Issue 250 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published March 2001 Copyright © Socialist Review

When I was a teenager there was a cartoon show on television called Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. It's a show that seems to have got completely lost and forgotten in the mists of time. However, I must thank defence secretary Geoff Hoon for allowing the memory of the show to pop back into my consciousness.

The show featured a family whose next door neighbours were mad McCarthyite witch-hunters who found Communists everywhere. On one occasion they started intercepting and opening the main character's mail in order, they said, 'to protect his freedom and personal privacy'. At the time it seemed quite a funny joke, but it pales into insignificance compared to Hoon's claim that the bombing of Iraq was a 'humanitarian act'. Yes, Wait Till Your New Labour Defence Secretary Gets Home would clearly be an even funnier show than its predecessor. For to claim that dropping weapons that bring destruction and death is somehow humanitarian surely takes the biscuit. I can see that you could argue they were an unfortunate by-product of a chosen strategy, or an evil necessity in the circumstances, but humanitarian?

None of this should surprise us though. From the moment the west adopted Saddam Hussein as 'our man in the region' up to the present day, British and US policy has combined opportunism, doublespeak and fraud with acts of inhumanity and outright aggression which have brought untold misery to the civilian population of the region.

First supporting Saddam in his cruel and bloody war with Iran, the western rulers turned a blind eye to the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds. Then they gave him a nod and a wink to invade their puppet state Kuwait, only to launch a bloody war against him once he had done so. During the course of this war they suddenly rediscovered the Kurds and encouraged them to join in the war on Saddam. Once the war was over they then left the Kurds isolated and to their fate. Only at this point did they suddenly seem to rediscover the horror of the use of chemical weapons. Their response then seemed to be that if they couldn't prevent the misery being inflicted on the Kurds they would try and spread that misery around to all civilians in Iraq by introducing murderous sanctions.

Having invented murdered babies plucked from incubators in Kuwait during the war, they seem to have decided to even up the score by allowing sanctions to bring death and suffering to young children throughout Iraq. Finally as part of their 'New World Order' they introduced 'no-fly zones' where they could flex their muscles and deploy their military hardware with gay abandon.

A process that started with warmongering halfwits like Reagan, Bush Senior, Thatcher and Major now ends up being perhaps the most revolting example of New Labour ministers prostituting their ideals for that oh so special relationship. Not even the arrival of a US president who lacks electoral legitimacy, or indeed two coherent ideas to rub together, seems to put them off.

So despite all evidence to the contrary, we have had endless expositions from Peter Hain arguing that sanctions are (a) working, and (b) hurting no one in Iraq bar Saddam himself. From defence minister Baroness Symons came the statement that Saddam's claims that civilians had been killed in the recent bombing 'may be false'. Even by this logic it is surely implied that they also 'may be true'. Indeed, after Hoon's initial statement that 'humanitarian' bombs were being dropped to 'save Kurds', Symons moved the goalposts and explained that they were being dropped to 'protect Allied aircrew'.

So now you have it. It is humanitarian for military personnel to defend themselves by dropping bombs on unarmed civilians. Gosh, the rules of war get better and better all the time.

Little surprise that all this lickspittle nonsense has left Britain and the US isolated. Never fear, though, because brave foreign secretary Robin Cook was on hand to explain things more clearly. 'Saddam', he said, 'has not given up his claim to Kuwait or his wish to get weapons of mass destruction.' All very interesting, but nothing to do with the reasons originally given for the bombings, which is just as well if you think about it. For if humanitarian bombs are going to start being dropped for every 'wish' and 'claim', then the world will end up being one long military love-fest.

Just take two examples--Spain has not given up its 'claim' to Gibraltar, nor has the government of the Republic of Ireland given up its 'wish' for a united Ireland (well, not publicly anyway).

The serious awfulness of all this, though, is that it is being done in the name of the Kurds, who undoubtedly have suffered awfully under Saddam's regime. They have also suffered awfully under successive Turkish governments. Turkey, though, is a Nato ally, and therefore the plight of Turkish Kurds matters not a jot to Blair or Bush (he may of course not even be aware of their existence).

To add insult these bombs are being dropped on a 'war criminal' in the region. There is, however, another war criminal in the region. He has just replaced a 'peace criminal' who rained death on his largely unarmed neighbours but was kicked out of office for apparently not raining enough death.

Can we expect sanctions to strangle, and US and British bombs to force submission? Can we await the arrival of a no-fly zone? No, we can expect aid, aid and more aid to be thrown at the murderous Israeli regime and its murderous ruler, Sharon. Little wonder Arab people throughout the region look on in anger and dismay at a double standard that always seems to leave Arabs as the bad guys, be they ruthless dictators or children gunned down in the streets.

Our rulers seem happy to live with the hypocrisy. No doubt they call it the human touch.