Why do Sixties Peaceniks Turn into 21st Century Warmongers?
‘Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?’, was a favourite chant of protestors against the Vietnam war. It was also scrawled in ragged capitals on a very long hoarding in Broad Street, Oxford, for much of the summer and autumn of 1967. Every time I went past it (for then as now I was an Oxford townie), I would hug to myself the secret knowledge (confided by him) that my late brother, Christopher, was personally and solely responsible for the inscription, which he said had taken him an alarmingly long time to do, in days when there were still proper police patrols in England. Tourists would photograph it. It lasted for many months. I seem to recall it once featured in a TV programme. I always meant to tease him about it, once he had decided to support the Iraq war. But, for one reason or another, that was never possible and now never will be. I get a bit of a lump in my throat, remembering it.
‘LBJ’, for those whose knowledge of history is restricted to the Romans, the Tudors and the Nazis, referred to Lyndon Baines Johnson, then President of the United States.
The Vietnam war was, well, what was it? Anyway, it was a thing everyone under 20 was against, throughout the Western world. I used to be against it myself. Then I was for it, for a bit. Now I rather think I’m against it again, but I can’t claim to have done enough homework to be half as sure as I was when I was 16. Fortunately, my views on the subject matter even less now than they did then, though I suppose that, as part of the great Rentamob of the era, I probably helped to destroy much that I now wish had survived.
In fact I once owned a North Vietnamese flag, which I would wave about at demonstrations of all kinds, to signify my support of the National Liberation Front and of dear old Ho Chi Minh, the avuncular wispily bearded sage who headed the North Vietnamese police state which we then hoped would win the war, and sweep away with Americans and their client state in South Vietnam .
I think it was mainly because we disapproved of the Americans. We just did. I was, like most protestors, more or less clueless about the details of the quarrel. Sometimes, we would chant ‘Ho! Ho! Ho chi Minh!’ as if his mere name was enough to resolve any doubts that bystanders might have. Did they put something in the water about then? They certainly put something in the cigarettes. It sometimes seems to be the only explanation for the general (and more or less permanent) departure of reason from the country. Years later, I had one of those lookingGlass moments when I found myself living in a Moscow street, very close to a square named after Ho chi Minh and featuring a surprisingly tasteful memorial to the old monster. There in the heart of the Evil Empire, the rebellious was respectable, and vice versa.
When I wrote a few years ago about the horrible year of 1968, I quoted Timon’s curse from Shakespeare (cleverly applied to this era by Bernard Levin in his superb book ‘the Pendulum Years). It runs : ‘Obedience fail in children! Slaves and fools, Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench and minister in their steads! To general filths convert green virginity! Do it in your parents' eyes! ...
Son of sixteen, pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire; With it, beat out his brains ... Lust and liberty, creep in the minds and manners of our youth, that 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive and drown themselves in riot!'
Much of what I’ve written since, especially my book ‘The Abolition of Britain’ has been an attempt to understand and explain ( and atone for) that odd convulsion, which was proof against all criticism at the time and which still affects all our lives so deeply. The other day, researching background for a novel I shall probably never write, I looked up the records of Oxford in the revolutionary 1960s (How many familiar names stood out from the crumbling pages, so long ago yet so recent too) and the seeds of every modern evil, especially drugs and abortion, but also the severe intolerance of the modern left, were already flourishing in that sunny walled garden.
But to return for a moment to Vietnam and the rest, one thing which was quite universal among the 1968 generation was a detestation of war, and especially the bombing of foreign countries for their own good.
Now, and it’s one of the most interesting things in the world that this is so, in the more thoughtful regions of the Left, there’s a contrasting love for war and bombing, the Chicago School, as one might teasingly call it, of people who are inspired by the speech delivered by Anthony Blair in Chicago in April 1999. This was the one which justified dumping the 350 years of wisdom since the Peace of Westphalia had accepted that you didn’t interfere in foreign countries because you didn’t like the way they were governed.
This conclusion had been reached after the Thirty Years War had shown what happened when you *did* interfere on such grounds. Much of the continent looked like like a Hieronymus Bosch depiction of Hell.
I doubt if the Blair creature understood the implications of the words he recited to the Economic Club that evening. ( a good clear version can be read here http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june99/blair_doctrine4-23.html)
I have never believed that he understood what he was doing, domestically or internationally. But others did understand.
But the speech contains a beautiful, near-perfect example of the ‘Good War’ concept I wrote about yesterday, in which all our foes are versions of Hitler, and we are all versions of Churchill : ‘This is a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values. We cannot let the evil of ethnic cleansing stand. We must not rest until it is reversed. We have learned twice before in this century that appeasement does not work. If we let an evil dictator range unchallenged, we will have to spill infinitely more blood and treasure to stop him later.’
Very little work has been done, in the years since, on the actual fate of Kosovo or on the real nature of the ‘Kosovo Liberation Army’ to whom we lent the airpower of the North Atlantic Treaty. It is my belief, from what I have read, that the outcome has not been an unmixed joy, especially for the Serbian minority and the Orthodox Christian heritage in that place, and that the KLA are not necessarily gentlemen. I also remain fascinated by the way in which the Yugoslav Federation could not be permitted to coexist with the rival federation of the EU (in a milder, slower way, the United Kingdom, and its one-time semi-detached but actually rather close relationship with Ireland has also been quietly loosened by devolution).
The real core of the speech lay elsewhere. It was a proclamation of the end of the Nation State: ‘Globalisation’ Mr Blair trilled ‘has transformed our economies and our working practices. But globalisation is not just economic. It is also a political and security phenomenon.
‘We live in a world where isolationism has ceased to have a reason to exist. By necessity we have to co-operate with each other across nations.
‘Many of our domestic problems are caused on the other side of the world. Financial instability in Asia destroys jobs in Chicago and in my own constituency in County Durham. Poverty in the Caribbean means more drugs on the streets in Washington and London. Conflict in the Balkans causes more refugees in Germany and here in the US. These problems can only be addressed by international co-operation.
‘We are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not. We cannot refuse to participate in global markets if we want to prosper. We cannot ignore new political ideas in other counties if we want to innovate. We cannot turn our backs on conflicts and the violation of human rights within other countries if we want still to be secure.
‘On the eve of a new Millennium we are now in a new world. We need new rules for international co-operation and new ways of organising our international institutions.’
National sovereignty, a thing all previous British prime ministers had at least claimed to value, was now to be dismissed as ‘isolationism’ and ‘protectionism’. What had previously been normal was now redefined as a discredited dogma. Those who had for years seen Communism as the great revolutionary force in the world were now able to transfer their allegiance to a globalised, multicultural USA. That’s why you find so many Marxists cheering on the missiles.
These were the rules for intervention he set out.
‘Looking around the world there are many regimes that are undemocratic and engaged in barbarous acts. If we wanted to right every wrong that we see in the modern world then we would do little else than intervene in the affairs of other countries. We would not be able to cope.
‘So how do we decide when and whether to intervene. I think we need to bear in mind five major considerations
‘First, are we sure of our case? War is an imperfect instrument for righting humanitarian distress; but armed force is sometimes the only means of dealing with dictators. Second, have we exhausted all diplomatic options? We should always give peace every chance, as we have in the case of Kosovo. Third, on the basis of a practical assessment of the situation, are there military operations we can sensibly and prudently undertake? Fourth, are we prepared for the long term? In the past we talked too much of exit strategies. But having made a commitment we cannot simply walk away once the fight is over; better to stay with moderate numbers of troops than return for repeat performances with large numbers. And finally, do we have national interests involved? The mass expulsion of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo demanded the notice of the rest of the world. But it does make a difference that this is taking place in such a combustible part of Europe.’
Personally I find these rules rather incoherent. But have his heirs and successors even abided by them, especially on the questions of prudence, and of staying to see the matter through? Were they really observed at the time? Were such things as the Rambouillet accords on Yugoslavia (which no sovereign government could possibly have accepted) a real attempt to exhaust all diplomatic options? Have Britain and the USA seriously attempted to pursue peace in Syria? Who judges?
Well, here’s a intervention backed by the Chicago School, the one we engineered in Libya, by claiming (as in Kosovo and as in Syria) to be acting to prevent a massacre. I’ve always thought evidence of the likelihood of this massacre was in rather short supply, but leave that aside.
How is Libya getting on, since our humanitarian intervention? I’ve mentioned elsewhere the failed attempt by our supposed friends to kill the British ambassador, and their successful attempt to kill the US ambassador. I’ve mentioned their desecration of a British war cemetery in Benghazi, with special attention paid to smashing the gravestones of Jewish soldiers.
But, as so often if you want to know what’s really going on in the world, you need to turn to the work of that peerless foreign correspondent, Patrick Cockburn of the Independent, who keeps an eye on these liberated zones, after most people have gone. Read his article on today's Libya here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/special-report-we-all-thought-libya-had-moved-on--it-has-but-into-lawlessness-and-ruin-8797041.html?origin=internalSearch
One particularly striking fact is this – that ‘Free Libya’, actually an oil producing state, is now importing oil to keep its power stations going because production has almost completely stopped. I remember a similar paradox in Iraq during my visits there after the invasion, with immense queues at the petrol stations.
The invasion has , it seems to me, made things worse. Muammar Gadaffi was without doubt a wicked tyrant, and more than a little unhinged. But why did anyone think that, by overthrowing him, they could guarantee that his successors would be better? The same dim vision seems to inform those who wish to overthrow the Assad state in Syria. Can they guarantee that what follows will be better? Of course they cannot. Then how can they be so hot for action? And can President Obama (holder of the Nobel Peace Prize and, so far as I can recall, not elected on a platform of war-making in either 2008 or 2012)please make up his mind? Is his Syrian intervention a self-contained punitive strike, as we are told? Or is it in fact a plan for regime change, as the BBC reported he had told neo-conservative war enthusiasts? One or the other, but not both.
One final thing, a small problem for the Churchill part of the ‘good war’ cult. Churchill himself did not share Mr Obama’s and Mr Cameron’s disdain for chemical weapons. The ‘Guardian’ published this interesting historical reflection earlier this week.
Isn’t life complicated?
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