Accountancy and Solidarity

Professor Stiglitz spoke at the Commons recently before an appreciative crowd. He outlined the key theme of his new book - the Three Trillion Dollar War. Without having read the book, I cannot challenge his evident erudition on accountancy and how the Bush Administration has behaved. The thrust of his argument appeals to American voters – he himself admitted that he was being US-Centric.

He went on to refer to the impact of the war on Iraq, citing casualty figures and the number of exiles and internally displaced refugees. I am sceptical of the figures so often cited by opponents of the intervention but it is clear that a large number of Iraqi people has been killed in the last few years, mainly by nihilist forces that have no compunction about targeting busy markets. I don't dispute that millions have fled to other parts of Iraq and neighbouring countries. It's wrong to ignore negative factors.

My difference with Professor Stiglitz is that he failed to mention the positives that have emerged in the last few years. If there had been enough time for comments at the meeting I wanted to mention two.

First, the overthrow of a fascistic regime that deliberately slaughtered up to 200, 000 Iraqi Kurds has allowed the Kurdistan Region to breathe more easily and begin its democratic reconstruction in earnest. On two visits there in the last two years, it was clear that most people there regard the intervention as a liberation – their only quibble is why it took so long to happen. What price can be put on such liberation. What would have been the cost, through the no-fly
zone, of preventing Saddam, or his possibly more psychotic sons, from
continuing genocidal operations against the Kurds, as well as the general oppression of most Iraqis? Who can know?

Second, there has been a mushrooming of democracy and independent
organisations such as unions and women's groups. What price their freedom?

My guess is that none of this cuts much ice with those who were firmly opposed to the intervention and to whom the Professor's enlivening of accountancy to damn the Bush Administration is further proof that we should just get out of Iraq.

My plea is to remember Iraqis whose government has accepted, under UN resolution, the continuing presence of foreign troops. Of course, they should go when the elected Iraqi Government says so. In the meantime, whatever view one had on the original intervention, solidarity with those seeking a democratic and federal Iraq should be the priority.

Gary Kent