Tariq Ali – botching up a worthwhile cause

If you think we believe Iraq is not a mess, let me correct you here itself. We believe that this was George W.’s war, media has erred in covering it and not asking enough questions, and the situation in Iraq is so bad that every solution anyone offers has to be examined. 

However, this article by Tariq Ali is a sham. After ranting on through several paragraphs, he does not ever come to the point and tell us why foreign troop withdrawal is the solution, what will be its aftermath, will it give rise to another Afghanistan, whether that is a good idea or not, whether we should re-install Saddam Hussein, whether he thinks that the moment foreign troops vanish, all the armed groups currently killing US troops and Iraqi civilians and truckers and journalists will convert themselves into a decent national army… Nothing. Read on for our analysis. 

Tariq Ali may be a good writer, but his ridiculous column that rages and roars is no different from a good bellowing by someone who has just laid his hands on a rocket launcher. At least, rant if you want, but do not pretend that it is a proper column with a viewpoint. Tariq Ali may have a point, but this column proves he is a sham writer. Even someone who is desperately looking for some reasons to agree with him cannot find them in this story.

We know Tariq Ali – historian, writer, filmmaker. He is not what he is because he is a racketeer or rabble-rouser. Tariq Ali knows what is is talking about – I came across a transcript of a debate that he participated in with Christopher Hitchens. He took on Christopher Hitchens brilliantly. 

The headline to Tariq Ali's Guardian article screamed: ‘The withdrawal of foreign troops is the only solution’. 

Really? Tariq Ali could be right, was my first reaction. After all, we all know that there are no WMDs in Iraq. At least now. We know that George Bush has led US into a confrontation with Al Qaeda, Iraqi nationalists, local criminals, religious fighters, and a diplomatic war with most of the world with his unilateral invasion of Iraq. Up to here, its pretty easy to accept, unless you are a hardcore Republican or a Christian fundamentalists out to convert Iraq.

But withdrawal of foreign troops? How is that going to solve anything? Is it even possible? Tariq Ali may know something I don’t – after all this is his core competency. 

Let’s analyse Tariq Ali’s column - paragraph by paragraph - and see if it is a well-argued position, or just a wish held dear.

Headline: The withdrawal of foreign troops is the only solution.
This is what Tariq Ali would be establishing as the ideal thing to do in the current situation. The rest of the story should tell us how effectively he proves his point.

Intro: The media-hyped fiction of a handover of power in Iraq is designed for US voters
This is a good intro for a story that attempts to sell us the solution of complete withdrawal. No arguments here from us.

Para 1. “Most legends contain a small grain of truth, but none is to be found in the fraudulent images being presented each day by the BBC (and the US networks). The print media is not much better. Official propaganda is constantly repeated in sentences such as: "On June 28 the United States and its coalition partners transferred sovereign control of Iraq to an interim government headed by prime minister Ayad Allawi. The transfer of sovereignty ended more than a year of American-led occupation".”

This paragraph does not contribute towards the main point of Tariq Ali’s story – which is advocating a withdrawal of troops. Maybe he is slowly building up his case. He says that there is no grain of truth at all in the BBC’s coverage of the Iraq situation. Really? I find that hard to stomach. No grain of truth at all? Not just occasional lies, deceptions but complete lies? I hold my skepticism in check here. The line on official propaganda – sovereign control is not a piece of bread that can be handed over to anyone, it is a concept. Real sovereign power is proven in action, not in a ceremony or statements. But we can infer from whatever background information we have that there is an apparent transfer of partial (perhaps minor) authority. 

“Meanwhile, US intelligence agencies admit that the size of the resistance increases every day. If Moqtada al-Sadr were to be captured or killed in the fighting taking place in Najaf, the steady trickle of recruits could become a flood. In such a situation and with no official opposition to the occupation in the Commons, it should be the responsibility of the media to ensure that some truth, at least, is regularly reported.” 

As far as we know, US intelligence agencies do not directly admit anything of the sort – however, it is quite possible that this is happening and they cannot afford to admit it directly. Tariq Ali states that if Muqtada Al-Sadr is captured or killed in Najaf, the trickle of recruits will become a flood. Whether Tariq’s prediction comes true or not, we will know soon. The latest information is that Sadr has suffered shrapnel wounds, but nothing life-threatening. Let’s wait and watch. Meanwhile, Tariq Ali has still not buttressed his advocacy of foreign troop withdrawal even in this paragraph.

“The capitulation of the BBC has been in evidence ever since the Hutton whitewash. This is not just a question of journalists censoring themselves. Earlier this summer the new director-general Mark Thompson reportedly told a meeting of the corporation's news board there was a "perception" that BBC news was too left-wing and critical of the government - a perception which needed to be corrected. He must be happy now.” This paragraph too does not approach the initial question – whether foreign troop withdrawal is the only solution available now or not. Tariq Ali seems to be wandering all over the place.

“The notion that Iraq today is a sovereign state governed by Iraqis is a grotesque fiction. Every Iraqi citizen, regardless of political views or religious affiliation, is aware of the actual status of the country. And if the BBC carries on in this fashion, its credibility, already at an all-time low, could disappear altogether. Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, declared some months back: "We want to change the Iraqi mind." But the US-funded Arab TV channel called Truth has proved a dismal failure. And now, to prevent any alternative images from reaching Iraqis and the rest of the world, a plucky puppet at the "ministry of information" has banned al-Jazeera TV from reporting out of Iraq - a traditional recipe from an oppressive cookbook” 

This paragraph, the fourth, too is a comment on BBC. It also comments on Condoleeza Rice’s statement, the US-funded Arab TV channel etc. Is it a grotesque fiction that Iraq is a sovereign state now? Maybe, maybe not. However, Tariq Ali’s arbitrary statement does not give us any further information to come to a judgement than a typical George Bush statement. Al-Jazeera is banned? One can argue that a channel that constantly broadcasts material that is bound to inflame people should be banned – governments do this all the time. However, Tariq Ali’s opinion that is is done to avoid criticism is probably correct, while the government may have used potential inflammation of sentiments as the ostensible reason. We may note, Tariq Ali does not tell us anything about foreign trop withdrawal even here.

"The "handover", designed largely to convince US citizens that they could now relax and re-elect Bush, was also an invitation to the western media to downgrade coverage of Iraq, which it dutifully did. As Paul Krugman noted in the New York Times last week: "Iraq stories moved to the inside pages of newspapers, and largely off TV screens. Many people got the impression that things had improved. Even journalists were taken in: newspaper stories asserted that the rate of US losses there fell after the hand-off. (Actual figures: 42 American soldiers died in June, and 54 in July)." Tariq Ali gives us some interesting facts here – all most probably true. However, he does not come to the point yet – which is troop withdrawal as a solution. So far, what we have seen are comments on the US and media.

"Like previous confections to justify the war, this one is not working either. Of the two Iraqis plucked from obscurity to be the front men for the occupation, "President" Yawar is a relatively harmless telecoms manager from Saudi Arabia. He was perfectly happy to don tribal gear for official functions and photo ops with Rumsfeld and the boys. "Prime minister" Allawi was at one time a low-grade intelligence employee for Saddam, reporting on dissident Iraqis in London. Subsequently, Anglo-American intelligence outfits recruited him. After the first Gulf war, he was sent to destabilise the regime. His hirelings bombed a cinema and a bus carrying children." Nothing about why troop withdrawal is a solution yet from Tariq Ali. 

The next four paragraphs in Tariq Ali’s column focus on Iraq Prime Minister Allawi’s alleged misdeeds, including stories of his shooting seven militants in the head. If all that they allege are correct, Prime Minister Allawi is no better than Saddam Hussein. However, no word from Tariq Ali on troop withdrawal here either.

Next para: "The fact is that Iraq is in a much bigger mess today than before the war. The situation was summed up by a former inmate of Abu Ghraib prison: "We want electricity in our homes, not up the arse." Arguably true, we think. Definitely untrue, for the supporters of the War. However, we are not interested in that debate. Does this para contribute in any way to making Tariq Ali’s point? No.

The citizens of the aggressor states can see this for themselves and regardless of the media will, one must hope, punish their leaders for taking them to war - regardless of the fact that the alternatives on offer are so weak. In the US, Senator Kerry is an unconvincing politician. Unlike some of his liberal apologists, he does not like to portray the Democrats as the consistently less aggressive of the two parties. It was, after all, Democratic - not Republican - presidents who launched the wars in Korea and Vietnam. The Republican Eisenhower's electoral appeal in 1952 was based on being the more peaceful of the two candidates. In 1960 Kennedy attacked the Republicans for the "missile gap", denouncing their weakness before the Soviet threat. Carter, not Reagan, launched the second cold war. And in 1992 Clinton was thundering against Bush senior's weakness on Cuba and China. Now, Bush junior has outpaced any Democratic rival in accelerated militarism. But it is enough to remember that on the eve of 9/11, Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman organised a letter, signed by nearly every Democratic senator, denouncing Bush's Middle East policies. They wanted more support for Israel.“ This para too talks about everything under the sun but not abut the topic – which is still troop withdrawal. Now is this a well-thought out story, an argument or just a rant? We are beginning to wonder.

"It is necessary to bear this record in mind, as pressure has built up for the US left to fall into line behind Kerry. Many will, understandably enough, vote for him to get rid of a warmonger government. If they succeed, he must be put under immediate pressure to withdraw from Iraq. If there had been no resistance in Iraq, the triumphalism of warmongers would have drowned out oppositions of every hue. The defeat of the warmongers, if it happens, will be the outcome of what is happening in Baghdad and Basra, Falluja and Najaf. Even if they try and brush aside the 37,000 Iraqi civilians killed in this conflict, according to a recent estimate by an Iraq-based NGO, Bush and Blair will not forget the names of the cities whose people refuse to surrender. There is only one serious option: the unconditional withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq." 

Hey here we have it – troop withdrawal!!! So what if it does not appear anywhere else in the column! Just becase you have mentioned troop withdrawal in the headline and in the last line of the paragraph, Tariq Ali has convinced us that this is the solution! 

This kind of writing is shameful to anyone who has ever learnt to string a few sentences together. It is understood that Iraq is a mess now, there are people who believe that this mess can be corrected only by those who started it – the US. There are those who believe that UN should be the agency which cleans up this mess. John Kerry believes that Iraq is a mess now. President Bush too privately knows that this is a mess of his own creation. And then there is Tariq Ali, who too knows that this is a mess, and the solution to it is by calling for troop withdrawal in the headline and concluding line of a column!

This kind of muddled thinking leading to muddled writing undermines the very cause that Tariq Ali advocates- withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The article reads more like Guardian commissioned Tariq Ali to write on troop withdrawal from Iraq, Ali started writing and then got lost somewhere, rambled around in BBC, Najaf, Commons and elsewhere through 1000 words before finally waking up to realise that he was commissioned to write on troop withdrawal. 

As we have seen, the headline and the concluding line have nothing to do with Tariq Ali's fulminations. Is it some brilliant Guardian sub-editor's headline that has appeared? It would have made more sense if the headline read something like Random thoughts on Iraq, media and American politics. That way Tariq Ali could have written the same stuff and retained his respectability also. As it has appeared, it serves to undermine the possible revival of Iraq. Should troops leave the country, leaving its reins with a trigger-happy prime minister? There are no answers. Or is it the case that Saddam should be reinstated? Again, no comments from Tariq Ali. But withdraw troops, we must.

BABYCHEN MATHEW