‘IS THERE A MOUSE IN THE HOUSE?’

“The whole world can’t be wrong,” my friend remarked, as we marvelled at the scale of the global protest against the US-led War on Iraq.

Such an argument against the War might have had a simplistic ring to many seasoned commentators and analysts. However, it appeared to me, the most concise, convincing, one I had heard for the past few weeks. “I do not know if the whole world is wrong,” I replied. “However, I am certain it is confused. Perplexed at the twists and turns that have brought it to these images we are watching now of a bombed Baghdad.” If we tried to make sense of it, I added, many of us would trace the  commencement of combat to the morning of September 11, 2001 when we saw New York’s Twin Towers collapse.

We knew from the moment the first plane crashed into the first Tower that the hunt would start for Osama bin Laden. We comprehended that the Taliban’s days were over. We grasped the US thirst for revenge, the Old Testament Eye for an Eye. We watched the search for Osama on TV, encapsulated in the catchy sound byte for the American viewer, “War on Terrorism,” and we were not too worried. The only thing that baffled us was the daring and the insanity of the terrorist act.

However, not long, after the US began its attempt to catch Osama, to claim its biblical eye, the American President, George W Bush started talking about an axis of evil. And, before we could ask what in hell he meant by that, we were told Saddam was funding terrorism. No sooner, were we trying to connect the dots between Saddam and September 11, Bush was warning us about piles of weapons of mass destruction, that the Iraqis were deceiving the United Nations inspectors.

It was at that moment many of us held our heads. We were now more than ever confused about what September 11 had become. But, we were sure about one thing. We, the junior citizens of the world were being led by the noses, by our Big Brother to another inevitable Gulf war. We could hear the call to arms in the Texas twang of Bush, and in Donald Rumsfeld’s midwestern bark. Then just as we thought that we sort of understood how terrorism translated into weapons of mass destruction, Bush shifted gears on us again. Saddam and his regime were villains from whom the Iraqis had to be liberated. The War on Terrorism and on Osama became the War on the Saddam Regime aka Operation Iraqi Freedom. The US was removing Saddam from power, bringing democracy to the people of Iraq.

Lord, have mercy! It was sheer madness. We didn’t like Saddam. However, we did not understand how one day the US was in Afghanistan, then the next, invading Iraq. We could not see the reasoning, no matter what Bush, Dick Cheney, Ari Fleischer and the ever-offensive Rumsfeld and their coalition hangers-on were saying. No matter how many arguments for this war they were advancing. Or perhaps it was precisely because of all the US leaders saying that we surmised that  less than half the story had been told to us; that we concluded this military campaign was more about the preserving of the US way of life.

The explanations the Americans were giving for the invasion kept changing so often, we wanted to shout “Ref, blow the whistle. The Yankees are shifting the goal posts. And Ref, they think no one is noticing.” The world wanted the war to cease because we didn’t understand the game. We wanted badly to grasp what was going on, but US prophecies and reasoning made comprehension more difficult. For example, where were the thousands of Saddam’s elite fighters, the US warned us about? Why didn’t the Iraqi badjohn set all the oil fields on fire, launch chemical weapons at the US troops? Why was it more or less plain sailing to Baghdad? Why were we only seeing images of ragged Iraqi troops — conveniently disarmed by the UN — being decimated from the air and surrendering en masse? Why were marines becoming so ecstatic over the discovery of arms that looked as if they had long passed their shelf life? We had so many questions and so few true answers were forthcoming.

Sure, Saddam probably had a weapon or two, but nothing worth this onslaught. Yes, we were also witnessing on TV the detritus of three decades of Saddam’s rule in the torture cells and graves of Iraq. Though we did not rejoice in their discovery, we knew these were the usual signs of a dictator’s passing. And, those of us old enough to recall anything at all also knew about other images of other dictators who were on the best of terms with the USA. Those such as the men who ran Apartheid South Africa, a racist, savage system that had the full backing of the US and Britain.

“Divest now!” was the petition to the two nations for years both from peoples around the world. It was a cry for their companies to pull out of South Africa and force the end of the cruel regime. Both countries ignored the world for decades. Back then, my friend would have said of Apartheid, “the world cannot be wrong.” And he would have been right. We could only hope that today my friend was wrong and the whole world with him. We could only pray that one day this war would make sense to us, instead of making us feel we were smelling a 21st century rat that was far too cunning and much too powerful for any Millennium Piped Piper to catch. Columnist’s note: This political/parliamentary column will be entitled “No Red House for Manning” until TT’s Prime Minister’s period of insanity is over.

Suzanne Mills is the Editor of the daily Newsday.