The western anti war movement - the left boot of imperialism?

By Kola Odetola

01/01/06 "Media Lens" -- -- The silence of the western antiwar movement on the lynching of Saddam Hussein is deafening and is increasingly beginning to prove what a lot of discerning people have suspected all along – that the mainstream anti-war movement (including large parts of its left wing) in the west is the well concealed left boot of western imperialism, the conscience of the conqueror.

The main reason given by western radicals – including many on this board for ignoring the assassination of the deposed Iraqi president is the crimes against humanity he has allegedly committed. How many of these ‘left’ activists then would welcome a Chinese invasion of the British Isles, the sacking of British cities, the incarceration and torture of tens of thousands of English youths in concentration camps scattered along the Yorkshire Dales, the murder of a million British citizens (the equivalent of the Iraq dead) if the reason Beijing gave for the invasion was to arrest, try and execute Tony Blair for the limitless war crimes he has directly and indirectly carried out in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine over the last three years – killing in Iraq alone (in 3 years) more than Saddam killed in 35.

Saddam Hussein has not been tried; he has been executed by the west’s leaders, while their ‘radical’ sons look the other way. If a serial killer was brought to trial in the UK and during the trial three of his defence lawyers were kidnapped, tortured and murdered, (clearly by state agents) the media lens message board for one will be heaving with anger and righteous fury, but now there is only silence.

Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, but as president of Iraq, he represented something which nobody ever talks about these days, the sovereignty of his nation, by his judicial murder by a foreign invader the sovereignty of every poor third world nation has just been executed. The reason why the left in the west cares so little about that is because the sovereignty of poor nations is as much a threat to them as it is to their ruling circles.

The multi billion pound human rights/NGO industry for one (the new missionaries) are as dominant in the third world as any multinational, and in many ways even more powerful, since they seduce the minds of the natives buying up activists by the barrel load, feeding them with inconsequential facetious drivel about ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ all the better to cement the west’s moral and ideological supremacy over the natives.

Trade unions from the west struggle to organise in the third world to ensure the starving do not go beyond the level of loyal opposition to the western banks and companies that impose the crucifix of hunger on their children. Even the far left get in on the act with an assortment of ‘Mac’Trotskyist groups fighting for the ‘world revolution’ creating so called internationals - a global franchise they dress up as fraternity. The headquarters of the ‘world revolution’ sharing its capital with that of world finance.

The primary contradiction for the last 500 years has not been between classes but between nations, the poor and the rich ones. It has been a struggle by the west to dominate and control the rest of humanity. While the ordinary people in the west do not participate in the oppression willingly, many of them share the same patronising and superior attitudes of their leaders. Thus even when they support the struggles of the oppressed in the poor world it is with conditions and qualifications that are never applied to them when they face similar circumstances.

It is this ingrained and unconscious superiority that made then overlook the humiliation of saddam – checking his hair on camera for lice, something they would have baulked at if it had probably been done on the German Herman Goring – who was treated with great personal dignity – in full uniform and well groomed throughout the trial at Nuremberg as was Slobodan Milosevic another ‘northern tyrant.

People fighting against imperialist enslavement in the poor world should accept the support of western radicals whenever it is forthcoming but should not subordinate the narrative of their struggle to the ‘friends of the people’