Today, we are calling the fact that, around now, on our best estimate, a million people have died in Iraq as a result of the chaos launched by the US and UK led invasion. That is a million people, the majority of them women and children, who would overwhelmingly be alive today were it not for the actions of governments acting on behalf of the large majority of readers of this blog, paid for by our taxes.

Click on the counter in the left margin to get an explanation of the estimate. It is based on the Lancet study that estimated 655,000 dead long since, an appraisal judged “sound” by the UK’s Chief Scientist and “If anything, an understimate” by the experts in the Department for International Development. Despite these endorsements from their own experts, the British government attempted to rubbish the study.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/03/lying_abouth_th.html

Not one of us has done enough to stop it. Whatever the vagaries of our electoral systems, it is to the eternal shame of both the US and UK that Blair and Bush were re-elected, by a substantial slice of our societies, after becoming war criminals.

Only the most rabid commentators now even attempt to justify the War in Iraq. Saddam Hussain was a terrible ruler, but the rate of death, the collapse of essential services and the destruction of integrated society, that we have brought upon Iraq is far worse. The near total silence of the pro-war lobby is stunning. I haven’t even heard “At least we got rid of Saddam” or “We brought freedom and democracy” for ages. Hopefully they hang their heads in shame. Except for the odd murmur that it’s all Al-Qaida’s fault, like the crestfallen schoolboy, head hanging, face flushed, caught with the stolen i-Pod in his pocket but still mumbling it was Tommy who done it.

Al-Qaida, of course, were virtually non-existent in Iraq before our invasion.

Gordon Brown is reportedly under great pressure from the White House not to pull out British forces and leave the US isolated. This is ridiculous. Basra, like so much of Iraq, is under control of disputatious local militias, often constituting rival units of the laughably named “Iraqi security services.” Our troops are effectively under siege, in horrible conditions, in isolated camps. When we send out patrols, we just lost three good men killed in four days.

Of course we don’t know the exact number of Iraqi dead. Nobody does – dead civilians are not considered important enough to count by the occupying forces. I don’t care if the estimate of a million is 50% out, either way. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died a terrible death, and we caused it. Not one of us has yet done enough to stop it. The guilt lies heaviest on Bush, Blair and Cheney.

But it lies on you and me too.

NB For a discussion of why the use of the estimate method is necessary and its likely validity see Casualty Monitor.

The Village Voice detect hopeful signs that Gordon is not as much of a poodle as Tony. I hope they are right. It is worth following the link, not so much for my namecheck as for the lovely photo.

http://villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/2007/08/postpoodle_poli.php

It would be churlish not to congratulate the government for at long last calling for the release of five British residents, against whom there is no smidgeon of evidence, held in Guantanamo Bay. My own campaigning on this issue has been mostly with the Save Omar campaign from Brighton. I have no doubt the government’s welcome change of heart is related to the departure of the odious Blair.

The BBC, however, seems to think it necessary to report the story with reference to the dangers the government is running by potentially letting innocent people walk the streets.

In the meantime the government is revealing its callousness towards all Iraqi life by refusing to allow Iraqi interpreters, working for the British forces, to have asylum in the UK. Of course we must, as we leave defeated, get out all Iraqi civilians who have worked for us and their immediate families. I do not want to see our soldiers training their guns on their own desperate staff as the last helicopter takes off.

When the government tried to stop me publishing Murder in Samarkand, one of the more despicable arguments they used was to try emotional blackmail by asking me to consider what reprisals the Uzbek government would take on my ex-staff. The obvious answer to that, is that of course the Uzbek government already knew the whole story, and who my staff were. What we should have been doing was offering to get my ex-staff out with their immediate families and give them asylum. They refused to contemplate that.

In fact the UK Embassy in Tashkent has since I left substantially reduced its local staff and, as far as anyone can tell, now performs no discernible function. I am happy to say that at least three of my close staff members have indeed managed to escape the country so far.

The US seems much more concerned at having lost 190,000 weapons than at a multiple of that number in dead people losing their lives.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2841342.ece

Doubtless many of these weapons are in the hands of opponents of the US occupation. Of those other weapons issued by the US that can be accounted for, most are in the hands of security services that are simply local militias in uniform and can switch allegiances from day to day.

You have to add to the 190,000 weapons the still greater potency of the weapons already in Iraq

before the invasion, looted from Saddam’s massive conventional arms caches which the coalition failed to secure while Bush and Blair had them desperately searching for non-existent WMD.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/10/26/explosives_were_looted_after_iraq_invasion/

The other thing the US is good at losing is money. Of course, the poor US tazpayer is spending a triilion dollars on the War in Iraq, while the hopeless administration manages to mislay billions at a time.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article720217.ece

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2008189,00.html

Much of that lost money lined the pockets of “contractors” and corrupt officials. Some will have again found its way through criminal channels to the Iraqi resistance. The US continually accuses Iran of funding and arming the Iraqi resistance. That is hardly necessary when the US is doing such a good job of arming and funding the Iraqi resistance itself, often through the well established criminal gangs within the US armed forces.

http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=41005&archive=true

You really do have to wonder how long this can go on. The brainwashing of key portions of the US population through the media and evangelical churches, and the crass appeal by shifty politicians to “Patriotism”, has held the line so far against all the evidence of the disaster this is for the US as a nation. But at some time the patience of the people must surely snap – I suspect leaving a timid Democrat leadership scuttling to keep up.

My efforts to bring the great J A Hobson out of obscurity, that people might use him as a guide to the motivation driving the Iraq war and other US foreign policy, are having some success. Moon of Alabama has posted an extract including this statement:

the adoption of Imperialism thus serves the double purpose of securing private material benefits for favoured classes of investors and traders at the public cost, while sustaining the general cause of conservatism by diverting public energy and interest from domestic agitation to external employment.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2007/08/imperialism-a-s.html

Let me post another key section. Hobson, an economist, outlines economic statistics and analysis to prove that the costs of the British Empire 1870 to 1900 had far outweighed any economic benefit to the economy as a whole. He goes on to state this:

Seeing that the Imperialism of the last three decades is clearly condemned as a business policy, in that at enormous expense it has procured a small, bad, unsafe increase of markets, and has jeopardised the entire wealth of the nation in rousing the strong resentment of other nations, we may ask, “How is the British nation induced to embark upon such unsound business?” The only possible answer is that the business interests of the nation as a whole are subordinated to those of certain sectional interests that usurp control of the national resources and use them for their private gain. This is no strange or monstrous charge to bring; it is the commonest disease of all forms of government. The famous words of Sir Thomas More are as true now as when he wrote them: “Everywhere do I perceive a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage under the name and pretext of the commonwealth.”

I.IV.1

Although the new Imperialism has been bad business for the nation, it has been good business for certain classes and certain trades within the nation. The vast expenditure on armaments, the costly wars, the grave risks and embarrassments of foreign policy, the stoppage of political and social reforms within Great Britain, though fraught with great injury to the nation, have served well the present business interests of certain industries and professions.

I.IV.2

It is idle to meddle with politics unless we clearly recognise this central fact and understand what these sectional interests are which are the enemies of national safety and the commonwealth. We must put aside the merely sentimental diagnosis which explains wars or other national blunders by outbursts of patriotic animosity or errors of statecraft. Doubtless at every outbreak of war not only the man in the street but the man at the helm is often duped by the cunning with which aggressive motives and greedy purposes dress themselves in defensive clothing. There is, it may be safely asserted, no war within memory, however nakedly aggressive it may seem to the dispassionate historian, which has not been presented to the people who were called upon to fight as a necessary defensive policy, in which the honour, perhaps the very existence, of the State was involved.

I.IV.3

The disastrous folly of these wars, the material and moral damage inflicted even on the victor, appear so plain to the disinterested spectator that he is apt to despair of any State attaining years of discretion, and inclines to regard these natural cataclysms as implying some ultimate irrationalism in politics. But careful analysis of the existing relations between business and politics shows that the aggressive Imperialism which we seek to understand is not in the main the product of blind passions of races or of the mixed folly and ambition of politicians. It is far more rational than at first sight appears. Irrational from the standpoint of the whole nation, it is rational enough from the standpoint of certain classes in the nation. A completely socialist State which kept good books and presented regular balance-sheets of expenditure and assets would soon discard Imperialism; an intelligent laissez-faire democracy which gave duly proportionate weight in its policy to all economic interests alike would do the same. But a State in which certain well-organised business interests are able to outweigh the weak, diffused interest of the community is bound to pursue a policy which accords with the pressure of the former interests.

I.IV.4

In order to explain Imperialism on this hypothesis we have to answer two questions. Do we find in Great Britain to-day any well-organised group of special commercial and social interests which stand to gain by aggressive Imperialism and the militarism it involves? If such a combination of interests exists, has it the power to work its will in the arena of politics?

I.IV.5

What is the direct economic outcome of Imperialism? A great expenditure of public money upon ships, guns, military and naval equipment and stores, growing and productive of enormous profits when a war, or an alarm of war, occurs; new public loans and important fluctuations in the home and foreign Bourses; more posts for soldiers and sailors and in the diplomatic and consular services; improvement of foreign investments by the substitution of the British flag for a foreign flag; acquisition of markets for certain classes of exports, and some protection and assistance for trades representing British houses in these manufactures; employment for engineers, missionaries, speculative miners, ranchers and other emigrants.

I.IV.6

Certain definite business and professional interests feeding upon imperialistic expenditure, or upon the results of that expenditure, are thus set up in opposition to the common good, and, instinctively feeling their way to one another, are found united in strong sympathy to support every new imperialist exploit.

How do they do it?

In view of the part which the non-economic factors of patriotism, adventure, military enterprise, political ambition, and philanthropy play in imperial expansion, it may appear that to impute to financiers so much power is to take a too narrowly economic view of history. And it is true that the motor-power of Imperialism is not chiefly financial: finance is rather the governor of the imperial engine, directing the energy and determining its work: it does not constitute the fuel of the engine, nor does it directly generate the power. Finance manipulates the patriotic forces which politicians, soldiers, philanthropists, and traders generate; the enthusiasm for expansion which issues from these sources, though strong and genuine, is irregular and blind; the financial interest has those qualities of concentration and clear-sighted calculation which are needed to set Imperialism to work. An ambitious statesman, a frontier soldier, an overzealous missionary, a pushing trader, may suggest or even initiate a step of imperial expansion, may assist in educating patriotic public opinion to the urgent need of some fresh advance, but the final determination rests with the financial power. The direct influence exercised by great financial houses in “high politics” is supported by the control which they exercise over the body of public opinion through the Press, which, in every “civilised” country, is becoming more and more their obedient instrument. While the specifically financial newspaper imposes “facts” and “opinions” on the business classes, the general body of the Press comes more and more under the conscious or unconscious domination of financiers. The case of the South African Press, whose agents and correspondents fanned the martial flames in this country, was one of open ownership on the part of South African financiers, and this policy of owning newspapers for the sake of manufacturing public opinion is common in the great European cities. In Berlin, Vienna, and Paris many of the influential newspapers are held by financial houses, which use them, not primarily to make direct profits out of them, but in order to put into the public mind beliefs and sentiments which will influence public policy and thus affect the money market. In Great Britain this policy has not gone so far, but the alliance with finance grows closer every year, either by financiers purchasing a controlling share of newspapers, or by newspaper proprietors being tempted into finance. Apart from the financial Press, and financial ownership of the general Press, the City notoriously exercises a subtle and abiding influence upon leading London newspapers, and through them upon the body of the provincial Press, while the entire dependence of the Press for its business profits upon its advertising columns involves a peculiar reluctance to oppose the organised financial classes with whom rests the control of so much advertising business. Add to this the natural sympathy with a sensational policy which a cheap Press always manifests, and it becomes evident that the Press is strongly biassed towards Imperialism, and lends itself with great facility to the suggestion of financial or political Imperialists who desire to work up patriotism for some new piece of expansion.

I.IV.40

Such is the array of distinctively economic forces making for Imperialism, a large loose group of trades and professions seeking profitable business and lucrative employment from the expansion of military and civil services, from the expenditure on military operations, the opening up of new tracts of territory and trade with the same, and the provision of new capital which these operations require, all these finding their central guiding and directing force in the power of the general financier.

I.IV.41

The play of these forces does not openly appear. They are essentially parasites upon patriotism, and they adapt themselves to its protecting colours. In the mouths of their representatives are noble phrase, expressive of their desire to extend the area of civilisation, to establish good government, promote Christianity, extirpate slavery, and elevate the lower races. Some of the business men who hold such language may entertain a genuine, though usually a vague, desire to accomplish these ends, but they are primarily engaged in business, and they are not unaware of the utility of the more unselfish forces in furthering their ends. Their true attitude of mind is expressed by Mr. Rhodes in his famous description of “Her Majesty’s Flag” as “the greatest commercial asset in the world.”*20

The entire book is available online.

http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Hobson/hbsnImp.html

It is deeply saddening to me how much of the great heritage of Liberal thought is now neglected. I do hope you will take a look and see just how little we have learnt in the ensuing 100 years.

The War in Iraq has already cost the US taxpayer over $500 billion and will cost over $1 trillion – that’s $1,000,000,000,000 – according to official estimates.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/08/01/analysis_says_war_could_cost_1_trillion/

The war has been almost entirely deficit financed. It has added to the US’ already massive budget and current accounts deficits. The US economy can sustain its massive deficits because the rest of the World is willing to treat the dollar as its currency of note, and accept the value of the eurodollar.

Eurodollar is a term economists coined decades ago to denote dollars held outside the US. It is no longer that apt as most of them are held in Asia now. China alone holds about a trillion dollars – indeed there is a neat argument that China’s willingness to hold vast stocks of US paper has financed the Iraq war. Japan, perhaps surprisingly, also has over $400 billion.

How much money are we talking? Let me put it this way. China could buy all the real estate in London or New York – buy every property in the whole city – and have change. China could buy a controlling interest in every single company in the Dow Jones.

That, however, is not the danger. The danger is that China, Japan and others will come in time to doubt that these huge mounds of paper (OK, virtual paper) really hold the value that they are supposed to hold. They could start to diversify their holdings. The result in the US could rapidly tip towards extreme inflation, among other symptoms. Once the process starts it snowballs – the UK went through the economic trauma of slipping from being the key currency in the last century, largely as the result of expensive wars.

Confidence is a difficult thing, and the process could certainly be sparked by moves to switch major commodity trading to euros. The US is indeed jumpy about that, though the theory that this concern triggered the Iraq war is overblown.

Much of the trillion dollars war cost is redistributive within the United States. It is important to remember that to ordinary people – and to the unfortunate US taxpayer – the War in Iraq may look like an unmitigated disaster, but to easily identifiable groups the whole thing is a great success.

Record oil prices have resulted in obscene levels of profit for the oil companies. Armaments manufacturers have bulging order books and, given urgency of demand, have like the oil companies been able to increase not just profits but profit margins. The privatisation of war has brought massive contracts for those employing the many tens of thousands of mercenaries and the logistic supply contractors.

Like any war, increased career opportunities have opened up for the senior military. This one has been unique in the massive burgeoning of budgets, jobs and promotions within the security services also.

How the system works was outlined 100 years ago by the Liberal economist J.A.Hobson in his great book Imperialism – A Study. Written at the greatest extent of the greatest formal Empire the World has yet seen, Hobson proved, counter to the prevailing wisdom of both supporters and opponents of Empire, that the Empire had cost Britain money, not been a gain at the expense of the colonies. But while the net effect had been to make Britain poorer, the redistributive effect had made the ruling class, military and arms manufacturers much richer, at the expense of everyone else.

Hobson is now almost completely forgotten. In part this is because Lenin, a much lesser thinker, ruthlessly plagiarised Hobson’s work some years later and plastered it over with Communist claptrap. But for me Hobson’s Imperialism is in the same rank as J.S. Mill’s On Liberty, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man, as essential reading on the foundations of modern political thought.