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This weekend there've been millions people on the roads worldwide to protest against the upcoming war against Iraq. Although people like Tony Blair simply tried to ignore the protests by going elsewhere, they were just too huge to deny them. People made their point and we see a change in Tony Blair's attitude – who has to use moral arguments against Saddam Hussein now.
I think this is very encouraging as it will force people to acknowledge that, firstly, the situation is rather tricky and, secondly, difficult decisions will have to be made on international policies – how we want to get along with other countries, whether we are prepared to interfere and for which reasons.
Currently it looks like the U.S. government wants to go and have a war. Ignoring all the plausible conspiracy-theorist arguments that the benefits for the oil industry / weapons industry / future elections may be sufficient reasons to have a war, the question is why the U.S. government wants one. Their argument seems to run along the line that Iraq could possibly attack the U.S.A. and didn't fully disarm itself since the last war. They also throw in a bit of terrorism. All these supposed 'arguments' look very bogus and for sure don't justify sacrificing one of the most civilised agreements, namely the peaceful settlement of disputes and not starting wars on other countries.
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that having people like Saddam Hussein rule countries isn't desirable either – particularly for the people living there. However, this means that we have to different, even contradictory, arguments here: The U.S. government wanting to attack Iraq for their own protection on the one hand and moral reasons to get rid of dictators on the other. People will be much more likely to go along with the second argument as it doesn't go against our intuition that we are the good guys
. Tony Blair now switched to that line of argument as the first became insupportable for him. But how will he resolve the contradiction? Will his change of mind be convincing? And why didn't anyone come up with the idea of getting rid of evil dictators earlier on?
I guess answering the latter question isn't too hard. At least there are a couple of plausible answers, including
To me it seems that, by taking his new position, Tony Blair has opened the door for the discussion of these points. On the other hand, I don't expect much to change because of that. Probably the politicians and diplomats will just continue bitching around and eagerly prefer whatever argument looks most convenient to them to those arguments which are sound.
And what's happening around the warmongers doesn't look to promising either. We're being prepeared for attacks – perhaps just to maintain a little amount of fear that'll ease war down or throats. In the U.S. they even have that brilliant Duct and Cover strategy. People in the U.S. are also considering to boycott products from anti-war countries. As usual, our conservative friends are the first in-line to do this. Naturally they don't want to miss any of their creature comforts while doing this – handily observing:
French cosmetics and wines, Belgian chocolates, and German beers and luxury automobiles such as Mercedes and BMW, are targeted in the economic boycott.
Because of today’s global economy, Nancy Bohrer, the group’s president, encouraged participants to carefully identify a product’s origin.
Since the Mercedes M class is manufactured in the United States, not Germany, and Godiva chocolates made for American distribution are produced in Pennsylvania, not Belgium, these products are exempt from the boycott.
So they're really into hurting those evil European companies...