By T Navin
The recent report produced by John Chilcot to look into UK role in US led invasion exposes the hollowness of such actions by allied forces. Some of the key highlights of the report are that a) UK chose to join the invasion before peaceful options had been exhausted; b) Blair deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein; c) There was no proof of weapons of mass destruction and it was based on ‘flawed information’ produced by British intelligence; d) The decision to invade was made in unsatisfactory circumstances; e) George Bush ignored the UK advice on postwar planning and involving UN; f) UK military were ill equipped for the task; g) US-UK relations would not have been harmed if UK had stayed out of the war; h) Blair ignored warnings on what would happen in Iraq after invasion; i) The government did not try hard enough to keep the tally of Iraqi civilian casualties.
An imperialist psychology rationalizes its actions in the name of serving a larger human purpose, whatever is the actual reality. In response to the Chilcot reportTony Blair states “I believe we made the right decision and the world is better and safer”. This is even echoed by Bush who states that the “world is better off”. It is not surprising that despite lack of public support, Blair went on to say that “I will be with you, whatever” in 2002, much before the misadventure in 2003.
John Chilcot’s war enquiry report into UK role in Iraq war confirms that in a war (in reality invasion) nobody is a victor neither the invader nor the one invaded. While the invaded suffer the most with destruction of thousands of lives, many becoming disabled, infrastructure and social services destroyed and many displaced it also equally affects the normal soldiers of the invader. The damage created continues to affect a generation of the invaded country who as children were directly exposed to war. The soldiers of the invading country also suffer with many years of their lives lost in an alien country, carrying out military activities which benefit none except the commercial elite of the invaders. It may at the most serve and satisfy the imperialist powers who aim to put their own puppet regimes and gain control over oil resources, the multinational companies aiming to enter and capture the markets, the companies which enter the destroyed country in the name of contributing to rebuilding efforts and posing themselves as serving them. While the imperialist powers go on to create a manufactured consent around threat from ‘Islamic terrorism’ (through their ideological media houses such as CNN, Fox news etc) and loss of innocent lives, what gets hidden is the fact of ‘Imperialist genocide’ where loss of lives occur is many times higher.
Navin works with an NGO as a Researcher. He had done his M.Phil from Jawaharlal Nehru University
8 July 2016