openDemocracy is asking writers around the world to express their view about US power and Iraq. As in kitchens and meeting rooms, tea-shops and tapas bars around the world, our office is the scene of intense discussion about responsibility and choice in the face of war.
Some have confessed to difficulty about coming to a conclusion. This in its way is good news in hard times: doubt and hesitation are the fertile condition of all progress. It is clear that the world is in the midst of a conversation whose dynamic and exploratory nature is itself becoming an intrinsic part of the global crisis.
For many, non-Americans and Americans alike, the attitude of the current US administration is particularly telling. But those who are repelled by the arrogance of Washington should beware of their own. That many are torn as to what to think, especially as they listen to Iraqi voices, is understandable. It could even promise a wiser world not a weaker one.
We want openDemocracy to help you make up your mind (I did for my part in my last Editors note) in the most energetic and accessible way.
Months ago, Paul Rogers said February would be the likely month for war. Now my guess is this: that given the military success of their use of civil conflict in Kosovo and Afghanistan, American agents are currently at work with the biggest bribes in human history to persuade Iraqis, including sections of Saddam Hussains own forces, to stage a coup against him. Or, if that proves impossible, to arrange an uprising in a significant part of the country, such as a large air-base. Either way, the rebels will call for popular support and invite the United States to assist them.
There will be no need for UN resolutions, reports from inspectors or the discovery of weapons of mass destruction. America will go in. Indeed, it will be obliged to move fast as any promise of reward for raising the standard against Saddam has to include the pledge of swift and overwhelming support that the US is now able to deliver, or the piano wires will soon await the conspirators.
Invited in as liberators, US forces will be welcomed as liberators. Perhaps George W. Bush will make a surprise visit and take the salute in Baghdad. If so, there will be cheering crowds.
Why, then, should there be any argument at all over the rights and wrongs about the gathering American might now focused in the region?
America may be about to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, one colleague said to me. The list of the wrong reasons seems to be a long one. However, you dont have to be good to do good.
Alas, wicked people have often furthered their ends by occasionally doing good.
To come to a view, it helps to have an angle of vision. Should it be that of most Iraqi people, of a US policy maker, of a Palestinian or an Israeli? Where you place yourself is a matter of emotion and identification, not just calculation. And why cant you identify with two different sides at the same time?
Tom Nairns developing argument is both original and important. The US, he suggests, is not a calculating machine that knows its interests and is counting up the oil fields. Rather, its leadership is gripped by fear of loss of overall control, even though this is inherent in the very processes of contemporary, hi-tech globalisation it has initiated. It is the unknown, not the known, the globe, not Iraq, which it is attempting to reshape.
If so, motivation, methods, partiality and larger aims must be a central part of any reckoning.
Rarely, has the tension between means and ends been as acute as it is with respect to Iraq today.
