are still alive. No one knows where the story came from. No matter; it has the educated classes' approval. There will therefore always be enough vocal people to spread it to future generations.
Nor is there any evidence that Mr Bush being a 'born again' Christian is of decisive importance. He prays much, it seems. Christian fundamentalists vote for him. But they vote for most Republicans, especially for one running against Mr Gore who served the profane Mr Clinton.
During the mid-term Congressional elections last year, in which Mr Bush triumphed, the President distanced himself from the television evangelists, Mr Falwell and Mr Robertson, because they had explained 11 September as a punishment for Americans being so permissive and gay. In the Republican gubernatorial primaries in California, the White House stringpullers favoured the moderate rather than the candidate who had fundamentalist support. In any case, church attendance, including that at fundamentalist churches, is falling. And at the convention that adopted Mr Bush as Republican presidential candidate, the platform, unlike the hall, was full of blacks and Hispanics. This was to reassure floating voters — especially women — not right-wing voters.
Mr Bush, then. is above all a politician. He strings along the neo-conservatives — whose war this was — just as he strung along the fundamentalists when they were no threat to him. But the neo-conservatives would indeed become a threat to him if they plunged him into wars with Syria or Iran in the name of spreading democracy to the Middle East, especially next year, an election year. By drifting along with them, Mr Bush rather blundered into this war. He did not think the Iraqis would fight. A week after war began, he must have become worried because the Iraqis seemed to be resisting rather more than he was told. In the end, they stopped, and Mr Bush had his victory. He will not risk another.
Previous page
