Britain’s Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, responded to my article about possible British complicity in the torture of Binyam Mohamed (Thus passim) with a reader’s letter in the Guardian, disputing its accuracy. It concluded: ‘These are serious issues which deserve to be discussed seriously. But let us do so on the basis of the facts’. Yesterday another letter appeared in the Guardian, this time from one of Mohamed’s lawyers, offering some compelling detail to contest the Foreign Secretary’s central claim that ‘it is factually wrong to say that we tried to conceal potentially exculpatory material from Mr Mohamed’s defence counsel’. So plainly the facts are disputed. Tempting though it is to plunge into tangled thickets of claim and counter-claim, we must not lose sight of the wood for the trees.

'We are fortunate to have the best security and intelligence services in the world' - Gordon Brown

One big, wood-size question is precisely how we establish those facts in public, especially given that some of them derive from intelligence shared with the British government by the United States. A second is: how can we avoid this ever happening again? Gordon Brown announced on 19 March 2009 that there will be new guidelines for British security and intelligence operatives interviewing detainees abroad. We must wait to see them, but the remit is not wide enough. The principle must surely be that any British operative is obliged, on pain of their career and possible prosecution, to whistleblow if he or she receives any intelligence reports that suggest someone is being tortured under the auspices (direct or indirect) of the US, or of anyone else. And the agency should immediately cease all further cooperation on that particular case, and related ones. Such fundamental human rights trump even that holy-of-holies of British foreign policy, intelligence-sharing with the US. Or is anyone prepared to say: better to stand by while a man is tortured rather than imperil our intelligence-sharing with the US?

Is that wise, Sir?

At the heart of all this is the absolute priority that the British government gives to the supposed ‘special relationship’ with the US, and the way in which British leaders and officials approach it. Take, for example, the story which the Foreign Office has told me with some emphasis over the last week. It is that, soon after David Miliband arrived at the Foreign Office in summer 2007, he wrote to the US secretary of state asking that the British residents incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay be released and returned to Britain. Thereafter, Foreign Office officials worked to make that happen, and secured the release of three of them, but not Mohamed. When Pentagon prosecutors defiantly went ahead to prosecute Mohamed, against a raft of good advice, the issue of potentially exculpatory US intelligence reports in the British government’s possession became acute. The British officials worked hard to get those documents released from US sources to Mohamed’s defence counsel in the US. All along they believed private diplomacy would be more effective than public confrontation. Finally, the charges were dropped and Mohamed was set free – though only after damning judgements of the British High Court and a change of administration in Washington.

In short: we, the British, were the good guys: the Americans were the bad guys. Or rather, some Americans, since characteristically the British government got itself entangled in Washington’s dysfunctional inter-agency process, getting caught in the cross-fire between, say, the State Department and the Pentagon. Taking this account on its own terms, let us accept that, at least from the early summer of 2008, the British Foreign Office made strenuous efforts to achieve the fair treatment and eventual release of Binyam Mohamed. Even if we accept that, what is the deeper lesson of the larger story to which this is only a coda?Here, in miniature, is a classic example of that whole British approach to our relationship with the United States which I call the Jeeves school of diplomacy. Impeccable manners; a discreet smile; always perfect loyalty in public; but privately murmuring insistently ‘is that wise, Sir?’ And back home in  Jeeves’ own club, frequented – as devotees of P G Wodehouse will recall – only by gentlemen’s gentlemen (ie. butlers), you tut-tut about the foolish conduct of the masters.

This has, in some measure, been a British approach for more than sixty years, ever since hegemony passed across the Atlantic. (Jeeves was himself a master once.) But it has been a national strategy with ever diminishing returns, and it has no remedy in the event that his master, Bertie Wooster, goes berserk. What does Jeeves do when Wooster starts torturing people in a back room, or getting a Moroccan butcher to do the penis-slashing for him? What if Wooster embarks on what you believe is a dangerous and mistaken war? From everything we know so far, the British Jeeves’ answer was to murmur by turns ‘might I assist you, Sir?’ and ‘is that wise, Sir?’ That was the approach not just on particular horrors like extraordinary rendition but also on the Iraq war and the whole misbegotten concept of the ‘Global War on Terror’. For all along, the Foreign Office, and much of the British government, knew better, knew that this was not wise or right, and would privately tell you so.

The claim was that this policy best served the British national interest, Britain’s national security and the safety of its citizens. Maybe Tony Blair believed that at the time. Yet a clinching argument was always, as Robin Cook recorded Blair telling a Cabinet meeting in the run-up to the Iraq war, ‘I tell you that we must steer close to America. I we don’t we will lose our influence to shape what they do.’ What influence, Jeeves? What of any significance did you actually change in Bush’s disastrous, law-abusing foreign policy? Not only did this whole strategy end up harming those British national interests, security and reputation in the world that it was supposed to sustain. It was not even good for the United States. We would have been a better friend to the United States if we had spoken up publicly to protest, never even countenanced extraordinary rendition, not gone along into Iraq, and instead – as Obama now advocates – stuck with Afghanistan and more intelligent, civilised, legal and durable ways to combat the real terrorist threats we face.

Not only Britain but the United States, indeed the world, would be in better shape today, if Britain had not continued to play this demeaning part of the faithful retainer who will put up with anything. A true, valued friend is the one who tells you when are doing something stupid or wrong, not a sycophant. This subservient British fetishisation of the Special Relationship, with intelligence-sharing at its heart, ends up weakening even the special relationship. Poor, stupid, self-deluding old Jeeves.

A version of this article appeared in the Guardian, 19th March 2009.

A surefire sign that something's wrong

India and China sit on an awful lot of coal, and there is a heated debate going on amongst agonized environmentalists that Fast Breeder Nuclear Reactors might be necessary to avoid it all going up in smoke. Carbon sequestration – capturing the carbon as it leaves the chimney and then storing it underground-  sounds like a good idea, but it is a long way from being commercially viable, and there is not a lot of time left. The Greenpeace energy plan for India avoids coal and nuclear, but leans on “biomass.” This means plants mainly, and it raises the same problems as bio-fuels, namely that it becomes more economic to power machines than feed poor people.

One thing that has become clear with the recent nuclear deal is that the chances of the US stopping India from further developing its military nuclear capability are next to zero. So in this version of events, the risk of nuclear proliferation is a sad side-effect of what has to be done to stop us from cooking ourselves more slowly.  However, in another version of the story, proliferation is the main event. It involves a dark place, deep underground, where a small yellow bird sits in a cage.

Before the invention of the Davy lamp, canaries were used by miners because they are sensitive to gas. When they died, the miners knew they had to get out. Today’s canaries are the poor, such as subsistence farmers. When they start to perish in accelerating numbers, we know that there is a calamity upon its way. This makes the recent slew of farmer suicides in India a bit worrying. Actually a country with 80 odd percent of its people at or below starvation incomes – the 27% poverty figure you see for India is based on snide statistics –  can only really be described as a Canary state. India uses 90% of its freshwater for irrigation, and looks set to get drier. Tweet, tweet.

Canaries are useless if you don’t pay attention when they start expiring. Indeed, if recent trade rounds are anything to go by, the rich world seems unconcerned about the fate of Indian farmers under climate change. But here’s the twist. The US has just given India what looks like a license to power up their nukes.  So India is now unlikely to go out with just a chirrup. It also has nuclear-enabled neighbours, China and Pakistan, who are not going to sit on their hands as India tools up. So we have probably got the best part of Asia cooking up a nuclear storm.

Forget Africa, with its huge land area and tiny population (ten times the area and 200 million less population than India alone.) The subsistence farmers in Africa are not hugely dependent on chemical inputs, and thus on Oil prices as in Asia, and they have a lot more space to move around in, with a huge North-South gradient to traverse in search of the weather they need. No, it is Asia with its incredible population densities supported by mechanised agriculture that will feel the pinch between Climate Change and Peak Oil. And that is where America has been is tending its nuclear flower bed.

So things are bound to change a bit: Rather than valuing the Canaries based on their “willingness to pay” for their lives (THUS passim), we have to start thinking about what happens to their nuclear-armed governments if they show a strong willingness to riot. Ironically, this means that George “W” is an accidental hero. Having upped the ante, the world now needs to work hard to ensure that India is not forced into a situation where food riots lead to catastrophic nuclear proliferation, enabled by the US. In the words of another great American, Forrest Gump, “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.”

Journalist retraining scheme for Muntadhar-al-Zaidi?

Unfortunately, my playful prediction that the Iraqi authorities would meet out summary justice to the shoe thrower was justified, as this BBC report illustrates: Shoe thrower ‘beaten in custody’. Apart from demonstrating absolute contempt for any civilised behaviour, this shows that George W Bush was either powerless to influence the actions of his ‘hosts’ in Bagdhad, or complicit. I would prefer to believe that he is just dumb, and the situation is out of control, but either way, it’s sad. Meanwhile, several Arab potentates are vying for the right to buy the shoes. Touching one’s enemy with shoes is a traditional sign of contempt serious matter in Iraqi custom, I’m told. Munthadar-al-Zaidi was not engaged in a copycat version of the notorious Alex Ferguson boot throwing incident which led to the departure of Golden Balls David Beckham. This was much more serious and for that reason we’ll hear no more from him.

John J Kelly

Here’s the video, in case anybody missed it: George Bush shoe attack

Meanwhile, despite the constant propaganda telling us that the ‘Iraqi people’ are eternally grateful (many of them are in eternity) to America for giving them ‘democracy,’ the move was praised as ‘a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people.” In a Reuters vox pop, Bagdhadiya Television called on the authorities to release their reporter, Muntadhar-al-Zaidi . “It’s the Shot of the Age and Bush deserved it” said one interviewee. “Bush failed to keep his promises. The situation gets worse every day.”

On December 4 2008 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the practice of holding  DNA samples of more than 1 million UK citizens, some as young as 10 years old, who have no criminal record but who have been investigated in the course of police enquiries, is contrary to Article 8. Britain is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, a prerequisite of EU membership. This landmark ruling, a setback for the UK government’s Identity Card project (Thus passim), amongst other ambitious schemes to roll forward the barriers of the state, was sixth item on early editions of BBC Radio 4 news, (UK national radio) but is shooting up the ranks and has set the blogosphere alight. UK Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith (Thus passim), is disappointed by the ruling and has announced that the DNA of innocent people will remain on file for the time being. Why are we not surprised?

We can expect several high profile examples of the arrest and conviction a person with no previous criminal record but whose DNA is held on the database in the very near future, no doubt first or second on the running order of the national news.

Speaking of European Courts, Roger Cohen of the International Herald Tribune (IHT) published an important opinion piece on the International Criminal Court (ICC) .  A Court for a New America calls for the US to join the Hague-based Tribunal court, set up to indict and try war criminals, dictators and abusers of state power. Strangely, George Bush and Dick Cheney were vehemently opposed to the ICC. Cheney called it a ‘kangaroo court’- unlike Guantanamo. Obama should take up where Bill Clinton left off and give it the legitimacy of US approval and participation. Following that, the ICC could indict Tony Blair, Bush, Cheney, Bremer, Rumsfeld and various others for their role in prosecuting aggressive warfare in Iraq in violation of the Geneva Convention and International Law. We know that won’t happen, of course, and naturally the US wouldn’t join if it meant that any of these fine fellows were to be subjected to unsavoury scrutiny, but it would help if the world’s most vigorous defender of western values subscribed to a court designed to uphold those very values.

End wurreld famine wid cluster bombs, W?

Thanks to Jack Roberts of Big Idea and the Herald Sun for pointing out that Saint Bob Geldof charged $100,000 to speak in Australia recently about ‘the tragedy of world famine.’ Guests weren’t told that it was a paid gig, by no means the first, for Geldof, friend of the man who has done a lot to reduce the world’s population and wealth of late. 

The Spoils of War

According to the Observer, “Tony Blair has earned £12m since leaving Downing Street, including speaking fees of £200,000 a time; by contrast John Prescott earns £30,000 a year from after-dinner speeches” (but probably eats at least an equivalent amount). A triple header with Tony and George seems a natural (already done, I believe). Any suggestions for the remaining horseman? Robert Mugabe? Bono? Omar Al Bashir? Gary Glitter?

He did what pappie should have done to win a second term, but in eight years, he made America the world’s most hated nation.

So why don’t we hate George W Bush even more after this movie? At least the Iraqis got to watch mobile phone videos of Saddam’s long drop. All we got was a thoughtful portrait of a likable if somewhat self-centred guy who only wanted to make win his father’s approval.

One reason is that is that ‘W’ is not a political documentary. Another is that one man was not responsible for the collective insanity of US foreign policy over the past decade. It took a dedicated team of mountebanks scheming round the clock, a hideous, spectacular act of terrorism, a suspension of disbelief, creeping totalitarianism and the absence of credible opposition to serve up such a witches’ brew. By painting a credible picture of a man of instinctive populist genius, born-again conviction but no interest in the wider welfare of the world outside America, ‘W’ fillets and indicts the Bush administration far more subtly than a spit-flecked Michael Moore attack. In any event, that movie – Team America, World Police – has already been made.

If we take time out from hating, we learn all the above during the course of this thoughtful exposure of hubris and the Peter Principle. George W. took the temperature of the nation and gave the majority what they wanted at the time: Shock and Awe. His End-of-Empire antics were not dissimilar to those of any over-reaching dictator, except that they were enacted in a seemingly genuine belief that he was empowering democracy. He acted in the god-given belief that America First was best for the world. Stone’s ‘W’ is not stupid, but he’s no Einstein; no choirboy but not deliberately malicious. He gambled, high stakes, Texas Hold’em. Fate bit back. 

His advisors are another matter. Cheney is portrayed as a recidivist cold warrior, a consummate Iago, bent on total world domination. Rumsfeld is a lizard, prosecuting war on a strategy borrowed from WalMart. Colin Powell is the Imperial general whose loyalty to his commander in chief overrides professional misgivings. Condi Rice graduates from intellectual doubter to malicious Tinkerbell, spinning scenarios to fit the desired outcomes. General Tommy Franks is Paton. Carl Rove is Gollum.

‘W’ the movie resonates deeper because it does not preach nor condemn. Hitler was a failed painter. George W wanted to be a baseball hero. Both liked dogs. Both stepped up to the plate when the nation demanded vengeance for real and perceived ills. Both caused epic misery by aggressive, unprovoked warfare. One of them will be rehabilitated. It wasn’t America’s fault that they whacked the wrong guys. God told George to do it. He’s comfortable with that.