In Defence of Freedland

David Hirsh defends Jonathan Freedland against Guardian readers who ignore but attack his arguments

Jonathan Freedland, in his Guardian column, has consistently opposed the American and British invasion of Iraq.

In yesterday’s Guardian he observed that unexpectedly, there appears, for the moment, to be a ‘ripple of change’ spreading through the Middle East. The toppling of the Saddam regime just might have been a catalyst, setting off a benign chain reaction, he argued. Mass demonstrations in Lebanon against Syrian troops in that country leading to the resignation of the Lebanese government; this year’s presidential election in Egypt may have more than one name on the ballot paper; a vague commitment in Saudi Arabia that women will be allowed to vote in the next elections; Libya halting its programme of building weapons of mass destruction; Iran promising to halt the production of enriched uranium; a new apparent mood in the Israel/Palestine conflict.

‘Of course, each one of these hopeful developments has its own origins and dynamics, distinct from the Iraq war’ says Freedland. ‘Even so, it cannot be escaped: the US-led invasion of Iraq has changed the calculus in the region.’

Freedland is not saying that he was wrong to oppose the war; but he is saying that the war might, even if it is was wrong, have had some good consequences.

And he also says that ‘we cannot let ourselves fall into the trap of opposing democracy in the Middle East simply because Bush and Blair are calling for it. Sometimes your enemy's enemy is not your friend.’

In today’s Guardian there are two letters reacting to this column with an unexpected ferocity.
Abdulhadi Ayyad says that Freedland understands Bush and Blair’s invasion as ‘altruistic’. Bizzarely, he claims to speak for all Arabs, as though all Arabs had the same opinion, the same politics, the same experience. ‘Could it be that democracy is a hard-won right which the Arab people have paid for dearly? Was it really necessary to kill a few more of us in Iraq to make this happen?’ But Freedland does not think that Bush and Blair’s invasion was ‘altruistic’; he does think that Arab struggles for democracy have been pivotal; he does not think that it was necessary to kill Arabs in Iraq.

And Khaled Diab writes in a letter that these tentatively good consequences of the invasion do not vindicate the invasion of Iraq. He argues that it is the anti-war movement that has emboldened democracy activists. ‘we cannot allow ourselves,’ he adds, ‘to fall into the trap of believing Bush and Blair's call for democracy legitimises their invasion of a sovereign state and [the] killing of thousands of innocent civilians.’ Freedland, however, clearly argued that the ‘silver lining’ did not justify the invasion.

The problem for those of us who opposed the war is this: many of our predictions and our fears did not in fact materialise. An unexpected consequence of the war is, at the moment, a wave of hope sweeping across the Middle East, the emergence and strengthening of democracy movements and a situation in Iraq where it is sometimes possible for people to organise, to discuss and to think openly about a better future.

Either we can recognise the truth of what is happening in the Middle East or we can turn our eyes away and pretend that our predictions and fears came true when they didn’t. Jonathan Freedland chooses truth and an effort to make sense of a complex and contradictory situation.

Some of the anti-war movement cannot bear truth, complexity and understanding. They opt instead for narratives that tell half of the story and narratives that tell an untrue story. Nothing good is possible, they say, in an Iraq oppressed by a bloodthirsty imperialist occupation. This just does not reflect the reality of what is going on in Iraq today.

The two letters attacking Freedland cannot even bear to face up to the words that Freedland writes, preferring to critique a different position, one that Freedland did not write. Its easier.

And as for Freedland’s most important point – that those of us who are really for consistent democracy in the Middle East must not allow the hypocritical rhetoric of Bush and Blair to be the only voices for democracy – this is missed altogether.

Khaled Diab says that ‘it is the pro-Intifada and anti-war movement that has emboldened activists to challenge’ the undemocratic regimes in the Middle East. Well, the truth is that while some pro-Intifada and anti-war activists are part of the struggle for democracy in the Middle East while others are either silent on the question of democracy, or are actively supporting forces that are trying to drown pro-democracy movements in blood.

Contrary to Abdulhadi Ayyad’s claim that all Arabs think the same thing, the truth is that politics rather than ethnicity is what makes people act. And different politics makes people act differently.

Most Palestinians who support the Intifada are currently supporting their newly elected president’s ceasefire and his efforts to find a political way to oppose the Israeli occupation. A minority of Palestinians who support the Intifada are currently supporting Jew-hating religious movements who think that the best way forward is to send Palestinians to blow themselves up in Tel Aviv nightclubs.
Some activists in the anti-war movement, such as Jonathan Freedland, are supporting struggles for democracy; other activists in the anti-war movement are supporting the Iraqi ‘resistance’ that executes people struggling to build trade unions, executes lawyers working on the trial of Saddam Hussein and guns down people queuing up to vote in elections.