Across the pond

There has been a lot of ‘news’ this week which I would like to have reported upon. This article takes several events together and considers what, taken as a whole, they tell us about the world in which we live. The fact that these events have happened at the same time is just co-incidence. But when considered together they represent a challenge to some prevailing basic assumptions.

Probably the most sensational story of the week was the one in the British Medical Journal which suggested that the Iraq war had resulted in the deaths of 655,000 Iraqis. This figure is more than ten times greater than any of the ‘official’ estimates. It was immediately dismissed by the White House although the Downing Street response was much more muted. The figure is an estimate made by teams of medical researchers who interviewed a sample of Iraqis asking how many people they knew had died. Such statistical analyses are subject to error. But even allowing for the biggest statistical margin of error the survey’s findings suggest deaths of more than 350,000.

The result was published, not in the capitalist press, but in the official journal of the British doctors. The research was conducted under the guidance of Johns Hopkins university, one of the most respected American universities. Furthermore, it showed a six fold increase in the number of deaths compared with a similar survey done by the same group in 2004. By the end the week officialdom had still not managed to demolish the story by publishing any definitive and reliable figures. If accurate the story means that roughly twice as many Iraqis have died than died during the Sadam Hussein regime, whose toppling was the trigger for the Iraq war. The deaths have resulted from civil war between rival Iraqi factions as well as the bombing and shooting by the armies of America and its allies. Even officialdom does not deny that three years after the war began the death toll is now bigger than it was in the first year.

The second most sensational story was delivered in Friday’s Daily Mail, a fully paid up member of the capitalist press. It was based on a long interview with the head of the British army, General Sir Richard Dannatt. He proposed that we should get out of Iraq soon or risk serious consequences for both British and Iraqi society. He said: ‘I don’t say that the difficulties we are experiencing around the world are caused by our presence in Iraq, but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them.’ And later: ‘As a foreigner you can be welcomed by being invited in a country, but we weren’t invited…………..The military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in.’

We will leave aside the issue as to whether the General should have said such things. (My wife said that in the olden days he would have been court-martialled and shot.) But by weekend he has neither resigned nor been fired.

Next item, which broke yesterday. The Oxfordshire coroner conducting the inquest into the death in Iraq of ITN correspondent, Terry Lloyd, ruled that by the standards of British law his killing was ‘unjustifiable homicide’. He found that the journalist had been killed by American bullets and that the Americans had not acted in self-defence. He wants the troops concerned to be charged with murder in the British courts.

Co-incidentally, further allegations about the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay emerged resulting in still more calls for its closure.

North Korea conducted a successful test nuclear explosion. By end week the United Nations was still arguing about what to do about it. But what is absolutely clear is that neither the UN, nor anyone else, will be able to stop the further growth in the size of the nuclear club. It is only a matter of time before Iran and other nations develop the expertise to make nuclear weapons.

Not on the front pages, but well covered inside, was the news that the American population is due to hit 300 million next week. The devil is in the detail not in the global figure. The reason American population is increasing more rapidly than the rest of the developed world is immigration, and particularly immigration from of Mexicans, who are categorised as Hispanics. It is now estimated that by 2050 the non-Hispanic white population will be down to 50 per cent; Hispanics will be 24 per cent, African Americans 14 per cent and Asians 8 per cent. We shall all have to get used the fact that increasingly America is not an Anglo-Saxon country.

Meanwhile the row over last week’s remarks whether Muslim women should be asked to take off the niqab ran all week. This morning Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, entered the fray with his views on the subject.

What does all this mean?

First, the contradictions in American and British policy over the war against Iraq and the war on terror are now abundantly clear. Although Bush was talking about staying in Iraq until 2008 he was whistling in denial of the opinion polls, which show that his wars are becomingly increasingly unpopular with the American public. Neither Bush nor Blair is credible in their assertions that the rise of Muslim fundamentalism is nothing to do with American and British war-like solutions.

In terms of personalities Blair is soon to depart the scene. It is by no means certain that there will be a smooth passage of power to Gordon Brown. The likelihood is that there will be quite a tough fight for the Labour leadership and that this fight might let in the Conservatives under their new leader, David Cameron, who had a good week, helped, rather than hindered, by the Labour MP who did a spoof satirical video on the internet inviting viewers to sleep with Cameron’s wife.

In America Bush is surely as crippled as Blairism is in Britain. The mid-term elections are likely to weaken him further. The ethnic changes in the American population will have political effects. Bush’s brand of right-wing Christian fundamentalism is unlikely ever again to result in a Republican majority. Republican attitudes and policies will have to change; otherwise the next American President will be a Democrat.

More speculatively global politics are undergoing their biggest change since the Berlin wall came down. Then communism was vanquished, the Soviet Union was broken up and American cultural imperialism was thought to have triumphed. No future American President will be able to act as the police chief of the world.

Unless, of course, the democratic process leads to someone as mad as Dr Strangelove getting the job.