Other Politicky Stuff

OK, I know I talked about politics last time, and no I don’t want to start another series on this, but I actually found when writing my last post that I got very rapidly sidetracked when I tried to use voter turnout as a way of demonstrating the fact that everyone hates their politicians, and I thought I might dedicate a post to this particular train of thought as well.

You see, across the world, but predominantly in the developed west where the right to choose our leaders has been around for ages, less and less people are turning out each time to vote.  By way of an example, Ronald Reagan famously won a ‘landslide’ victory when coming to power in 1980- but only actually attracted the vote of 29% of all eligible voters. In some countries, such as Australia, voting is mandatory, but thoughts about introducing such a system elsewhere have frequently met with opposition and claims that it goes against people’s democratic right to abstain from doing so (this argument is largely rubbish, but no time for that now).

A lot of reasons have been suggested for this trend, among them a sense of political apathy, laziness, and the idea that we having the right to choose our leaders for so long has meant we no longer find such an idea special or worth exercising. For example, the presidential election in Venezuela – a country that underwent something of a political revolution just over a decade ago and has a history of military dictatorships, corruption and general political chaos – a little while ago saw a voter turnout of nearly 90% (incumbent president Hugo Chavez winning with 54% of the vote to win his fourth term of office in case you were interested) making Reagan look boring by comparison.

However, another, more interesting (hence why I’m talking about it) argument has also been proposed, and one that makes an awful lot of sense. In Britain there are 3 major parties competing for every seat, and perhaps 1 or two others who may be standing in your local area. In the USA, your choice is pretty limited to either Obama or Romney, especially if you’re trying to avoid the ire of the rabidly aggressive ‘NO VOTE IS A VOTE FOR ROMNEY AND HITLER AND SLAUGHTERING KITTENS’ brigade. Basically, the point is that your choice of who to vote for is limited to usually less than 5 people, and given the number of different issues they have views on that mean something to you the chance of any one of them following your precise political philosophy is pretty close to zero.

This has wide reaching implications extending to every corner of democracy, and is indicative of one simple fact; that when the US Declaration of Independence was first drafted some 250 years ago and the founding fathers drew up what would become the template for modern democracy, it was not designed for a state, or indeed a world, as big and multifaceted as ours. That template was founded on the basis of the idea that one vote was all that was needed to keep a government in line and following the will of the masses, but in our modern society (and quite possibly also in the one they were designing for) that is simply not the case. Once in power, a government can do almost what it likes (I said ALMOST) and still be confident that they will get a significant proportion of the country voting for them; not only that, but that their unpopular decisions can often be ‘balanced out’ by more popular, mass-appeal ones, rather than their every decision being the direct will of the people.

One solution would be to have a system more akin to Greek democracy, where every issue is answered by referendum which the government must obey. However, this presents just as many problems as it answers; referendums are very expensive and time-consuming to set up and perform, and if they became commonplace it could further enhance the existing issue of voter apathy. Only the most actively political would vote in every one, returning the real power to the hands of a relative few who, unlike previously, haven’t been voted in. However, perhaps the most pressing issue with this solution is that it rather renders the role of MPs, representatives, senators and even Prime Ministers & Presidents rather pointless. What is the point of our society choosing those who really care about the good of their country, have worked hard to slowly rise up the ranks and giving them a chance to determine how their country is governed, if we are merely going to reduce their role to ones of administrators and form fillers? Despite the problems I mentioned last time out, of all the people we’ve got to choose from politicians are probably the best people to have governing us (or at least the most reliably OK, even if it’s simply because we picked them).

Plus, politics is a tough business, and what is the will of the people is not necessarily always what’s best for the country as a whole. Take Greece at the moment; massive protests are (or at least were; I know everyone’s still pissed off about it) underway due to the austerity measures imposed by the government, because of the crippling economic suffering that is sure to result. However, the politicians know that such measures are necessary and are refusing to budge on the issue- desperate times call for difficult decisions (OK, I know there were elections that almost entirely centred on this decision that sided with austerity, but shush- you’re ruining my argument). To pick another example, President Obama (and several Democrat candidates before him) have met with huge opposition to the idea of introducing a US national healthcare system, basically because Americans hate taxes. Nonetheless, this is something he believes very strongly in, and has finally managed to get through congress; if he wins the elections later this year, we’ll see how well he executes.

In short, then, there are far too many issues, too many boxes to balance and ideas to question, for all protesting in a democratic society to take place at the ballot box. Is there a better solution to waving placards in the street and sending strongly worded letters? Do those methods at all work? In all honesty, I don’t know- that whole internet petitions get debated in parliament thing the British government recently imported from Switzerland is a nice idea, but, just like more traditional forms of protest, gives those in power no genuine categorical imperative to change anything. If I had a solution, I’d probably be running for government myself (which is one option that definitely works- just don’t all try it at once), but as it is I am nothing more than an idle commentator thinking about an imperfect system.

Yeah, I struggle for conclusions sometimes.

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The story of Curveball

2012 has been the first year for almost as long as public conciousness seems able to remember that the world has not lived under the shadow of one of the most controversial and tumultuous events of the 21st century- the Iraq war. From 2003 to December 2011, the presence and deaths of western soldiers in Iraq was an ever-present and constantly touchy issue, and it will be many years before Iraq recovers from the war’s devastating effects.

Everybody knows the story of why the war was started in the first place- the US government convinced the rest of the world that Iraq’s notoriously brutal and tyrannical dictator Saddam Hussein (who had famously gassed vast swathes of Iraq’s Kurdish population prior to his invasion of Kuwait and the triggering of the First Gulf War) was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. The main reason for the US government’s fears was, according to the news of the time, the fact that Hussein had refused UN weapons inspectors to enter and search the country. Lots of people know, or at least knew, this story. But much fewer know the other story- the story of how one man was able to, almost single-handedly, turn political posturing into a full-scale war.

This man’s name is Rafid Ahmed Alwan, but he was known to the world’s intelligence services simply as ‘Curveball’. Alwan is an Iraqi-born chemical engineer, who in 1999 fled to Germany, having embezzled government money. He then claimed that he had worked on an Iraqi project to design and produce mobile labs to produce biological weapons. Between late 1999 and 2001, German intelligence services interrogated him, granted him political asylum, and listened to his descriptions of the process. They were even able to create 3-D models of the facilities being designed, to a level of detail that CIA scientists were later able to identify major technical flaws in them. Despite the identification of such inconsistencies, when Curveball’s assertions that Iraq was indeed trying to produce biological WMD’s got into the hands of US intelligence, they went straight to the top. US Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to Curveball’s evidence in a 2003 speech to the UN on the subject of Iraq’s weapons situation, and his evidence, despite its flaws, pretty much sealed the deal for the USA. And where the US goes, the rest of the world tends to follow.

Since then, Curveball has, naturally, come under a lot of criticism. Accused of being an alcoholic, a ‘congenital liar’ and a ‘con artist’, he is quite possibly the world record holder for the most damaging ‘rogue source’ in intelligence history. Since he first made his claims, the amount of evidence showing how completely and utterly false they were has only stacked up- a facility he attested was a docking station was found to have an immovable brick wall in front of it, his designs were completely technically unsound, and his claims that he had finished top of his class at Baghdad University and had been drafted straight into the weapons program were replaced by the fact that he had finished bottom of his class and had, as he admitted in 2011, made the whole story up.

But, of course, by far the biggest source of hatred towards Curveball has been what his lies snowballed into- the justification of one of the western world’s least proud and most controversial events- the Second Iraq War. The cost of the war has been estimated to be in the region of two trillion dollars, and partly as a result of disruption to Iraqi oil production the price of oil has nearly quadrupled since the war began. The US and its allies have come under a hail of criticism for their poor planning of the invasion, the number of troops required and the clean up process, which was quite possibly entirely to blame for the subsequent 7 years of insurgent warfare after the actual invasion- quite apart from  some rather large questions surrounding the invasion’s legality in the first place. America has also taken a battering to its already rather weathered global public image, losing support from some of its traditional allies, and the country of Iraq has, despite having had an undoubtedly oppressive dictatorship removed, become (rather like Afghanistan) a far more corrupt, poverty-stricken, damaged and dangerous society than it was even under Hussein- it will take many years for it to recover. Not only that, but there is also evidence to suggest that the anger caused by the Western invasion has been played for its PR value by al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, actually increasing the terrorism threat. But worse than all of that has been the human cost- estimates of the death toll range from 87,000 to over a million, the majority of whom have been civilian casualties from bomb attacks (courtesy of both sides). All parties have also been accused of sanctioning torture and of various counts of murder of civilians.

But I am not here to point fingers or play the blame game- suffice it to say that the main loser in the war has been humanity. The point is that, whilst Curveball cannot be said to be the cause of the war, or even the main one, the paper trail can be traced right back to him as one of the primary trigger causes. Just one man, and just a few little lies.

Curveball has since said that he was (justifiably) shocked that his words were used as justification for the war, but, crucially, that he was proud that what he had said had toppled Hussein’s government. When asked in an interview about all the death and pain the war he had sparked had caused, he was unable to give an answer.

This, for me, was a both shocking and deeply interesting moral dilemma. Hussein was without a doubt a black mark on the face of humanity, and in the long run I doubt that Iraq will be worse off as a democracy than it was under his rule. But that will not be for many years, and right now Iraq is a shadow of a country.

Put yourself in Curveball’s position- somebody who thought his words could bring down a dictator, a hate figure, and who then could only watch as the world tore itself apart because of them. Could you live with that thought? Were your words worth their terrible price? Could your conscience ever sleep easy?