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Recent Articles Iraq; Warning to wobblers The Sun Thursday April 15, 2004 PRESIDENT Bush said in his Press conference that the consequences of failure in Iraq are unthinkable. He is right. Much of the news from Iraq -attacks on civilians, on coalition soldiers and the murder and mutilation of foreign aid workers -is heartbreaking. But behind the headlines Iraq is not all disaster. When I was there last month every Iraqi I met said they were glad that the US, Britain and their allies had overthrown Saddam. They do not want to be occupied indefinitely and they worry about security. But following our sacrifices they now feel they have a future. Under the tyranny of Saddam they did not. What the United States, Britain and their allies are doing in Iraq is revolutionary and very difficult. And it is essential. We are helping 23million people who have suffered under an appalling dictatorship for decades to create a decent society. The knock-on effects in the whole Middle East could be stupendous. A democratic Iraq would have an electrifying effect on an area mired in dictatorship and despair. With all its oil, the Middle East should be one of the most successful regions of the world. In fact it is one of the most wretched. The combined economic output of the 22 Arab League countries is less than that of Spain. Forty per cent of adult Arabs -65million people -are illiterate, including two out of three women. Why? Largely because of dictatorship and fundamentalism. Blair and Bush are right to insist that the outcome in Iraq is of huge importance to us all. Success in Iraq means the creation of a decent, modern society which, for the first time, responds to its people's needs. Under the guidance of the allies, Iraq's Governing Council -to which power will be handed over on June 30 -has adopted the most liberal constitution in the Middle East. Naturally there is furious resistance to such progress -from the remnants of the Saddam regime and from fundamentalists who want to trap people forever in a medieval time warp. They have everything to lose if America and Britain succeed. No wonder they are fighting so desperately. Tragically, some of our notional allies, like France and Germany, have also tried to undermine Iraq's liberation and progress. If they had united with us behind UN demands that Saddam come clean on his weapons over a year ago, war might have been avoided. Now all too often they seem to rejoice in the problems that have developed. Mistakes have certainly been made since the brilliant military campaign to overthrow Saddam a year ago. We have not created jobs fast enough. Security is patchy -though most places are far better than Fallujah, the centre of current awful battles. Electrical power has increased, but not enough to meet the demand from all the new air conditioners and other consumer goods that people have been able to buy since the fall of Saddam. America's 18-billion dollar reconstruction aid should be kicked in at once to give more jobs and more hope. One young woman said to me in Baghdad last month: "The end of Saddam was like a dream." Those resisting US and British efforts in Iraq want to turn it into a nightmare. As Bush and Blair say, they must not succeed. Iraq will only be a disaster if we fail. |
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