Vor 19 Jahren: "Ein Krieg für Demokratie nicht Öl"

Erst kürzlich in einer Diskussion über den Krieg in der Ukraine stellte ich einmal mehr fest, dass neunzehn Jahre nach dem Beginn des Dritten Golfkrieges, der mit dem Sturz Saddam Husseins endete, weitgehend in Vergessenheit geraten ist, dass es damals eine kleine, aber durchaus nicht unbedeutende Linke im Westen gab, die diesen Krieg unterstützte. Paul Berman gehörte ebenso dazu wie der leider inzwischen verstorbene Christopher Hitchens.

Und nicht zu vergessen Berham Saleh, der heute Präsident des Irak ist und dessen Rede vor der Sozialistischen Internationale in Rom wenige Tage vor Kriegsbeginn deshalb hier noch einmal mit den Worten Paul Bermans in Erinnerung gerufen werden soll:

The war in Iraq has always been a war against fascism, a liberation war for democratic freedom -- even a left-wing war. Or so I have always thought. All over the world there are people who consider themselves liberals or left-wingers who think the same and who have backed the war in one fashion or another, even while criticizing President Bush’s way of conducting it. (...)

I have to admit that quite a few other people take a different view and look on the war as a strictly right-wing adventure -- a war for oil, or for imperialism, or for Republican interests. We liberal and left-wing supporters of the war have had a pretty hard time of it as a result.

In January 2003, before the war began, Salih delivered a speech in Rome to the council of the Socialist International that was perhaps the single most important statement of the left-wing hawk position. He pleaded with the democratic left all over the world to support the impending invasion, comparing it to the liberation of Italy by the Allies in 1944. The Italians had suffered under fascism for 20 years, he said, and the invasion of 1944 was their liberation. Iraqis, he said, had suffered under the Baath Party and its “aggressive, racist ideology” for 35 years and needed the same kind of help.

Five months ago, in Madrid, Salih addressed another meeting of the Socialist International. What follows are excerpts from his speech:

“Most Iraqis see the moral and political imperative for the war of liberation as overwhelming. For many of us inside Iraq, who experienced firsthand Saddam’s WMDs, the debate about lack of evidence of WMDs is difficult to understand.

“For us in Iraq, weapons of mass destruction are not about dry accounting. They have been conventional tools of repression by Saddam.

“Ethnic cleansing began in Iraq in 1963, when the Baath Party sized power. Around a million people have been displaced, mostly Kurds but also Turkmens and Assyrian Christians. The fascist regime of Saddam has cost the lives of at least 2 million Iraqis. Four million more have been forced to become refugees. So far, more than 170 mass graves have been uncovered throughout Iraq. These mass graves should vindicate the morality of this war of liberation.

“I, as a Kurd and as an Iraqi, I know, perhaps better than others, that war is devastating and should be questioned. However, for us, this war was to end the brutal war that has been waged against the people of Iraq ....

“Despite images on Western television screens depicting Iraq as a brutal calamity, most Iraqis, who have known nothing but the murder and mayhem of Saddam’s rule, the last 10 months have seen astonishing progress toward the creation of a free society. This is the first time in their history, possibly in the entire history of the Islamic Middle East, that people are able to engage in a wide-ranging political debate over the future of their country.”

I can understand why many left-wingers and liberals all over the world have not responded to these speeches. It is because when they open their ears to the Iraq debate, they hear the off-putting voice of George W. Bush and do not hear the voices of the democratic left in Iraq.

But let us listen. This is a war for democracy, not for oil. An anti-fascist war. It is a war that, for the moment at least, has brought to power, as deputy prime minister, a genuinely admirable figure in the struggle for liberty in the Middle East. That man asks for our solidarity. He deserves to have it.