By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 3rd September 2012

For years it seems impregnable, then suddenly the citadel collapses. An ideology, a fact, a regime appears fixed, unshakeable, almost geological. Then an inch of mortar falls, and the stonework begins to slide. Something of this kind happened over the weekend.

When Desmond Tutu wrote that Tony Blair should be treading the path to the Hague, he de-normalised what Blair has done(1). Tutu broke the protocol of power – the implicit accord between those who flit from one grand meeting to another – and named his crime. I expect that Blair will never recover from it.

The offence is known by two names in international law: the crime of aggression and a crime against peace. It is defined by the Nuremberg Principles as the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression”(2). This means a war fought for a purpose other than self-defence: in other words outwith articles 33 and 51 of the UN Charter(3).

That the invasion of Iraq falls into this category looks indisputable. Blair’s cabinet ministers knew it, and told him so. His Attorney-General warned that there were just three ways in which it could be legally justified: “self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UN Security Council authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case.”(4) Blair tried and failed to obtain the third.

His foreign secretary, Jack Straw, told Blair that for the war to be legal, “i) There must be an armed attack upon a State or such an attack must be imminent; ii) The use of force must be necessary and other means to reverse/avert the attack must be unavailable; iii) The acts in self-defence must be proportionate and strictly confined to the object of stopping the attack.”(5) None of these conditions were met. The Cabinet Office told him “A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to Law Officers’ advice, none currently exists.”(6)

Without legal justification, the attack on Iraq was an act of mass murder. It caused the deaths of between 100,000 and a million people, and ranks among the greatest crimes the world has ever seen. That Blair and his ministers still saunter among us, gathering money wherever they go, is a withering indictment of a one-sided system of international justice: a system whose hypocrisies Tutu has exposed.

Blair’s diminishing band of apologists cling to two desperate justifications. The first is that the war was automatically authorised by a prior UN resolution: 1441. But when it was discussed in the Security Council, both the US and UK ambassadors insisted that 1441 did not authorise the use of force(7). The UK representative stated that “there is no ‘automaticity’ in this resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion as required in paragraph 12.”(8) Two months later, in January 2003, the attorney-general reminded Blair that “resolution 1441 does not authorise the use of military force without a further determination by the security council”(9).

Yet when Blair ran out of options, he and his lieutenants began arguing that 1441 authorised their war. They’re still at it: on Sunday, Lord Falconer tried it out on Radio 4(10). Perhaps he had forgotten that it has been thoroughly discredited.

The second justification, attempted again by Blair this weekend(11), is that there was a moral case for invading Iraq. Yes, there was one. There was also a moral case for not invading Iraq, and this case was stronger.

But a moral case (and who has launched an aggressive war in modern times without claiming to possess one?) does not provide a legal basis. Nor was it the motivation for the attack. In September 2000, before they took office, a project run by future members of the Bush administration – including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz – produced a report which said the following: “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”(12) Their purpose, they revealed, was “maintaining American military preeminence”(13). The motivation for deposing Saddam Hussein was no more moral than the motivation for arming and funding him, two decades before(14).

But while the case against Blair is strong, the means are weak. Twenty-nine people have been indicted in the International Criminal Court, and all of them are African(15). (Suspects in the Balkans have been indicted by a different tribunal). There’s a reason for this. Until 2018 at the earliest, the court can prosecute crimes committed during the course of an illegal war, but not the crime of launching that war(16).

Should we be surprised? Though the Nuremberg tribunal described aggression as “the supreme international crime”(17), several powerful states guiltily resisted its adoption. At length, in 2010, they agreed that the court would have jurisdiction over aggression, but not until 2018 or thereafter. Though the offence has been recognised in international law for 67 years, the international criminal court (unlike the Rwanda and Yugoslavia tribunals, which hear cases from before they were established) will be able to try only crimes of aggression committed beyond that date(18).

The other possibility is a prosecution in one of the states (there are at least 25(19)) which have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws. Perhaps Blair’s lawyers are now working through the list and cancelling a few speaking gigs.

That the prospect of prosecution currently looks remote makes it all the more important that the crime is not forgotten. To this end, in 2010 I set up a bounty fund – http://www.arrestblair.org – to promote peaceful citizens’ arrests of the former prime minister. People contribute to the fund, a quarter of which is paid out to anyone who makes an attempt which meets the rules(20). With our fourth payment last week, we’ve now disbursed over £10,000(21). Our aim is the same as Tutu’s: to de-normalise an act of mass murder, to keep it in the public mind and to maintain the pressure for a prosecution.

That looked, until this weekend, like an almost-impossible prospect. But when the masonry begins to crack, impossible hopes can become first plausible, then inexorable. Blair will now find himself shut out of places where he was once welcome. One day he may find himself shut in.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/02/desmond-tutu-tony-blair-iraq

2. Principle VI(a)(i). http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/390

3. http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/

4. Matthew Rycroft, 23rd July 2002. To: David Manning. Iraq: Prime Minister’s Meeting, 23 July. S 195 /02. http://downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html

5. Jack Straw, 8th March 2002. Iraq: Legal Background. Memo to Tony Blair. http://downingstreetmemo.com/iraqlegalbacktext.html

6. Overseas and Defence Secretariat, Cabinet Office. 8th March 2002. Iraq Options paper – memo from outlining military options for implementing regime change. http://downingstreetmemo.com/iraqoptions.html

7. John Negroponte, 8th November 2002. Statement to Security Council meeting 4644. http://www.undemocracy.com/securitycouncil/meeting_4644#pg003-bk01

8. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, 8th November 2002. Statement to Security Council meeting 4644. http://www.undemocracy.com/securitycouncil/meeting_4644#pg004-bk01

9. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/21/tony-blair-chilcot-inquiry

10. On Broadcasting House, Radio 4, 2nd September 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/bh

11. http://www.tonyblairoffice.org/news/entry/tony-blair-responds-to-archbishop-tutus-opinion-piece-in-this-weeks-observe/

12. The Project for the New American Century, September 2000. Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century. http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

13. As above.

14. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/dec/31/iraq.politics

15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_indicted_in_the_International_Criminal_Court

16. Article 15 bis (2), Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/ADD16852-AEE9-4757-ABE7-9CDC7CF02886/283503/RomeStatutEng1.pdf

17. Bruce Broomhall, 2003. International Justice and the International Criminal Court: between sovereignty and the rule of law. Oxford University Press.

18. Article 15 bis (2), Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/ADD16852-AEE9-4757-ABE7-9CDC7CF02886/283503/RomeStatutEng1.pdf

19. Astrid Reisinger Coracini, pers. comm. http://www.uni-graz.at/~reisiast/d_Lebenslauf.html

20. http://www.arrestblair.org/rules

21. http://www.arrestblair.org/war-crimes-reports

By George Monbiot, published on monbiot.com, 20th January 2011

Tomorrow, Tony Blair reappears at the Chilcot Inquiry. With any luck, he’ll have a tougher time of it than he did on the last occasion, not least because his attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, has now testified that he misled parliament over the legality of the Iraq war.

This adds even more weight to the case that, in invading Iraq, Blair commissioned a crime of aggression. Since October 2009, arrestblair.org, one of monbiot.com’s sister sites, has offered a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former prime minister.

The principle is simple: people make donations to the bounty pot, and whoever attempts an arrest which meets the conditions set by the site gets a quarter of whatever’s in it. So far three pay-outs have been made, of £2,619.67, £2,801.98 and £3,129.02.

There is currently £9,397.06 in the fund, so someone attempting to arrest Tony Blair tomorrow stands to make £2349.27, to use as they wish.

You can find details of Blair’s appearance, the terms and conditions and the case for his prosecution on arrestblair.org.

Good luck!

www.monbiot.com

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 2nd February 2010

What else can you do? When the entire administration is engaged in a criminal act, when there is no clear separation of powers between the government and the judiciary, when those appointed to hold the government to account are as scary as a litter of kittens, where do you turn? Do you appeal to the Attorney-General’s office to prosecute itself?

The forensic failure of the Chilcot Inquiry illustrates what we learnt from the banking scandals: self-regulation doesn’t work. The independence of the inquiry is as stark a lie as any of the claims made by its star witness. In truth this panel of pussycats is a quango appointed and instructed by the prime minister, who will himself appear as a witness. If ever you needed more evidence that the power of the prime minister’s office is insufficiently defined in the United Kingdom, here it is.

So you can mock our feeble attempts to hold Tony Blair to account, but only if you propose an alternative. Last Friday’s hearings show that there will be no justice, no reckoning from the organs of the state. Encouraging citizens’ arrests of Tony Blair for the crime of aggression is perhaps the only remaining option we have, and the astonishing response to the campaign I launched last week shows that many people understand this. In 30 hours, before Paypal blocked the account without notice, the bounty fund at www.arrestblair.org, which rewards people trying to arrest the former prime minister for crimes against peace, cleared £9000. Since then it has been harder to produce a running total, but further pledges, electronic transfers and Tipit contributions amount to several thousand pounds more, and are still coming in at the rate of hundreds of pounds a day. The volume of correspondence has been overwhelming too: it will take weeks to reply to all the pledges and letters of support. There is a massive public appetite to see justice done.

Already the campaign has borne fruit. Outside the Chilcot Inquiry a woman called Grace McCann, inspired by the website, tried to apprehend Mr Blair, before she was restrained and removed by the police(1). She qualifies for the first bounty: one quarter of the total pot at the time of her attempt. She has pledged to give the money to relevant charities. The fund will remain open for as long as Blair lives or until he is officially prosecuted, and we will keep paying out to those who follow Grace’s example.

Two main arguments have been deployed against this campaign. The most surprising was produced by Polly Toynbee in her column on Saturday. “Calling in judges to override the decisions of a democratically elected government backed by parliament is a dangerous road, leading to the demise of politics … there is no other authority and we undermine it at our peril. Politics is already at a low ebb: sending political decisions to be over-ridden by the courts would do nothing to restore credibility.”(2)

This is a weird form of liberal exceptionalism. Because enthusiasm for politics has declined, she argues, there should be no limits to state power, except those ordained by the state. It is precisely because we no longer believe that the government can be held to account that we have become so disillusioned with politics. In a country like the United Kingdom – where executive power is constitutionally unlimited, the prime minister can bully, mislead and lie to parliament, the Attorney-General is both overseer of the legal system and a minister of the Crown,
media scrutiny is feeble and partisan and citizens have come to expect nothing better – judicial review is even more important than it is elsewhere. But in any nation, equality before the law is fundamental to democracy. Its absence leaves the door wide open to elective dictatorship. Except in Italy, this is the first time I have seen anyone in a democratic country argue that judges should be able neither to review the decisions of government nor to try its ministers.

I agree with Polly that the legal issue must not obscure the moral issues. But it doesn’t: it highlights them. Wars of aggression are illegal for a good moral reason: they kill people without justification.

Most of Blair’s apologists – William Shawcross(3), Nick Cohen(4), David Blunkett(5), John Rentoul(6) and others – argue that Iraq is a better place now than it was before the war, therefore the war was restrospectively both just and legal. On the same grounds – the ends justify the means – any number of wars could be excused. The First World War secured votes for women, allowed the young to challenge a corrupt gerontocracy and began to crack the class system, but you would be hard put to argue that this justified the slaughter in the trenches. Europe has been a safer and more prosperous place since the conclusion of the Second World War: this doesn’t mean that the Axis powers were right to launch it. To suggest that the murder of somewhere between 100,000 and 1 million people in Iraq, the wounding and mutilation of many more, the collapse of infrastructure and public services and the misrule of the occupying powers is justifed by subsequent partial improvements in the lives of surviving Iraqis is to maintain that the massive tally of death and destruction was a price worth paying. It is part of the same psychopathic mindset – which reduced human lives to nothing but figures in a political equation – that launched the war.

Nick Cohen’s argument – that Saddam was a monster and his reign was illegitimate, therefore it was legitimate and legal to remove him – is facile and deeply confused. He deliberately conflates two meanings of the word legitimate. I can see that there’s a case for updating international law to examine the issue of humanitarian intervention, and to decide whether countries might be justified in attacking another to relieve the suffering of its citizens. But to maintain that states have a right to disregard the current law at their convenience and unilaterally punish another country invites the collapse of an international system that, though flawed, seeks to defend weaker nations from perpetual attack. This doctrine would permit states to invent justifications for wars of self-interest, just as King Leopold claimed to be liberating the Congo from Arab slavers so that he could enslave it himself, or Saddam Hussein claimed to be saving the region from Shia fundamentalism by bombarding Iran with poison gas. If you want to invade another nation, a humanitarian reason can always be found.

The arrest campaign cannot right the wrongs of the Iraq war, or even guarantee that Blair is prosecuted for his gigantic crime, but it makes sure that the issue cannot be shuffled away into the dark corners of the national memory. While Blair can brush off the Chilcot panel, this bounty fund ensures that he will never rid himself of accountability for his actions. It shows governments that they may no longer destroy people’s lives and expect us to forget.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Iraq-Inquiry-Protester-Restrained-Trying-To-Perform-Citizens-Arrest-On-Tony-Blair/Article/201001415537885?lpos=Politics_Carousel_Region_1&lid=ARTICLE_15537885_Iraq_Inquiry%

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/30/clair-chilcot-iraq-inquiry-un

3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/27/illegal-war-iraqis-hope-blair

4. Nick Cohen, 28th January 2010. Jeremy Vine Show, BBC Radio 2.

5. David Blunkett, sometime last week. Today programme, BBC Radio 4.

6. John Rentoul, 29th January 2010. Drive Time, BBC Radio Wales.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 26th January 2010

The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won’t address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg Tribunal called “the supreme international crime”(1): the crime of aggression.

But there’s a problem with official inquiries in the United Kingdom: the government appoints their members and sets their terms of reference. It’s the equivalent of a criminal suspect being allowed to choose what the charges should be, who should judge his case and who should sit on the jury. As a senior judge told the Guardian in November, “Looking into the legality of the war is the last thing the government wants. And actually, it’s the last thing the opposition wants either because they voted for the war. There simply is not the political pressure to explore the question of legality – they have not asked because they don’t want the answer.”(2)

Others have explored it, however. Two weeks ago a Dutch inquiry, led by a former supreme court judge, found that the invasion had “no sound mandate in international law”(3). Last month the former law lord, Lord Steyn, said that “in the absence of a second UN resolution authorising invasion, it was illegal.”(4) In November Lord Bingham, the former lord chief justice, stated that, without the blessing of the UN, the Iraq war was “a serious violation of international law and the rule of law.”(5)

Under the UN Charter, two conditions must be met before a war can legally be waged(6). The parties to a dispute must first “seek a solution by negotiation” (Article 33). They can take up arms without an explicit mandate from the UN Security Council only “if an armed attack occurs against [them]” (Article 51). Neither of these conditions applied. The US and UK governments rejected Iraq’s attempts to negotiate(7). At one point the US State Department even announced that it would “go into thwart mode” to prevent the Iraqis from resuming talks on weapons inspection(8). Iraq had launched no armed attack against either nation.

We also know that the UK government was aware that the war it intended to launch was illegal. In March 2002, the Cabinet Office explained that “a legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to Law Officers’ advice, none currently exists.”(9) In July 2002, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, told the prime minister that there were only “three possible legal bases” for launching a war: “self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC [Security Council] authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case.”(10) Bush and Blair later failed to obtain Security Council authorisation.

As the resignation letter on the eve of the war from Elizabeth Wilmshurst, then deputy legal advisor to the Foreign Office, revealed, her office had “consistently” advised that an invasion would be unlawful without a new UN resolution. She explained that “an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression”(11). Both Wilmshurst and her former boss, Sir Michael Wood, will testify before the Chilcot Inquiry today (Tuesday). Expect fireworks.

Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by the people who commissioned it. Crimes of aggression (also known as crimes against peace) are defined by the Nuremberg Principles as “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties”(12). They have been recognised in international law since 1945. The Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and which was ratified by Blair’s government in 2001(13), provides for the Court to “exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression”, once it has decided how the crime should be defined and prosecuted(14).

There are two problems. The first is that neither the government nor the opposition has any interest in pursuing these crimes, for the obvious reason that in doing so they would expose themselves to prosecution. The second is that the required legal mechanisms don’t yet exist. The governments which ratified the Rome Statute have been filibustering furiously to delay the point at which the crime can be prosecuted by the ICC: after eight years of discussions, the necessary provision still hasn’t been adopted.

Some countries, mostly in eastern Europe and central Asia, have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws(15), though it is not yet clear which of them would be willing to try a foreign national for acts committed abroad. In the UK, where it remains illegal to wear an offensive T-shirt, you cannot yet be prosecuted for mass murder commissioned overseas.

All those who believe in justice should campaign for their governments to stop messing about and allow the International Criminal Court to start prosecuting the crime of aggression. We should also press for its adoption into national law. But I believe that the people of this nation, who re-elected a government which had launched an illegal war, have a duty to do more than that. We must show that we have not, as Blair requested, “moved on” from Iraq, that we are not prepared to allow his crime to remain unpunished, or to allow future leaders to believe that they can safely repeat it.

But how? As I found when I tried to apprehend John Bolton, one of the architects of the war in George Bush’s government, at the Hay festival in 2008(16), and as Peter Tatchell found when he tried to detain Robert Mugabe(17), nothing focuses attention on these issues more than an attempted citizen’s arrest. In October I mooted the idea of a bounty to which the public could contribute, payable to anyone who tried to arrest Tony Blair if he became president of the EU(18). He didn’t of course, but I asked those who had pledged money whether we should go ahead anyway. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

So today I am launching a website, www.arrestblair.org, whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100, and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I’ve laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available for as long as Blair lives. The higher the reward, the greater the number of people who are likely to try.

At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have great political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press governments to prosecute. There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace. No civilised country can allow mass murderers to move on.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://books.google.com/books?id=-Ni6Qy2E9KwC&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=essentially+an+evil+thing…to+initiate+a+war+of+aggression…is+not+only+an+international+crime%3B+it+is+the+supreme+international+crime,+differing+only+from+other+war+crimes+in+that+it+contains+within+itself+the+accumulated+evil+of+the+whole.&source=bl&ots=vi_FtNzs0T&sig=D8sYeDqbnueaLmJvomG3Og2YBHw&hl=en&ei=Is5ESpOwMpTCML2A3bAC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10#v=onepage&q=&f=false

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/23/chilcot-inquiry-iraq-war

3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/12/iraq-invasion-violated-interational-law-dutch-inquiry-finds

4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/01/iraq-inquiry-interim-finding-illegal-law-lord

5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/18/iraq-us-foreign-policy

6. http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/index.shtml

7. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2003/11/11/dreamers-and-idiots/

8. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2002/10/08/thwart-mode/

9. http://downingstreetmemo.com/iraqoptions.html

10. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article387374.ece

11. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4377605.stm

12. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/390

13. http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XVIII-10&chapter=18&lang=en

14. Article 5.2, http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/EA9AEFF7-5752-4F84-BE94-0A655EB30E16/0/Rome_Statute_English.pdf

15. Astrid Reisinger Coracini, 2010. National Legislation on Individual Responsibility for Conduct Amounting to Aggression, in: Roberto Bellelli (ed.), International Criminal Justice. Lessons Learned and the Challenges Ahead (forthcoming).

16. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/06/03/justice-undone/

17. http://www.petertatchell.net/direct%20action/mugabe.htm

18. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/10/26/arresting-blair/

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian, 26th October 2009

Tony Blair’s bid to become president of the European Union has united the left in revulsion. His enemies argue that he divided Europe by launching an illegal war; he kept the UK out of the eurozone and the Schengen agreement; he is contemptuous of democracy (surely a qualification?); greases up to wealth and power and lets the poor go to hell. He is ruthless, mendacious, slippery and shameless. But never mind all that. I’m backing Blair.

It’s not his undoubted powers of persuasion that have swayed me, nor the motorcade factor which clinched it for David Miliband, who claims that no one else could stop the traffic in Beijing or Washington or Moscow(1)). I have a different interest. You could argue that I’m placing other considerations above the good of the EU. You’d be right, but this hardly distinguishes me from the rest of Blair’s supporters. I contend that his presidency could do more for world peace than any appointment since the Second World War.

Blair has the distinction, which is a source of national pride in some quarters, of being one of the two greatest living mass murderers. That he commissioned a crime of aggression (waging an unprovoked war, described by the Nuremberg Tribunal as “the supreme international crime”(2)) looks incontestable. I will explain the case in a moment. This crime has caused the deaths, depending on whose estimate you believe, of between 100,000 and one million people(3,4). As there was no legal justification, these people were murdered. But no one has been brought to justice.

Within the UK, there is no means of prosecuting Mr Blair. In 2006 the law lords decided that the international crime of aggression has not been incorporated into domestic law(5). But elsewhere in the world it has been. In 2006 the professor of international law Philippe Sands warned that “Margaret Thatcher avoids certain countries as a result of the sinking of the Belgrano, and Blair would be advised to do likewise.”(6)

Has he? I don’t know. Blair’s diary and most of his meetings are private. He has no need to travel to countries where he might encounter a little legal difficulty. So he goes about his business untroubled. He seldom faces protests, let alone investigating magistrates. His only punishment for the crime of aggression so far is a multimillion-pound book deal, massive speaking fees, posh directorships and an appointment as Middle East peace envoy, which must rank with Henry Kissinger’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize as the supreme crime against satire.

I have spent the past three days trying to discover, from legal experts all over Europe, where the crime of aggression can be prosecuted. The only certain answer is that the situation is unclear. Everyone agrees that within the EU two states, Estonia and Latvia, have incorporated it into domestic law. In most of the others the law remains to be tested. In 2005 the German federal administrative court ruled in favour of an army major who had refused to obey an order in case it implicated him in the Iraq war. The court’s justification was that the war was a crime of aggression(7). A study of the constitutions of western European nations in 1988 found that if there’s a conflict most of them would place customary international law above domestic law, suggesting that a prosecution is possible(8). President Blair would also be obliged to travel to countries outside the EU, including the other states of the former Soviet Union, many of which have now incorporated the crime of aggression. He would have little control over his appointments, and everyone would know when he was coming.

It’s just possible that an investigating magistrate, like Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish judge who issued a warrant for the arrest of General Pinochet, would set the police on him. But our best chance of putting pressure on reluctant authorities lies in a citizen’s arrest. To stimulate this process, I will put up the first £100 of a bounty (to which, if he gets the job, I will ask readers to subscribe) payable to the first person to attempt a non-violent arrest of President Blair. It shouldn’t be hard to raise several thousand pounds. I will help set up a network of national arrest committees, exchanging information and preparing for the great man’s visits. President Blair would have no hiding place: we will be with him wherever he goes.

Here is the case against him. The Downing Street memo, a record of a meeting in July 2002, reveals that Sir Richard Dearlove, director of the UK’s foreign intelligence service MI6, told Blair that in Washington “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”(9) The foreign secretary (Jack Straw) then told Mr Blair that “the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.” He suggested that “we should work up a plan” to produce “legal justification for the use of force.” The Attorney-General told the prime minister that there were only “three possible legal bases” for launching a war: “self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC [Security Council] authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case.” Bush and Blair failed to obtain Security Council authorisation.

This short memo, which should be learnt by heart by every citizen of the United Kingdom, reveals that Blair knew that the decision to attack Iraq had already been made; that it preceded the justification, which was being retrofitted to an act of aggression; that the only legal reasons for an attack didn’t apply, and that the war couldn’t be launched without UN authorisation.

The legal status of Bush’s decision had already been explained to Mr Blair. In March 2002, as another leaked memo shows, Jack Straw had reminded him of the conditions required to launch a legal war: “i) There must be an armed attack upon a State or such an attack must be imminent; ii) The use of force must be necessary and other means to reverse/avert the attack must be unavailable; iii) The acts in self-defence must be proportionate and strictly confined to the object of stopping the attack.”(10) Straw explained that the development or possession of weapons of mass destruction “does not in itself amount to an armed attack; what would be needed would be clear evidence of an imminent attack.” A third memo, from the Cabinet Office, explained that “there is no greater threat now than in recent years that Saddam will use WMD … A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to Law Officers’ advice, none currently exists.”(11)

It’s just a matter of getting him in front of a judge. The crazy plan to make this mass murderer president could be the chance that many of us have been waiting for.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/25/miliband-supports-blair-eu-presidency

2. Marjorie Cohn, professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, 9th November 2004. Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime. http://www.truthout.org/article/aggressive-war-supreme-international-crime

3. Iraq Body Count – http://www.iraqbodycount.org – estimates around 100,000.

4. Opinion Research Business estimates around one million. (January 2008. Update on Iraqi Casualty Data). http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=88

5. House of Lords, 29th March 2006. R v. Jones and Milling. [2006] UKHL 16.
http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/uk/cases/UKHL/2006/16.html&query=Jones+and+et+and+al&method=boolean

6. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2006/feb/14/highereducationprofile.highereducation

7. Justus Leicht, 27th September 2005. German court declares Iraq war violated international law.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/iraq-s27.shtml

8. Wildhaber and Breitenmoser, 1988. The Relationship Between Customary International Law and Municipal Law in Western European Countries 48 ZaoRV. I have not been able to obtain this study, so this reference is secondhand.

9. Matthew Rycroft, 23rd July 2002. Published in the Sunday Times as: The secret Downing Street memo. 1st May 2005. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article387374.ece

10. Jack Straw’s office, 8th March 2005. Memo to Tony Blair. http://downingstreetmemo.com/iraqlegalbacktext.html

11. Overseas and Defence Secretariat Cabinet Office, 8th March 2002. Iraq: Options Paper. http://downingstreetmemo.com/iraqoptions.html

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian, 6th October 2009

Robert Ouko was the Kenyan foreign minister with a fatal tendency to speak his mind. In February 1990 he was bundled into a car which allegedly contained the country’s permanent secretary for internal security. His body was found shortly afterwards. His leg had been broken in two places, there was a bullet hole in his head and his corpse had been burnt. The Kenyan police conducted a thorough investigation and came to the obvious conclusion that Dr Ouko had committed suicide. This was the beginning of the cover-up that persists to this day, involving police and officials at every level of government.

I was reminded of Dr Ouko after reading the judgement on the case brought to the High Court in London by Khuder al-Sweady and other Iraqis(1). They were seeking a public inquiry into the events of May 2004, when, they claim, they or their relatives were taken to a British army camp and tortured or killed. The judges published their findings on Friday and ordered a proper inquiry. It is the most damning judgement on official collusion and concealment written since Labour came to power. Total coverage in British newspapers so far amounts to one short article in the Guardian(2).

The claimants say that after a battle at a checkpoint in southern Iraq, some of the survivors, including farmers cowering in nearby fields, were taken by the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment to Camp Abu Naji. Witnesses say that up to 20 prisoners were jumped on while their hands were bound, hit with rocks, had their eyes gouged out and their genitals crushed and mutilated and were then hanged or shot(3). They claim that the corpses were then handed to their families as battlefield casualties.

The Royal Military Police (RMP) were supposed to have investigated these claims, but as a recent report on their methods by Greater Manchester police shows, they messed it up with panache, appointing unqualified detectives, losing evidence and failing to interview witnesses(4). The RMP concluded that no one had done anything wrong, that 20 Iraqi corpses and nine live captives were brought to the camp and all were released without further injury. The Ministry of Defence has stuck to that line like a holy creed.

Reading the High Court judgement, you have to pinch yourself and remember that this isn’t Kenya under Daniel arap Moi, but good old Blighty, where the police are impartial, the civil service disinterested and a minister’s word is his bond. In a civilised country at least half a dozen senior officials would now be charged with perjury, the secretary of state for defence would be facing impeachment hearings and a number of soldiers would be on trial for torture and murder. But in the United Kingdom, where we see only what we choose, the judgement sinks without a ripple. We carry on believing what we have always been told: that unlike other countries, we do things properly here.

The judges found that civil servants working for the Treasury Solicitor had repeatedly lied to the court, claiming that there were no further documents to disclose which might have cast light on the case. They found that the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, “consistently and repeatedly failed to comply” with the obligation to disclose the documents the claimants were seeking. He also slapped a Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate on some of the evidence, preventing it from being revealed to the court. It turns out that he signed this certificate “on a partly false basis”, seeking to suppress facts that were already in the public domain. This abuse, the judges say, has caused the PII process “potentially very serious damage”. Ainsworth’s lack of candour about the evidence meant that he had wasted “the whole of the cost of these proceedings”.

But the judges were harshest about the Royal Military Police. They found that “the RMP investigation in 2004/5 was not thorough and proficient”. It was blocked for five weeks, its procedures were risible, and none of the nine surviving captives was interviewed. Worse was the quality of the evidence presented to the court by Colonel Dudley Giles, who is the deputy head of the military police and was the secretary of state’s principal witness. Giles, they found, “was overall a most unsatisfactory witness”. The excuse he gave for not disclosing key evidence was “wholly without foundation”, “we are all firmly of the view that he lacked the necessary objectivity, proficiency and reliability”. They suggested that if ever he was presented as a witness for similar purposes again, the court “should approach his evidence with the greatest caution.”

Most important was what the judges found in some of the documents they eventually prised from the grubby hands of the state. They were, the court found, “consistent with the contention that more than nine live detainees” had been taken to the camp. As only nine came out alive, these papers support the claimants’ contention that prisoners were killed there. No wonder the government pretended that the documents didn’t exist.

At the Labour party conference last month, the home secretary rightly observed that “social justice means nothing without criminal justice … We need to support victims and subject perpetrators to the full range of enforcement powers”(5). But this admirable principle does not extend to military justice, where the army, the military police and the government collude to prevent torturers and murderers from being tried. Friday’s judgement relates to one of several cases of alleged British war crimes in Iraq. Just one – that of the hotel receptionist Baha Mousa who was beaten to death by British soldiers – has so far resulted in a conviction(6). Thanks to an apparently botched investigation and an army cover-up, only one soldier has been convicted of any crime in relation to his killing, and that was merely inhumane treatment, for which he was jailed for one year(7).

Even when soldiers appear to murder people on their own side, the cases are passed to the specialist investigations division of the Keystone Cops. Of the four young recruits who died in suspicious circumstances at the Deepcut training barracks, one had been shot with a bullet to each side of his head and another had five bullet wounds in his chest: the ballistics expert sent to the barracks maintains that four of them were fired from a distance and one at close range(8,9). After the army destroyed crucial evidence, Surrey police decided that all four had taken their own lives. The ghost of Dr Ouko hovers into view again.

One of the tests of a functioning democracy is the extent to which its public servants are subject to the same laws as everyone else. By this measure the United Kingdom is a failed state. When the army is in the dock, Justice swaps her crown for a bandana, her sword for a Kalashnikov and her blindfold for a pair of dark glasses. The state has tried to cover up the crimes of the armed forces since the Peterloo massacre and long before. But surely in 2009 it can do better than this?

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. The Queen (on the application of Al-Sweady and Others) vs The Secretary of State for the Defence, 2nd October 2009. Case No: CO/9282/2007. http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2009/2387.html&query=Sweady&method=boolean

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/02/ministry-of-defence-shamed-iraq

3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/oct/18/iraq.iraq

4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/26/iraq-conflict-army-torture-inquiry

5. http://www.labour.org.uk/alan-johnson-speech-conference

6. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/14/mousa.timeline

7. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/apr/30/military.iraq?DCMP=EMC-thewrap08

8. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3743131.stm

9. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/feb/20/military

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 3rd June 2008.

I realise now that I didn’t have a hope. I had almost reached the stage when two of the biggest gorillas I have ever seen swept me up and carried me out of the tent. It was humiliating, but it could have been worse. The guard on the other side of the stage, half hidden in the curtains, had spent the lecture touching something under his left armpit. Perhaps he had bubos.

I had no intention of arresting John Bolton, the former under-secretary of state at the US State Department, when I arrived at the Hay Festival. But during a panel discussion about the Iraq war, I remarked that the greatest crime of the 21st century had become so normalised that one of its authors was due to visit the festival to promote his book. I proposed that someone should attempt a citizens’ arrest, in the hope of instilling a fear of punishment among those who plan illegal wars. After the session I realised that I couldn’t call on other people to do something I wasn’t prepared to do myself.

I knew that I was more likely to be arrested and charged than Mr Bolton. I had no intention of harming him, or of acting in any way that could be interpreted as aggressive, but had I sought only to steer him gently towards the police I might have faced a range of exotic charges, from false imprisonment to aggravated assault. I was prepared to take this risk. It is not enough to demand that other people act, knowing that they will not. If the police, the courts and the state fail to prosecute what the Nuremberg tribunal described as “the supreme international crime”(1), I believe we have a duty to seek to advance the process(2).

The Nuremberg Principles, which arose from the prosecution of the Nazi war criminals, define as an international crime the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances”(3). Bolton appears to have “participated in a common plan” to prepare for the war (also defined by the principles as a crime) by inserting the false claim that Iraq was seeking to procure uranium from Niger into a State Department fact sheet(4,5). He also organised the sacking of Jose Bustani, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons(6,7). Bustani had tried to broker a peaceful resolution of the dispute over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction(8).

Some of the most pungent criticisms of my feeble attempt to bring this man to justice have come from other writers for the Guardian. Michael White took a position of extraordinary generosity towards the instigators of the war(9). There are “arguments on both sides”, he contended. Bustani might have received compensation after his sacking by Bolton, “but Bolton says that does not mean much. That is sometimes true.” In fact Bustani was not only compensated at his tribunal; he was completely exonerated of Bolton’s charges and his employers were obliged to pay special damages(10).

White suggested that Iraq might indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger, on the grounds of a conversation he once had with an MI6 officer. Alongside the British government’s 45-minute claim, this must be the best-documented of all the false justifications for the war with Iraq. In 2002, the US government sent three senior officials to Niger to investigate the claim(11). All reported that it was without foundation. The International Atomic Energy Agency discovered that it was based on crude forgeries(12). This assessment was confirmed by the State Department’s official Greg Thielmann(13), who reported directly to John Bolton(14). No evidence beyond the forged documents has been provided by either the US or the UK governments to support their allegation.

White also gives credence to Bolton’s claims that the war in 2003 was justified by two UN resolutions – 678 and 687 – which were approved in 1990 and 1991, and that it was permitted by Article 51 of the UN Charter. The attempt to revive resolutions 678 and 687 was the last, desperate throw of the dice by the Blair government when all else had failed. When it became clear that it could not obtain a new UN resolution authorising force against Iraq, the government dusted down the old ones, which had been drafted in response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. This revival formed the basis of Lord Goldsmith’s published advice on 17th March 2003. It was described as “risible” and “scrap[ing] the bottom of the legal barrel” by Lord Alexander, the former chair of the Bar Council(15). After the first Gulf War, Colin Powell, General Sir Peter de la Billiere and John Major all stated that the UN’s resolutions permitted them only to expel the Iraqi army from Kuwait, and not to overthrow the Iraqi government(16). Lord Goldsmith himself, in the summer of 2002, advised Tony Blair that resolutions 678 and 687 could not be used to justify a new war with Iraq(17).

Article 51 of the UN Charter is comprehensible to anyone but the lawyers employed by the Bush administration. States have a right to self-defence “if an armed attack occurs against” them, and then only until the UN Security Council can intervene. On what occasion did Iraq attack the United States? Is there any claim made by the Blair and Bush governments that Michael White is not prepared to believe?

Conor Foley, writing on Comment is Free, suggested that my action “completely trivializes the serious case” against the Iraq war(18) and claimed that I was seeking to “imprison … people because of their political opinions”(19), as if Bolton were simply a commentator on the war, and not an agent. Does he really believe that the former under-secretary did not “participate in a common plan” to initiate the war with Iraq? What other conceivable purpose might the State Department’s misleading fact sheet have served? And what more serious action can someone who is neither a Law Lord nor a legislator take? Bolton himself maintains that my attempt to bring him to justice reflects a “move towards lawlessness and fascism.”(20) This is an interesting commentary on an attempt to uphold a law which arose from the prosecution of fascists.

But there is one charge I do accept: that my chances of success were very slight. Apart from the 300-pound gorillas, the main obstacle I faced was that although the crime of aggression, as defined by the Nuremberg Principles, has been incorporated into the legislation of many countries, it has not been assimilated into the laws of England and Wales(21). This does not lessen the crime but it means that it cannot yet be tried here. This merely highlights another injustice: while the British state is prepared to punish petty misdemeanors with vindictive ferocity, it will not legislate against the greatest crime of all, lest it expose itself to prosecution.

But demonstration has two meanings. Non-violent direct action is both a protest and an exposition. It seeks to demonstrate truths which have been overlooked or forgotten. I sought to remind people that the greatest crime of the 21st Century remains unprosecuted, and remains a great crime. If you have read this far, I have succeeded.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Marjorie Cohn, professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, 9th November 2004. Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime. http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110904A.shtml

2. The charge sheet Nicola Cutcher and I compiled can be read here: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/05/27/arresting-john-bolton/

3. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/390?OpenDocument

4. See letter from Rep. Henry Waxman to Rep. Christopher Shays, 1st March 2005. http://oversight.house.gov/Documents/20050301112122-90349.pdf

5. The State Department fact sheet can be read here: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/16118.htm

6. Charles J. Hanley, 4th June 2005. Bolton Said to Orchestrate Unlawful Firing. Associated Press.

7. Bolton himself boasts of this role in his book, Surrender is Not an Option, 2008. pp 95-98. Threshold Editions, New York.

8. See http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2002/04/16/a-war-against-the-peacemaker/

9. Michael White, 29th May 2008. What I really think about John Bolton. http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/05/michael_whites_political_blog_169.html

10. See http://www.ilo.org/public/english/tribunal/fulltext/2232.htm

11. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Ambassador Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick and General Carlton Fulford.

12. Mohamed ElBaradei, 7th March 2003. The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: an Update.
Statement to the United Nations Security Council. http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2003/ebsp2003n006.shtml

13. Michael Duffy and James Carney, 21st July 2003. A Question Of Trust. Time magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1005234-1,00.html

14. No author given, 1st August 2005. Bush appoints Bolton as his UN ambassador. The Economist.

15. Clare Dyer, 15th October 2003. Goldsmith ‘scraped the legal barrel’ over Iraq war. The Guardian.

16. Philippe Sands, 2005. Lawless World, p190. Penguin, London.

17. John Kampfner, 2003. Blair’s Wars, p378. Free Press.

18. Conor Foley, 30th May 2008. Monbiot’s silly stunt. http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2008/05/monbiots_silly_stunt.html

19. Conor makes this claim in the comment thread.

20. Stephen Adams, 29th May 2008. John Bolton: Citizen’s arrest attempt was comic. The Telegraph.

21. House of Lords, 2006. Judgments – R v. Jones (Appellant) (On Appeal from the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)) (formerly R v. J (Appellant)), Etc.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldjudgmt/jd060329/jones-5.htm

On Wednesday 28th May 2008, I will attempt a citizen’s arrest of John Robert Bolton, former Under-Secretary of State, US State Department, for the crime of aggression, as established by customary international law and described by Nuremberg Principles VI and VII.

These state the following:

“Principle VI
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

…

“Principle VII

Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.”

The evidence against him is as follows:

1. John Bolton orchestrated the sacking of the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Jose Bustani. Bustani had offered to resolve the dispute over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, and therefore to avert armed conflict. He had offered to seek to persuade Saddam Hussein to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention, which would mean that Iraq was then subject to weapons inspections by the OPCW. As the OPCW was not tainted by the CIA’s infiltration of UNSCOM, Bustani’s initiative had the potential to defuse the crisis over Saddam Hussein’s obstruction of UNMOVIC inspections.

Apparently in order to prevent the negotiated settlement that Bustani proposed, and as part of a common plan with other administration officials to prepare and initiate a war of aggression, in violation of international treaties, Mr Bolton acted as follows:

In March 2002 his office produced a ‘White Paper’ claiming that the OPCW was seeking an “inappropriate role

4. See http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=35337841&postID=116049609842175978&quickEdit=true

5. Indymedia Ireland, 25^th July 2006. Not Guilty. The Pitstop Ploughshares All Acquitted on All Charges.

7. John Crace, 14^th February 2006. Philippe Sands: Weapon of mass instruction. The Guardian.

9. See http://www.tridentploughshares.org/article1080

10. George Monbiot, 30^th July 1996. Hawks and Doves. The Guardian. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1996/07/30/hawks-and-doves/

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 6th June 2006

That they have not seen his film is no impediment. That it has won the Palme d’Or at Cannes only quickens their desire for reprisals. Ken Loach has been placed in preventive detention and is having his fingernails pulled out.

Writing in the Times, Tim Luckhurst compares him – unfavourably – to Leni Riefenstahl. His new film is a “poisonously anti-British corruption of the history of the war of Irish independence. … The Wind that Shakes the Barley is not just wrong. It infantilises its subject matter and reawakens ancient feuds.”(1) I checked with the production company. The film has not yet been released. They can find no record that Luckhurst has attended a screening. Last night he said he was “not prepared to discuss the matter”.

At least Simon Heffer, writing in the Telegraph, admits he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Loach, he says, “hates this country, yet leeches off it, using public funds to make his repulsive films. And no, I haven’t seen it, any more than I need to read Mein Kampf to know what a louse Hitler was.”(2) The Sun says it’s “a brutally anti-British film … designed to drag the reputation of our nation through the mud.”(3) Ruth Dudley Edwards in the Daily Mail pronounced it “old-fashioned propaganda” and “a melange of half-truths”(4). She hasn’t seen the film either. Nor, it seems, has Michael Gove, who told his readers in the Times that it helps to “legitimise the actions of gangsters”(5).

Are these people claiming that events of the kind Loach portrays did not happen? Reprisals by members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Auxiliary division are documented by historians of all political stripes. During the period the film covers (1920-1921), policemen visited homes in places such as Thurles, Cork, Upperchurch and Galway and shot or bayoneted their unarmed inhabitants(6). Nor does any historian deny that they fired into crowds or threw grenades or beat people up in the streets or set fire to homes and businesses in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Bantry, Kilmallock, Balbriggan, Miltown Malbay, Lahinch, Ennistymon, Trim and other towns(7). Nor can the fact that the constabulary tortured and killed some of its prisoners be seriously disputed(8).

It is also clear that some of these attacks were sanctioned by senior officers and politicians. In June 1920, in the presence of the commander of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the force’s Divisional Commissioner in Munster (Colonel G.B. Smyth) told his men “You may make mistakes occasionally and innocent people may be shot but that cannot be helped … The more you shoot, the better I will like you, and I assure you no policeman will get in trouble for shooting any man.” He advised that “when civilians are seen approaching, shout “Hands up!” Should the order be not immediately obeyed, shoot and shoot with effect. If the persons approaching carry their hands in their pockets, or are in any way suspicious looking, shoot them down.”(9) Sir Henry Wilson, the director of operations in the War Office, complained that he had warned his minister – Winston Churchill – that “indiscriminate reprisals will play the devil in Ireland, but he won’t listen or agree.”(10) There was even a policy of “official reprisals”: the homes of people who lived close to the scene of an ambush and had failed to warn the authorities could be legally destroyed(11).

Loach’s hero, Damien, as many Irishmen were, is radicalised by a raid by the Black and Tans, who were members of the constabulary recruited from outside Ireland. As the film shows, they were responsible for much of the police brutality. The historian Robert Kee, who is a fierce critic of the IRA, remarks that while the police were at first slow to retaliate, their vengeance – exercised against innocent people – “further consolidated national feeling in Ireland. It made the Irish people feel more and more in sympathy with fighting men of their own”(12). The fighter Edward MacLysaght recorded that “what probably drove a peacefully-inclined man like myself into rebellion was the British attitude towards us: the assumption that the whole lot of us were a pack of murdering corner boys”(13).

There is no question that the IRA also killed ruthlessly – not just police and soldiers but also people they deemed to be informers and collaborators. But Loach shows this too (I have seen the film). The press hates him because he admits that the people who committed these acts were not evil automata, but human beings capable of grief, anger, love and pity. So too, of course, were the British forces, whose humanity is always emphasised by the newspapers. Ken’s crime is to have told the other side of the story.

The other side – whether it concerns Ireland, India, Kenya or Malaya – is always inadmissable. The torture and killing of the colonised is ignored or excused, while their violent responses to occupation are never forgotten. The only aggressors permitted to exist are those who fight back.

Does it matter what people say about a conflict that took place 85 years ago? It does. For the same one-sided story is being told about the occupation of Iraq. The execution of 24 civilians in Haditha allegedly carried out by US Marines in November is being discussed as a disgraceful anomaly: the work of a few “bad apples” or “rogue elements”. Donald Rumsfeld claims “we know that 99.9% of our forces conduct themselves in an exemplary manner”(14), and most of the press seems to agree. But if it chose to look, it would find evidence of scores of such massacres.

In March Jody Casey, a veteran of the war in Iraq, told Newsnight that when insurgents have let off a bomb, “you just zap any farmer that is close to you … when we first got down there, you could basically kill whoever you wanted, it was that easy.”(15) On Sunday another veteran told the Observer that cold-blooded killings by US forces “are widespread. This is the norm. These are not the exceptions.”(16) There is powerful evidence to suggest that US soldiers tied up and executed 11 people – again including small children – in Ishaqi in March(17). Iraqi officers say that US troops executed two women and a mentally handicapped man in a house in Samarra last month(18). In 2004, US forces are alleged to have bombed a wedding party at Makr al-Deeb and then shot the survivors, killing 42 people(19). No one has any idea what happened in Falluja, as the destruction of the city and its remaining inhabitants was so thorough. Even the Iraqi Prime Minister, who depends on coalition troops for his protection, complained last week that their attacks on civilians are a “regular occurrence … They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion.”(20) But like the Black and Tans the US troops have little fear of investigation or punishment.

Why should we be surprised by these events? This is what happens when one country occupies another. When troops are far from home, exercising power over people they don’t understand, knowing that the population harbours those who would kill them if they could, their anger and fear and frustration turns into a hatred of all “micks” or “gooks” or “hajjis”. Occupations brutalise both the occupiers and the occupied. It is our refusal to learn that lesson which allows new colonial adventures to take place. If we knew more about Ireland, the invasion of Iraq might never have happened.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Tim Luckhurst, 31st May 2006. Director in a class of his own. The Times.

2. Simon Heffer, 3rd June 2006. More poison from Loach the leech. Daily Telegraph.

3. Harry Macadam, 30th May 2006. Top Cannes film is most pro-IRA ever. The Sun.

4. Ruth Dudley Edwards, 30th May 2006. Why DOES Ken Loach loathe his country so much? Daily Mail.

5. Michael Gove, 31st May 2005. A truly radical film would dare to tell the truth. The Times.

6. Eg Robert Kee, 2000 edition (first published 1972). The Green Flag: a history of Irish nationalism. Penguin, London; Liz Curtis, 1994. The Caue of Ireland from the United Irishmen to Partition. Beyond the Pale, Belfast; Margaret Ward, 2001. In their own voice: women and Irish nationalism. Attic Press, Cork.

7. ibid.

8. Eg Robert Kee – see note 6, pp 689 & 703.

9. Dorothy Macardle, 1951. The Irish Republic: A documented chronicle of the Anglo-Irish conflict and the partitioning of Ireland, with a detailed account of the period 1916-1923. Irish Press, Dublin, p361.

10. David McKittrick, 21st April 2006. Ireland’s War of Independence: The chilling story of the Black and Tans. The Independent.

11. Robert Kee – see note 6, pp691-692 & 706.

12. Robert Kee – see note 6, p672.

13. Quoted by Robert Kee – see note 6, p674.

14. Julian Borger, 3rd June 2006. US soldiers cleared of murdering Iraqi civilians in raid. The Guardian.

15. Newsnight, 29th March 2006. Quoted by Medialens, 19th April 2006. ‘You Could Kill Whoever You Wanted’: War Crimes And The Struggle For Truth. http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060419_you_could_kill.php

16. Camilo Mejia, quoted by Paul Harris, Peter Beaumont and Mohammed al-Ubeidy, 4th June 2006. US confronts brutal culture among its finest sons. The Observer.

17. Julian Borger, 21st March 2006. Iraqi police claim US troops executed family. The Guardian.

18. By Reuters, 1st June 2006. In another town, Iraqis say US killed civilians. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13459.htm

19. Neil Mackay, 23rd May 2004. The Wedding Party Massacre. The Herald.

20. Richard Oppel Jr, 2nd June 2006. Iraqi Assails U.S. for Strikes on Civilians. New york Times. (Corrected version: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/02/world/middleeast/02iraq.html?ex=1306900800&en=05f6623de51d300f&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)