by Tan Copsey
The world wakes a little more worried today as it seems we may be inching towards a conflict no sane human being wants. As I write this news has just broken that US troops have stormed the Iranian consulate in Iraq. Whilst I’m hesitant to connect the dots just yet a combination of recent speeches by George Bush and Tony Blair suggest moves towards a much larger pan-regional conflict, or what Anatole Kaletsky described in The Times as ‘An unholy alliance threatening catastrophe’. Kaletsky claims that ‘With the dawning of a new year, the Bush-Blair partnership is working on an even more horrendous foreign policy disaster’.
The disaster in question is a much-much larger escalation of the conflict into ‘a Middle Eastern equivalent of the Second World War’, featuring the US, UK, Israel and the Saudi’s fighting Iran, Shia Islam as a whole, and the macho man Randy Savage. Such a confrontation could of course involve nuclear weapons of some description – most likely of the ‘tactical’ (the most distasteful word in the English language in this context) variety, used by Israel against Iran.
And at this point I stop, through a combination of deep scepticism – this sounds suspiciously like a story told to me by a friend a little too keen on conspiracy theories – and real fear. Certainly such a scenario would be impossible in saner times. But add together a combination of two premiers desperately trying to salvage what remains of a broken ideology, an Israeli leader under pressure to account for previous military failures, and a Saudi regime fearful of internal as well as regional threats, and it all looks alarming, if not yet totally feasible.
Bush’s speech last night did make direct reference to Iran. He stated that ‘Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria’. One might liken this to previous ‘axis of evil’ type rhetoric and note how the US military is already arguably over-stretched and incapable of fighting on yet more fronts, although I would have said that last week before the attacks on Somalia. Wonkette live-blogged the ‘surgin-generals’ speech with humorous intent, but elicited similarly worried reactions. Salon also raised the question.
Tony Blair’s recent article in Foreign Affairs adds further credence to the notion of a wider war. Blair suggests that ‘Afghanistan and Iraq have been the necessary starting points of this battle’ but that ‘success there, however, must be coupled with a bolder, more consistent, and more thorough application of global values, with Washington leading the way’. The article itself is frightening in its bizarre disassociation from reality. ‘Success’ what success? Even Bush was forced to admit last night that ‘The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people -- and it is unacceptable to me’. Whilst anyone who has seen recent BBC and Channel 4 documentaries on Afghanistan will know that things aren’t exactly going swimmingly there.
Thinking of Iraq and Afghanistan though leads me to fevered imaginings – if things have become godawful there, just how bad would they be if the war was widened. If the worst does occur I’d like to assure all my readers (hi mum!) that I will attempt to continue this blog from a remote Island somewhere of the coast of New Zealand. No you can’t all come!
