The Iraqi people’s new best friends

Of all the many responses from around the world to Sunday’s historic election in Iraq, the one that stood out for sheer jaw-dropping effronterie was that offered by -- who else? -- the French. The election, a spokesman for the French president said, was “a great success for the international community.” Well, in a way it was: the more than forty members of the international community who, led by the United States, Great Britain and Australia, fought a war to liberate the Iraqi people from the genocidal regime of Saddam Hussein -- who put soldiers in harm’s way, or contributed money and matériel, or at least lent moral support to the operation. They, along with the millions of Iraqis who defied the threats of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda affiliates and went to the polls, are entitled to take some satisfaction from the vote. But somehow that’s not the “international community” I think the Elysée had in mind. Theirs is the international community that opposed the war -- not the majority of the European Union, or the majority of the OECD, or the majority of the G7, all of whom were in support, but Saddam’s clients on the Security Council, who were content to pass resolution after meaningless resolution demanding Saddam comply with this or that elementary norm of civilized behaviour, but never to enforce them; who supplied him with the technology with which to further his nuclear ambitions (take a bow, France!), or the missiles with which to threaten his neighbours (come on down, Russia!), or the chemical agents used to gas the Kurds (hey, Germany, I thought you were out of that business!). It’s the international community represented by the United Nations, whose agents oversaw, and in some cases participated in, the massive embezzlement scheme known as the “oil-for-food program,” colluding with Saddam’s regime to siphon billions of dollars in oil revenues -- money that was supposed to be used to feed the Iraqi people -- into their own pockets, and Saddam’s. And it’s the international community that, to our everlasting shame, has come to include Canada. These people have no business making any comment whatever on the election. Had it been up to them, Saddam would still be in power, still tormenting his people, still menacing the region, still funding suicide bombers in Israel, still bribing foreign officials and smuggling oil and otherwise making a mockery of the sanctions that were supposed to keep him in check, until the day, not far off, when they collapsed altogether. Only imagine what Saddam could do now, with oil near $50 a barrel. I don’t just mean they were unwilling to help in the difficult project of removing Saddam. They did everything in their power to prevent it. It was the explicit policy of all these governments, Canada’s included, that Saddam should remain in place: in the words of Jean Chrétien, “we are against regime change.” In at least one country’s case -- France, again -- there is evidence that they continued to supply him with weapons, right up until the war and perhaps after. Had they any shame at all, they would admit their guilt, or at least confess their errors, or at the very least keep quiet. The election in which they now rejoice was none of their doing. Yet there they are, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder and Vladimir Putin and Kofi Annan, lining up to offer their congratulations. And look! There’s Paul Martin, as if anyone cared, saying on behalf of all Canadians “how much we admire the courage of the Iraqi people.” From afar, mind you, but admiring all the same. To be sure, hypocritical congratulations are to be preferred to sullen denial, such as that displayed by John Kerry and other critics of the war, who after warning for months that the election would be a fiasco, the bloody prelude to all-out civil war, are now reduced to cavils about the all-important Sunni turnout, and philosophical discourses on the difference between elections and democracy, and recalling that President Bush had once opposed direct elections (yes, he did -- in fear of the very sectarian conflict they had themselves foretold). The election, wrote the president-elect of the Middle East Studies Association, was a “joke,” the Iraqis’ evident attachment to it nothing more, according to Rick Salutin, than a “fetish.” Yet the same people who were wrong about the “quagmire” in Afghanistan, who were wrong about the millions of refugees and the hundreds of thousands of dead from the war in Iraq, who were wrong about the “Arab street” that was supposed to have the Middle East ablaze by now -- these same people, who have been wrong about everything at every stage of this conflict, now presume to offer their advice, not only to the Bush administration, but to the Iraqis. “As Iraqis retake control,” the Toronto Star burbled, “Canada should help them by lobbying prominent Iraqi leaders to respect minority rights.” Yes, that’s just the sort of help they need. But perhaps we will excuse them if they do not make too much show of their gratitude.