Getting out of Iraq

In the November issue of Peace News, Harry asked for views on getting out of Iraq. So here is one.

Tom Lehrer declared satire dead when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. It died again when Mr Blair drifted off to become a ‘Peace Envoy’ in the Middle East leaving behind, as ‘his legacy’, a trail of aggressive disasters - Iraq, with over one million civilian deaths and many more millions injured and with shattered families, Afghanistan, the Special Relationship, Trident Replacement. In our culture leaders are not held responsible for their crimes. They even get rewarded for them! This leads to a general amnesia regarding the harm we inflict on other peoples through our, almost rampant, militarism.

There is good reason to believe that we should get out of Iraq now. There is no reason that can justify abandoning the Iraqis. In my opinion we should declare our responsibility to supply funds and whatever other assistance is requested to repairing, in as far as it is possible, the well-being of the Iraqi people. We should commit ourselves to supplying whatever is needed and requested to repair the infra-structure, rebuild the destroyed towns and villages, hospitals and schools. If necessary we could finance a UN force to help with policing. The funding could come from the cancellation of the £50billion Trident programme.

Jim McCluskey