An important milestone on the road to losing any vestigial moral high ground

Upon hearing yesterday morning that Saddam Hussein had been executed, I was surprised at my main emotional response to the news. I was partly surprised, as I had not expected that the sentence would be carried out so promptly. After all, I had expected that he would actually be present at the ongoing trial surrounding events at Al-Anfal. Not that there’s much doubt that he was indeed responsible for the death of 180,000 Kurds in 1987-88, it’s just that surely the point of such a trial is to make the guilty party face up to his crimes, and to send out the message that such behaviour will not be tolerated or go unpunished. There’s nothing much the court can do to redress the situation, and in my mind and that of many others, it’s not the business of the courts to facilitate revenge. Obviously, not everyone shares that view.

I had rather expected that my first thought would be “Well done, it couldn’t have happened to a nastier chap”, or something along those lines. Only it wasn’t. The emotions that the news of Saddam’s demise stirred up were anger mixed with shame. The two often go hand in hand. The anger comes from the fact that the entire process leading to Saddam Hussein’s arrest, trial and execution has been a complete travesty. I don’t want to once again bring up a topic that never fails to lead to an intractable argument, so let’s say that the circumstances leading to his arrest were at the very least of dubious legality. What is beyond doubt is that the arrest warrant, if you will, was for being under suspicion of possessing weapons of mass destruction, which has proved to be a trumped-up charge on the part of the UK government. Alternately, as far as the US government is concerned, it was for being an accomplice to Al-Qaeda and associates, which was also utter tripe. It isn’t as if there weren’t any other charges that they could have made stick.

Of course, because of the uncertainty over the legal standing of the circumstances leading to Hussein’s arrest, he had to be tried in a “special Iraqi court”, not by an international one as are other suspected war criminals and their illustrious brethren such as Slobodan Milosevic. No matter how nasty a man Saddam was, he deserved a fair trial as much as anyone else, and there was no chance at all of such a thing happening in Iraq. Of course, that was his own fault for having given just about everyone in Iraq a reason to want to see him dangling, but the desire for revenge is different from justice, even if the practical end result is arguably the same. To be fair, the Iraqi court did a remarkable job given the almost impossible circumstances in which the trial took place: several of Saddam’s lawyers were assassinated for example.

But the fact remains that the outcome of it all was that Saddam was sentenced to death and executed with the complicity of the US and UK governments. All the talk of letting the Iraqi people judge Saddam as they see fit without outside intervention is transparent nonsense. It’s just George Bush and Tony Blair washing their hands of the situation unconvincingly. Of course, George Bush doesn’t have to care quite so much about this. He governs the only real democracy in the world to regularly execute so many of its’ citizens. Capital punishment isn’t so much of a political hot potato in the US as it is in Europe. But here, it’s anathema, at least it’s meant to be. The EU makes it a requirement for membership that capital punishment should be abolished. It’s just a fundamental human right. But it would seem that it’s only a human right for people like us, a group of which membership is subject to fluctuating criteria. Margaret Beckett, on behalf of the British government, said that “the British government does not support the use of the death penalty, in Iraq or anywhere else. We advocate an end to the death penalty worldwide, regardless of the individual or the crime. ‘We have made our position very clear to the Iraqi authorities, but we respect their decision as that of a sovereign nation.’”

This is quite obviously a cop-out. You have to be singularly naïve to believe that the Iraqi government can’t be influenced by the US or the UK.

The main problem with the outcome of this miserable mini-epic is not that Saddam’s dead, or that he didn’t deserve it. No one much regrets his passing. This will have no discernible impact on what people still amusingly refer to as “the security situation” in Iraq. Saddam Hussein hasn’t mattered in this conflict since he went into hiding in April 2003. The problem is that this is the schematic version of events leading up to this: The US and the UK invade Iraq and arrest Saddam on trumped-up charges. He is then tried by a kangaroo rat court with the collusion of the US and the UK who unconvincingly claim that it’s nothing to do with them. He is then sentenced to death and executed with the complicity of at least on government that opposes the death penalty. Where’s the moral high ground that it supposed to provide us with the justification for using violence against countries when we oppose it when used by anyone else? Why on earth would anyone listen to a word we say any more? Why would they pay lip service to all our admonestations on human rights and democracy?

George Bush says of Saddam’s death that “it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy”. Well I suppose that’s one interpretation of what democracy is supposed to be. It’s not one that the Militant Pine Marten shares though.

Why not make ID cards out of sew-on fabric, in the shape of stars?

In the past couple of months, those of us who flatter ourselves that we are members of the group disparagingly referred to as “the Liberati” by the now – possibly temporarily - retired David Blunkett, then Home Secretary, have been tempted to delude ourselves into believing rumours that the National Identity Register project was suffocating under its’ own weight. Leaks from Whitehall suggested that the word on the Civil Service street was that spiralling costs and technical difficulties, combined with the Government’s ongoing ineptitude when it comes to implementing large IT projects would result in the whole wretched endeavour being shelved. It was tempting to heave a tentative sigh of relief, to take a step back and think that we’d won, the whole scheme was being sunk by the Government’s hubris. However at a speech at the Institute of Public Policy research, Home Office Minister Liam Byrne reassured us that there has been no such change of tack. The scheme may be more expensive than expected (well, not really expected so much as wishful costed) and experience some teething problems, but it’s still going ahead, albeit maybe in little baby steps rather than in leaps and bounds.

As of last week, anyone over 16 years of age applying for their first UK passport will still be summoned to an “interview centre” and have all their details recorded on the National Identity Register, which is the iceberg under the cards, even if ID cards themselves are not due to make an appearance until 2008. Initially, they won’t be carried by UK citizens but by people that are either resented by the natives, or ignored, namely foreigners. The Pine Marten associates with a motley collection of these rogues, and although they are generally sympathetic to its’ opposition to the scheme, they do tend to think that at the end of the day, they’re not actually affected by all this. Thanks to Liam Byrne, the Pine Marten has the distinctly unpleasant task of telling them that they are in fact, completely wrong. As of April 2008, all foreign nationals wishing to live in the UK for more than three months, including EU nationals, will have the pleasure of being the first UK residents to be "interviewed”, fingerprinted, scanned and issued with ID Cards. Welcome to the UK!

Singling out foreign nationals as guinea pigs is politically pretty astute. First of all, most people arriving in the UK will not realise that this isn’t normal, that UK residents do not carry ID cards, and therefore they probably won’t make a fuss. As they’re all from different places rather than a single hazy "abroad", they probably won’t discuss it amongst themselves much. From UK citizens’ perspective well, most probably won’t care, so the scheme will be tested in a low-key sort of way, to make sure that it’s ready to go live on a bigger scale. Many of those who do care about such things don’t really like foreigners coming to the UK anyway, and if they’re not sure, they can always be told that this will keep out benefit scroungers, health tourists, illegal immigrants, asylum seekers or whatever other savages the Home Office, the media or UKIP and their ilk decide are the unpalatable flavour of the month.

(Incidentally, has anyone else noticed that the United Kingdom Passport Service is now called the United Kingdom Identity and Passport Service or UKIPs? Coincidence probably, but also maybe a deliberate clue left by an understatedly dissident civil servant).

There are three main points that flow from this in addition to the standard arguments surrounding the scheme. The first is admittedly paranoid, but it does seem that the Home Office is particularly adept at giving everyone a false sense of security about the National Identity Register. It’s not beyond the realm of fantasy to think that leaks regarding the possible landing in the long grass of the scheme were not entirely unplanned. What is more certain is that the singling out of foreign nationals as an ideal test group for the introduction of ID cards is underhanded and manipulative. The second point is of a more symbolic significance: singling out an unpopular minority with neither the means nor the knowledge to defend itself on a tide of popular scapegoating is practice with a long and despicable history. It is deeply worrying that UK citizens live in a state that has no qualms about using such means. This is callous and morally repulsive both to UK citizens and to foreign nationals, hundreds of thousands of which have lived in the country for many years, mostly without being treated as second-rate residents. Finally, the shrill voices that make such a deception on behalf of government effective are always loud and forceful, their arguments as simple as they are flawed. But they’re not the majority. The majority are those who do not oppose ID cards actively because they do not think it will affect them, and so they don’t speak up, they don’t act. And if they don’t, they’ll find themselves wearing metaphorical sew-on stars on their metaphorical lapels before they can say “police state”.

Darius Cameron stalks Blairshazzar’s throne, Iznogoud prepares his bid for the Caliphate.

It’s been a while since the Militant Pine Marten last piped up, but since it is mostly concerned with politics, and that for the duration of the summer the politicians have by and large been more concerned with their suntans, it decided to take a leaf out of their forest and do very much the same. Besides, since any theoretical readers will mostly have been enjoying their holidays rather than scanning these pixels at their office desks, there was really very little incentive to engage with the wider world. However, it is now September, and as millions of children endure the collective annual trauma of returning to school after a season of freedom, and as we return from attempting to recapture the feeling that they have just lost albeit for a shorter period and with a much lower likelihood of success, so have the politicians also resumed their posts. And so once again, the Militant Pine Marten must prick its’ little mustelid ears and hold forth on what it hears.

On both sides of the Channel, jostling for position as inevitably the tenures of two political heavyweights come to an end, although these two face the inevitable differently. The chief difference in the current situations of Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair is that whereas the date of the former’s retirement is set by the French Constitution, the latter does not seem to have yet come to terms with what must come to pass. But then, the current Prime Minister has never shown any inclination towards relinquishing any sort of power, and it was always quite clear that he would never leave Downing Street with good grace. Indeed, the alleged pact between Blair and Brown for an eventual orderly transfer of power has always struck the Pine Marten as self-delusion on the part of the Brown camp and Blairophobes. And so Blair desperately seeks to avoid the topic, like countless children last Sunday evening, who upon being told to prepare their satchels and go to bed early covered their ears and shouted “La-la-la! I’m not listening!”, and as the volume of their parents’ voices rose, so did their cries to drown out this new intruding, unwanted sound. “I’M NOT GOING! I’M NOT GOING! I still have other very important things to do!”. Only Tony isn’t referring to one last game or one last cartoon, what he has in mind is, in now typical, self-caricaturing style, one last paranoid, sinister plan to rid Britain of the scourge of yet-unborn juvenile delinquents. But the writing’s on the wall for Tony Blair, he just refuses to ask for a translation.

Outside the walls of Babylon, Darius Cameron may well be poised to set his Patrician behind on Blairshazzar’s vacated throne. He comes not at the head of a mighty host, but armed with pleasant sounding platitudes, vague proposals, and chubby shiny glowing cheeks. In fact, he’s really quite reminiscent of the Old King in an earlier incarnation. This is the new Tory house style: smiles, cheerios and sweetly scented hot air. Perhaps the finest illustration of the new prevailing mood was young Georgy Porgy Osborne’s rather disarmingly charming boyish enthusiasm for magnetic levitation railways. Frankly, maglev trains and scrapping ID cards is starting to look like quite an attractive set of policies. In fact, if the Tories are serious about this, and we have no reason to suspect this of course, it almost makes sense. Take the money earmarked for universal State surveillance, and use it for maglev railways! There are far worse ways of spanking away enormous sums of taxpayer’s money. Just make sure to bring over some Japanese and Chinese engineers to design and build the network.

That last suggestion would no doubt not be very palatable to some of Nicolas Sarkozy’s young supporters who appear to have confused his address to the UMP’s Youth organisation with a rock concert. Indeed, the event was blessed with the hallowed presence of Johnny Halliday himself, and even the rapper Doc Gynéco. Serious street cred there. Although it’s going to take all of the good doctor’s lyrical expertise to convert to Sarko’s cause those that the Great Pretender wished so famously to hose into the gutter.

The content of Sarkozy’s harangue was disappointing. Part of his appeal has always been that he was seen as a man of innovation, indeed he himself never tires of claiming that he would be the candidate of “rupture”, or fresh beginnings (and there’s Blair’s legacy by the way: all that “sweeping away the ashes of past”, “moving boldly into a Brave New World”, “a modern, forward-looking country”, that’s what will remain, together with the utter vacuity of such rhetoric). The problem is that what he has outlined in his speech is a simple old-fashioned backward-looking rightwing, nationalistic programme: “no” to gay weddings and adoption, strict immigration controls, compulsory “civic service”, and repeated invocations of the Heroic Youth of 14-18, the Heroic Resistance, and other venerated ancestor spirits. Finally, on the one area that really requires a little vision, a little daring, not to say a little sensitivity, that of cultural integration of the French of immigrant origins, he resorted to old-fashioned monolithic Republican dogma. “France is your Fatherland and you have no other, even if your parents and grandparents came from elsewhere”. The Militant Pine Marten happens to be in a position to claim authoritatively that it is perfectly possible to have two “fatherlands”, to have two cultures, to be not without solid roots, but to have two sets of them, each as strong as the other. Arguably, it makes for a healthier tree. But it does not appear that Sarkozy is a great one for multiculturalism. In today’s France, a president with that degree of shortsightedness would be positively dangerous.

One way or another, it’s going to be an interesting political year on both sides of the Channel, although the calibre of those that would replace those currently in power is not particularly reassuring. Hopefully, by the time all the aforementioned schoolchildren come to vote, we will have left them with some worthier candidates.