No-one can criticise the far left for lacking energy. In 2003 the SWC organised one of the biggest peace time rallies in modern British history and it has vociferously expanded its political demands ever since. Its central manifesto of ‘Troops Out!’ has swollen to include ‘Freedom For Palestine!’ and ‘Don’t Attack Iran!’ (slightly lacking in originality that one). Clearly SWC is not a one-issue organisation and it obviously strives to fight for people’s rights in various parts of the world. So what, you may ask, is SWC’s position on that highly topical subject of Zimbabwe? Hmmm, well I’m not quite sure because try as I might I couldn’t find a single sentence covering the events in Zimbabwe on SWC’s website. Nor could I find any stories about the repression in Burma or North Korea. So why the silence over Mugabe? Surely they could knock-up a few 'Free Zimbabwe' placards and bring them on the next pro-Hezbollah march? Now I wouldn’t be so glib as to insinuate that the stoppers don’t care about the plight of Zimbabwe; clearly that is not the case. No the real reason for its embarassing silence is twofold; firstly SWC is a counter culture organisation. It exists only to reflexively criticise the actions of its own Government. As the West is manifestly innocent of any crimes comitted in Zimbabwe the far left has little to say on the issue. Secondly and more pertinently the far left is intellectually bankrupt, (although not financially so, Galloway isn’t short of a penny or two). The far left offers only reactive slogans, (Don’t Attack Iraq! e.t.c.), it offers no positive ideas and hasn’t done since 1989. So the far left can offer nothing positive for Zimbabwe, apart from muttering about the fact that it’s an Arican problem and not much can be done about it. Effectively the far left doesn’t have the faintest what to do with Mugabe and it’ll be damned if it’s going to venture a constructive suggestion.

So it’s a straight choice then either we do something or we don’t. Either we accept that Mugabe is free to bully and to torture and to murder or we try and do something about it. And if we do accept that we are right to try and help Mugabe’s victims then we accept that free people have a moral right to help fellow humans toiling under political oppression. Whether it is a vocal condemnation, the voiding of a knighthood, ecnomic sanctions or military intervention, the principle is the same; free countries are morally right to intervene/interfere to help bring down dictatorships. The practical justification for the extent of that intervention depends on each individual case. Perhaps that is why SWC is so quiet about Zimbabwe and Burma and North Korea; it knows the international community is morally justified to intervene against dictatorships and it cannot offer an alternative way to help the world.

So what’s the answer for Zimbabwe? Clearly we cannot sit back and do nothing. Military intervention would be morally justified but is it the best form of intervention for Zimbabwe? Military intervention by the Viet Cong in Cambodia stopped the genocide of the Khmer Rouge, similarly Tutsi rebels deposed the genocidal Hutu regime. But military intervention is risky and Mugabe’s supporters, the army and the war veterans, would be sure to wage a bloody insurgency campaign. I have much sympathy with the view that military intervention is only justified in cases of genocide. The trouble is how do you define genocide? Hundreds have been killed in the last few weeks; is there a magic number of deaths that legitimises intervention? To my mind military intervention would be morally legitimate but too risky to implement, at the moment. Yet the international community should continue to pile on the pressure. Perhaps an African intervention force could be setup with Western logistical backing; the threat of this force might just be enough to intimidate Mugabe out of power. This is unlikely given Mugabe’s stubbornness and the lethargy of African politicians but surely it is worth a try? If Mugabe remains in power the moral pressure for military intervention may eventually come to outweigh the practical risks.

Having said all that perhaps the SWC are right to ignore Zimbabwe after all, maybe they do actually have one constructive policy. Perhaps if we put Bush and Blair on trial for war crimes, allow the Iranians to develop nuclear weapons and give Hamas a free reign in Palestine then maybe, just maybe there will be peace on earth and Mugabe will step down from power. If not they could always have a quick demo.

I’m sure there have been some great British albums released in the last five years, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head. I don’t care where my favourite music comes from but recently my record collection has come to be dominated by North American groups, be they of the folk, indie, rock or dance varieties. The NME inspired British music scene may excel at producing ‘haircut bands’ or supremely overrated pub/dad rock, but for truly original music with depth and edge North America is a veritable goldmine.

Fleet Foxes, the fearsomely bearded Seattle group with hippy pretensions are no exception and their self-titled debut album is one of the year’s best records. Perhaps it’s the wide range of indigenous styles in the U.S. that gives American groups their edge and Fleet Foxes pull together influences ranging from folk, bluegrass, Appalachian, classic rock and Californian pop to produce a glorious synthesis of Americana. They may have impeccable references, Dylan, Fleetwood Mac and the Beach Boys to name but a few, but Fleet Foxes are not a pastiche or a homage to the past. They pull together complicated harmonies, simple melodies and traditional instrumentation to create a sound that references the past but soundtracks the present. Fleet Foxes bring the clarity of a crisp New England dawn and the warmth of a glorious West Coast sunset to the wettest English summer's day.

Yesterday came the news that the stoppers, the trots and the Arab street had long been waiting for. The Iraqi parliament announced that foreign oil companies had been given the go-ahead to start work on Iraq’s oil fields. The Americans had finally started plundering Iraq’s latent oil wealth, just like everyone said they would. Sure it took them five years, but it looks like they finally remembered why they had invaded in the first place. Perhaps they were too polite to take all the spoils for themselves though. Of the four oil companies given entry rights, (Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Total) one is British, one is Anglo-Dutch and one is owned by the cheese eating surrender monkeys. Mind you the suave Atlanticist Monsieur Sarko is in charge of said monkeys now, so I guess Bush has got to keep him sweet.

Of course it has cost America over three trillion dollars to get this far but Bush and Co. are only concerned about their own bottom line. I’m sure Bush considers that eye watering sum a nice little investment in return for a decrepit oil infrastructure patrolled my maniac Jihadists, in the most unstable place on earth. It’s all profit, profit, profit from now on for Bush and Cheney. The presidency of the United States was, after all, just an excuse for the multi-millionaire Bush to fill his already bloated coffers just a little bit more.

Of course Bush could have cut a deal with Saddam in order to get his grubby hands on all that oil, just like the French, the Russians, the Chinese and Kofi Annan did; but that would just be too easy wouldn’t it? He could also have negotiated a better deal with Sudan or Saudi like the Chinese are doing, but I guess he wanted all that lovely oil for himself.

Obviously Bush could have started to expropriate the black gold much sooner if he’d installed a Sunni strongman as Saddam’s replacement and declared martial law in 2003. He certainly had a justifiable pretext and he could have had all oil he needed that way. But no, Bush had a better plan. He decided to pretend he’d invaded Iraq to, get this, depose a brutal regime and build up a beacon of freedom and prosperity in the democratically-challenged Middle East. That way no-one could claim that he was after Iraq’s oil; and what if this delightful ruse cost his beloved country the lives of five thousand of its best men and women? So be it. Bush is only there for the oil after all. He doesn’t care about America, does he?

Bush evidently isn’t too bothered about spending all that oil wealth just yet, as Iraqi oil production since 2003 has been lower than it was during the days of sanctions and Saddam’s rule. The man from Texas also kept up the ruse that America’s cause was altruistic when he cunningly allowed the democratically elected Government to nationalise the oil industry. Everyone knows that the oil revenues will be channelled into Dubya’s savings account.

You can also bet that the coalition of the willing will be taking the share of Iraq’s black gold. I mean why else would such oil consuming giants as Poland, Denmark, El Salvador, Slovakia, Honduras and Iceland risk their soldiers' lives in Mesopotamia?

The good news is that Iraq’s parliament still controls oil production and they have are only allowing foreign engineers in so that they can rebuild the country’s shattered infrastructure. So at least we can rest assured that the wicked oil companies won’t be getting Iraq’s vast oil fields up and running just yet. I mean I can’t think of anything worse than the second biggest oil field in the world coming online helping to relieve global poverty and providing the Iraqi Government with enormous revenues in order to provide electricity, clean water, housing, infrastructure and security for its wretched inhabitants. Urghhh, that really is the stuff of nightmares!

Although we thought that McCain and Obama didn’t have any connections with the oil industry, both are now pledging to keep American troops in Iraq for years to come. Why would they do that? They couldn’t be arguing that for moral reasons America has a duty to protect a democratic Government from fascist terrorists could they? No it couldn’t be that. They must be after a slice of the oil money too! Ah well, maybe one day Kofi Annan will be able to run for president. He couldn’t possibly be interested in any oil money, could he?

I dislike using macabre milestones to make political points but as the tragic deaths of three paratroopers in Helmand seem to have at last roused those with a conscience into justifying the Afghanistan mission, I felt I should do the same. The moral argument is, for me at least, a no-brainer but there are certain groups that cannot fathom the fact that altruism and military intervention can be one and the same.

So for their benefit:

1. The invasion of Afghanistan was backed by a UN Resolution.

2. Al Qaeda used Afghanistan as a base from which they could plan attacks on U.S. targets in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan and its terrorist activities were actively supported by the Taliban Government. In 2001 the U.S. had been attacked by Afghanistan based militants for four years. If it allowed Al Qaeda to continue to operate with impunity from its Afghan bases then it would undoubtedly suffer further attacks on its citizens. The invasion of Afghanistan in order to destroy terrorist operating bases was a bona fide act of self-defence.

3. Aside from Al Qaeda the Taliban hosted numerous other terrorist groups. Tens of thousands of people attended the dozens of terrorist training camps that were openly run in Afghanistan.

4. Operation Enduring Freedom was winnable, with clear political objectives and the loss of life was kept as minimal as it could be.

5. The Taliban regime was a brutal theocratic totalitarian dictatorship involved in torture, mass murder, persecution and political oppression. The removal of the Taliban Government struck a blow for the emancipation of human kind.

6. The coalition forces are in Afghanistan under a UN Mandate to protect the democratically elected Government, provide security and help with reconstruction.

7. The Taliban murder civil servants, policeman, Afghan soldiers, reconstruction engineers, doctors and journalists amongst many others. They burn down schools and shoot teachers in front of their pupils. They murder Afghans who work for the Government or for foreigners. They murder women and children in cold blood for ‘crimes against Islam’. The Taliban destroy Afghan infrastructure and do everything they can to stop the reconstruction of the country. The Taliban are hated by the vast majority of Afghans.

8. Western countries left Afghanistan to its own devices in 1989 and the country was torn apart by war, famine and drought. If NGOs are to redevelop the country then they need to be protected from the Taliban who would be happy to drive them out of the country.

9. There is no oil in Afghanistan.

The strategic goal of making Afghanistan secure and democratic is the right one. That is not to say that we are using the right tactics or that the coalition tactics are above criticism.

Is the campaign morally justifiable? Absolutely.

Is it worth the cost? Perhaps only the soldiers who have served there and the Afghans who live there have the right to answer that question.

It gives me no pleasure to comment on the estimated death toll of the conflict in Iraq yet I came across a website today, justforeignpolicy.org, that claimed that (at the time of writing) 1,219,596 Iraqis had been killed since March 2003 and I felt compelled to write a short note about the matter. Clearly this is a difficult and emotive subject and let me make it clear the death of any innocent human being is an unquantifiable tragedy.

It will be a source of eternal shame for the US that its Government deliberately avoided cataloguing the deaths of civilians that occurred after the invasion of 2003. I am not sure that the numbers of violent deaths in Iraq prove or disprove the moral legitimacy of that war or any war. Some sixty million people died in World War Two, but that does not mean the war should not have been fought. Iraq has seen enough tragedy in the last thirty years to last an eternity and I do not mean to diminish the undoubted suffering of the Iraqi people.

Yet when it is claimed without shame that one and a quarter million people have died since 2003 it is perhaps morally right to question these figures.

If we accept that 1,219,596 Iraqis have been killed since 2003, then that means that around 243,919 people have been killed in Iraq each year since the invasion. That would involve the violent deaths of 668 people every single day for five years straight. Iraq has had some bloody periods over the last five years but there has not been a single day in the last 5 years that anything close to that number of violent deaths has been recorded. Iraq Body Count has conducted an exhaustive survey of deaths in Iraq, including the number of bodies dumped on the streets and delivered to morgues. Even between March 2006 and March 2007, by far and away the bloodiest period, an average of 73 civilians were killed every day, that’s 595 fewer than Just Foreign Policy’s estimates. Now Iraq Body Count must be taken as a low estimate, some civilians undoubtedly died of their injuries unreported and forgotten, and some violent incidents will undoubtedly have been missed by the researchers. Yet Iraq Body Count is pretty scrupulous and it is inconceivable that it has missed the equivalent of the violent deaths 600 people every single day for more than five years. Iraq Body Count estimates that between 84,000 and 91,000 Iraqis have been killed since 2003 and this to me seems a more likely figure. Undoubtedly the real figure is slightly higher, casualties will have succumbed to their wounds and some incidents will have slipped through the net. However it seems impossible to me that the true figure could be anything more than double this amount. According to Just Foreign Policy however, Iraq Body Count has underestimated by a factor of around twenty.

During World War Two every single city in Japan was flattened by the US Air Force, atomic bombs were dropped on two cities and a densely populated island was bitterly fought over. The Japanese civilian death toll for the entire war was 580,000 less than half the figure quoted for the war in Iraq. Similarly every single city in Nazi Germany, (a country with a population three times that of Iraq) was decimated by allied bombers, the country was torn apart by four enormous armies during a six year long ‘total war’, yet the civilian casualty figures for Nazi Germany are similar to those quoted for Iraq. In Britain 67,800 civilians were killed during the blitz and the V bomb raids. The total military casualty figures for Britain, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand during the entire war put together are far lower than those quoted for Iraq by Just Foreign Policy.

As I say I have no wish to diminish or belittle the immense suffering of the Iraqi people and I do not wish to use the number of dead to make a political point about the rights or the wrongs of the conflict. For those that do wish to use the number of deaths in Iraq to emphasise the evilness of Bush and his allies, I only ask that they subject their claims to rational analysis. It seems that too many jump upon the most ghoulish predictions in order to make their arguments seems all the more watertight. One should be careful what one wishes for.

“I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene . . . today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started,"

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, June 2008

Enriched uranium is not necessary for a civil nuclear power programme.

Enriched uranium is a crucial element in the design of a nuclear warhead.

Iran is currently enriching uranium.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work that one out.

The Independent today published Robert Fisk’s subtle, nuanced, balanced and considered views on the CIA report, which I wrote about yesterday.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/robert-fisk-so-alqaidas-defeated-eh-go-tell-it-to-the-marines-837843.html

Basically it involved him invoking the thousands of dead, (killed by Al Qaeda), lots of completely irrelevant points, something about the Crusades and the belief that if people of different religions dare to help each other a permanent state of global war must necessarily exist. I assume Mr Fisk pasued to flog himself briefly, (to expunge the sins of the west that seem to bear down on his shoulders) and then returned with the earth shattering news that there is still a conflict in Palestine. Mr Fisk then ended by crticising the West for bringing freedom to Iraq and also for not bringing freedom to Saudi Arabia. He decried the existence of a “new iron curtain”, (it starts in Greenland apparently) and then expressed the hope that the West and the East will have nothing to do with each other. Please excuse the sloppiness of this essay, it wasn’t worth spending more than twenty minutes demolishing his, ahem, argument. Below are some of his well considered points.

Six thousand dead in Afghanistan, tens of thousands dead in Iraq, a suicide bombing a day in Mesopotamia, the highest level of suicides ever in the US military – the Arab press wisely ran this story head to head with Hayden's boasts – and permanent US bases in Iraq after 31 December. And we've won?

Al Qaeda is loosing precisely because Muslims are disgusted at the murder of their brothers and sisters by Al Qaeda thugs. Levels of violence in Iraq are at the lowest level for four years. Al Qaeda will always be able detonate a bomb, yet their strategic aims have been emphatically blocked in Iraq; even if they continue to murder. The US Army, although under severe strain, is a functioning professional army. Discipline and morale in Vietnam completely broke down, contributing to America’s defeat. By contrast today’s troops are generally high in moral, well motivated and often toughened combat veterans.

Less than two years ago, we had an equally insane assessment of the war when General Peter Pace, the weird (and now mercifully retired) chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said of the American war in Iraq that "we are not winning but we are not losing". At which point, George Bush's Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, said he agreed with Pace that "we are not winning but we are not losing".

What other people said two years ago is frankly an irrelavance. It is perfectly possible to neither be winning or loosing; it’s often called ‘stalemate’. See World War One for details.

Am I alone in finding this stuff infantile to the point of madness? As long as there is injustice in the Middle East, al-Qa'ida will win. As long as we have 22 times as many Western forces in the Muslim world as we did at the time of the Crusades – my calculations are pretty accurate – we are going to be at war with Muslims. The hell-disaster of the Middle East is now spread across Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, even Lebanon. And we are winning?

Nobody denies there is injustice for many in the Middle East, but to suppose that all Arabs will as a result support a genocidal terrorist maniac is immensley condescending and patronising. Many leading religious scholars have recently attacked Al Qaeda for the bloodshed it has caused and opinion polls consistently show that Al Qaeda has lost its once high levels of support. How, exactly, will Al Qaeda win anything by blowing up innocent Muslims anyway? America did not exist during the Crusades and I’m not sure there is anyone alive that can be blamed for things that happened during the Middle Ages. Why will we always be at war with Muslims if Western troops are on Muslim lands? Are non-Muslims not allowed in Muslim lands? Is that not racist? Should non-Muslim tourists be banned from Muslim lands also? Should Muslim peacekeepers take the US Army's place? Would they be Sunni or Shia? Who would provide them Saudi or Iran? What about Muslim American soldiers? Why divide the world along religioous lines? We are all human beings – I don’t really care what religion a soldier may be – he is still human. “The hell-disaster of the Middle East is now spread across Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, even Lebanon.” What does that sentence even mean? What has it got to do with the CIA’s report?

Yes, we've bought ourselves some time in Iraq by paying half of the insurgents to fight for us and to murder their al-Qa'ida cousins. Yes, we are continuing to prop up Saudi Arabia's head-chopping and torture-practising regime – no problem there, I suppose, after our enthusiasm for "water-boarding" – but this does not mean that al-Qa'ida is defeated.

Iraqi Sunnis turned to the U.S. for help, not vice versa. Mr Fisk seems to be calling for regime change in Saudi Arabia, yet he criticises regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan. Waterboarding has been used exactly twice and I don’t think there was anyone that relished its use. Nor does that fact have any relavance to the state of Al Qaeda.

Because al-Qa'ida is a way of thinking, not an army. It feeds on pain and fear and cruelty – our cruelty and oppression – and as long as we continue to dominate the Muslim world with our Apache helicopters and our tanks and our Humvees and our artillery and bombs and our "friendly" dictators, so will al-Qa'ida continue.

American troops occupy precisely two Muslim countries, and they are protecting their inhabitants. Bin Laden became radicalised in the 1980s, I believe Mr Fisk needs to investigate Islamism a little more deeply.

Take the story that came out of Gaza this week. Eight Palestinian students won grants from the Fulbright scholarship programme to study in the United States. You'd think, wouldn't you, that it was in the interest of America to bring these young Muslim people to the land of the free. But no. Israel won't let them leave Gaza. It's all part of the "war on terror" which Israel claims it is fighting alongside America. So the US State Department has cancelled the scholarships. No, it's not worth turning yourself into an al-Qa'ida suicide bomber for such a nonsense. But it would be difficult to find anything meaner, pettier, more vicious than this in yesterday's papers.

The US sponsored eight West Bank students instead. How many Palestinians have attacked America recently? Nobody at the CIA denies that there are many difficult issues; but that does not mean that right thinking Arabs will necessarily beome Al Qaeda fanatics. To suggest that suicide bombing is the only form of protest is arrogant, condescending and patronising. The evidence suggests that although Arabs are unhappy with the status quo many are now disgusted by the atrocities carried out by Al Qaeda.

Are we going to bomb Iran? Is this what we are waiting for now? Or is it to be another proxy Iranian-American war in Lebanon, fought out by Hizbollah and the Israelis? And does Mike believe al-Qa'ida is in Iran?

How is the above relevant?

And as long as we have stretched this iron curtain across the Middle East, we will be at war and al-Qa'ida will be at war with us. This new iron curtain, by the way, starts up in Greenland and stretches down through Britain and Germany, through Bosnia and Greece to Turkey. What is it for? What's on the other side? Russia. China. India.
These are questions we do not ask; certainly they're not the kind of questions that The Washington Post would dare to put to Mike and his chums at the CIA. Yes, we huff and we puff about democracy and freedom and human rights, though we give little enough of them to the Muslim world. For the kind of freedom they want – the kind of freedom that allows outfits like al-Qa'ida to flourish – is freedom from "us". And this, I fear, we do not intend to give them.
Mike Hayman [sic] may think the Muslim world is "pushing back" al-Qa'ida's "form of Islam", but I doubt it. Indeed, I rather suspect al-Qa'ida is growing stronger.

I’m not sure what Russia, China and India have to do with Al Qaeda. Mr Fisk advocates giving Arabs freedom from “us”. That sounds like global apartheid and, dare I say it?, a “new iron curtain”. Mr Fisk calls on the West to promote freedom and democracy, yet he does not want us to promote it in Iraq or Afghanistan and criticises the west for getting rid of dictatorships in those two countries. The West is promoting demcoracy in Turkey, Lebanon, Yemen, Kuwait, Qatar and Indonesia. Many in the West passionately want freedom for the people of Saudi Arabia and to suggest otherwise is disingenous in the extreme.

Mike says they're defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. But are they defeated in London? And Bali? And in New York and Washington?

Er, what does that even mean? Does he belive that those atrocities represent ‘victories’ for Al Qaeda?

Mike Hayden emphasised that the struggle against Al Qaeda would be long and hard and any gains were fragile and reversable. Nobody has claimed anything close to a total victory over Al Qaeda and nobody denies that the problems facing the Middle East are multiple and varied. Mr Fisk comes dangerously close to glorifying Al Qaeda in that last sentence. I know that Mr Fisk favours extreme cultural masochism in his writings but to glorify the massacre of innocents is surely a new low, even by his wretched standards.