I blame Gorge Bush. I got a bad dose out protesting during his visit which has left me with a sore throat and feeling tired on and off ever since. In the larger scheme of things it doesn’t amount, to use a US Americanism, to a hill of beans but to me? Well, it’s George Bush’s fault for coming to have his war summit with Tony Blair in Hillsborough. Anyway, on with the show. Cough, cough.

What did the war do for you?

Well, the opposition to the Iraq war put up a good campaign and won many of the arguments but B&B ignored world opinion (and UK opinion in the case of Blair) and went to war anyway. This was at a cost much higher than ‘the West’ seems to know, in terms of loss of life from all sorts of causes, in terms of the rift in world opinion which should be focusing on AIDS, world hunger and disease, and global warming, and even in terms of the loss of some of Iraq’s priceless heritage (the USA cannot say they were not warned on the outcome of any of these).

As the opposition to the war sits back and reflects it has much to be proud of. There was the biggest mobilisation against any war anywhere before it started. It has put down a marker to world leaders. It has put parameters on the kind of war that the Axis (‘Coalition’) could fight. It has shown up the hollow nature of the USA’s claims to all sorts of things, since the lies told were quite blatant. Clearest of all was that ‘regime change’ was the aim and not ‘disarmament of weapons of mass destruction/‘WMD)’, and that war was a clear course of action, and not simply an option, from early on. The idea of a meaningful threat from Iraq to the USA or UK, compared to all the other possible threats in the world, was so ludicrous that it conscientised many around the world about the USA’s imperialist relationship (and the UK’s post-imperialist relationship) to the world community.

It is also good to know that President Blair didn’t get an electoral advantage from the war – indeed the local election results in Britain indicate that the Labour party suffered because of its stand. For George Bush in a country as nationalistic and xenophobic as the USA, the war was not a public opinion disadvantage, and indeed without ‘9/11’ he would still be a lame-duck president rather than the popular-ist figure he is. But the superpower has problems at home and abroad which are ignored, and are not going to go away, while he goes for glory.

There is undoubtedly a role for the peace movement in pushing for the US-UK promises before the war to be fulfilled. Occupation, after the initial euphoria of casting off the yoke of Saddam Hussein, is already on rocky ground. And the mobilisation of Shi’ite religious forces may augur badly for the kind of regime, in its own image, which the USA wished to install in Iraq. But fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Russia and France are no angels but they, along with the bulk of world opinion, were not so foolish as to think a short, sharp war would miraculously solve Iraq’s problems.

What did you do in the war?

Well, are you campaigned out? I know I am. It has been a hard slog since last autumn really and much has gone by the wayside that should have been done on other things. Having to keep up with new ideas for campaigning, new ways of influencing public opinion, well, it was hard work but also often great craic. Pretending to be drunk, dressed up with a ‘drinking’ hard-hat with ‘oil barrels’ to drink out of, plus a large bottle of ‘Best Iraqi crude’, and a placard saying ‘Getting well oiled in Iraq’, well, it satisfied the exhibitionist in me. Plus of course the reaction to my acting ability also swelled the old head – many people really thought I was drunk. [Ed – You didn’t need that, you already had a swelled head before.]

And it was special to be able to protest when George Bush was in town (well, the town of Hillsborough), though the ‘security arrangements’ in Hillsborough being a closed town might have permitted it to look like there was little or no opposition to him – except for the demo ‘outside’ the security zone on the Monday night plus a few of us did get into the security zone, both on the Monday evening and the Tuesday. Unfortunately the Stars and Stripes I was flying to welcome him on Tuesday beside the gates of Hillsborough ‘Castle’ (well, it did have some words on it as well, in fact the US flag is just made for writing on with those lovely white lines) was grabbed by the police within a minute and a half – so much for democracy, so much for free speech, it doesn’t exist when the PUS (I prefer that to POTUS) is in town.

Did you know there is a whole industry selling Stars and Stripes flags which have been ‘flown at the White House’? ‘Flown at the White House’ means instantaneously raised to the top of a flag pole, and immediately lowered, on the roof of the White House, out of sight of anyone. So they have been ‘flown at the White House’ – out of sight of anyone except the people raising and lowering them. I have here now a flag which has been flown in public within a couple of hundred metres of the US President, right at the gates of the place he was visiting in Northern Ireland. What am I offered? [Ed – What a woeful idea to flag up.] [Billy – I thought you might tear Stripes out of me for that, and I’d end up seeing Stars.]

However, I wanted to reflect for a minute on the overall campaign I was involved in (with the Justice Not Terror Coalition which had been formed after ‘9/11’). In fact I though I would throw in some reflections on the stages things went through [Ed – Oh no! Not more stages! You’re giving me stage fright again] [Billy – Didn’t you now that all the world’s a stage and we are merely players?].

Back last autumn when we started the campaign against the Iraqi war it felt a bit like pissing in the wind. It was still a long way off, not too many people were concerned. Setting out our stall, literally and metaphorically, we felt we were doing a slightly lonely but necessary action. The war clouds were looming. With hindsight, George Bush had probably already made up his mind, or had his mind made up for him, that there would be a war on Iraq to effect regime change come hell or high water. Not that many people stopped to sign the petition against war but we received good support from some people who stopped and were aware what was on the horizon.

As the New Year 2003 came, things picked up. There was much more awareness of what was no longer on the horizon but just around the corner. There was the feeling that perhaps the UK might be stopped and shamed if not the USA. Of course the UK did end up acting as the USA’s fig leaf – without Britain the description of ‘Coalition’ (I prefer ‘Axis’) would have been even more meaningless. Our Thursday munch-time stall in Belfast City Centre sometimes had a queue of people to sign, despite two or three petition boards being on the go. My voice calling out our wares had a much more assertive, confident tone.

As we built up to 15th February there was a tremendous popular outpouring against the war, locally, nationally (however you interpret that term!) and internationally. There was a spring in our steps (at the right time of year) and the mood was more upbeat. 15th February itself was a tremendous popular outpouring. It was a real downer when we discovered that Bush, Blair and Ahern (on Shannon) were totally unmoved. Bush and Blair were so unmoved, in fact, that they didn’t even consider postponement of ‘their’ war until the autumn. As an editorial in this issue states, democracy is about much more than party and parliamentary politics; these leaders – including Ahern – treated this great outpouring of democratic opinion with disdain. That does not augur well for democracy in the West, or certainly in the USA, UK, Spain, Ireland, and other countries where governments backed the war against massive popular opposition.

And so the mood changed again. Popular opinion remained against the war but it was clear that the US administration would not be deflected, even could not be deflected because it had made up its mind a long time ago and, in the final analysis, no one else mattered. The start of the war, amazingly, brought the stereotypical ‘back our boys’ swing in the UK. If it was an illegal, immoral war before it started then surely it was doubly illegal and immoral after it started. But no, British public opinion did what it almost always does in wartime – swing around in support of the war and British forces. Presumably this was a machiavellian factor that Tony Blair relied on. The early Axis successes in the war made it look like resistance would crumble like a dry sand castle.

A week into the military campaign the atmosphere changed again. The Iraqis were putting up opposition despite fighting the mightiest army the world has ever seen with weapons so sophisticated (but not always accurate) that the Iraqis might nearly have been as well served by bows and arrows. Tony Blair was seen to be a worried man. Was the military campaign going badly awry? Clearly the Axis had expected it to be all over in a week, bar the shouting, and the fact that it went on for three or four weeks was not what they expected. And any Iraqi military resistance was remarkable given the fact that they knew the might of their enemy.

And so we moved on to the current stage, US-UK occupied Iraq. This has also been different to what the Axis powers surmised, and indeed what the world expected. The lack of control exerted by the invading forces showed a woeful lack of preparation or concern for ordinary Iraqis and their future (how can an installation, factory or even shop get back up and running when its hardware, software and every other ware has been looted?). The extent of Shi’ite organisation in a country where 60% of the population is of that persuasion may bode a different future for Iraq than that which the USA wanted, if the different factions get their act together.

But for me there is the supreme irony of the US and UK proposing the end of sanctions of Iraq now that they have had their military way with Iraq. But there is more than one Butcher of Baghdad. One was undoubtedly Saddam Hussein. The other is that group of countries, including both the USA and UK, who continued to support economic sanctions on Iraq when it was known that they resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of ordinary and vulnerable Iraqis. The people suffered for the sins of their unelected leader. There is more than one kind of atrocity. Sanctions against Iraq were an atrocity.

The future? Doubtless there will be more twists and turns. And doubtless as time goes on the US and UK occupation of Iraq will be increasingly seen as just that, an unjustified military occupation. The anti-war movement can be proud of the campaign it exercised and hold its head high. Maybe its work will mean that ‘the next time’ is just that bit further away and more unlikely. Well done, folks.

Globalised

Well, SARS has shown how globalised we are, and Ireland as the top of the pops in terms of globalisation got its case of SARS too [Ed – It’s not SARS you have with that cough that you were talking about at the beginning of your Colm?] [Billy – Don’t be so SARScastic!]. But a sense of perspective is needed. Unless it becomes endemic in the Chinese countryside where health care, and possible control of the virus, would be very difficult, it looks like it is being brought under control. And malaria and other diseases, even lack of clean drinking water, kill far more people than SARS is likely to.

But it is the global nature of the disease, and the lack of a cure, which has scared people. One man, one lift in one hotel in Hong Kong and half a dozen countries become infected, including the one case that turned up in Ireland.

If SARS is brought under control it will be a good illustration of both international cooperation, and the realities of a globalised world. We sink or swim together. And if global warming hots up then it may be a case of having to swim together, literally, against a massive tide. Let’s hope that it is not already too late. Thinking locally and acting globally sounds good as well as vice versa.

Well, that’s the quota of words for this month. Maybe now I can start to think of all those things which got ignored while we campaigned against the Iraq war. It’s a long list awaits. Still, the lilac is a-blooming, the summer is a-coming, and, the rain is a-raining, having returned after the longest dry period in March/April just about ever. Back to abnormal. Hope everything is abnormal for you too,