Opinion polls, radio phone-ins and straw polls on street corners all conclude that a very large number of British people support the idea of bombing Iraq. Well over 50 per cent of the population backs the government's hard-line position that force is the only solution to ridding Iraq of its biological weapons capability and the world of Saddam Hussein. In this the British government and the majority of Britons share common cause with Bill Clinton. Yet, there is discomfort in Whitehall that it is being seen as the US' only military partner.It is not factually correct that Britain is the US' only pro-bombing buddy. Among Europe's big league, Germany at least has said that it supports the Clinton-Blair stance, although Germany's opposition parties are clearly opposed to military action. France on the other hand has come out actively against military action, while Italy has chosen to support Russia in a demand for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. And while a majority of Britons support a military attack onIraq, a majority of Europeans clearly do not. It does seem that unlike in 1991 there is a consensus against a war with Iraq. Britain and the US are the two exceptions to this consensus. While the US can, perhaps more comfortably, ignore international opinion Britain cannot.
The British government is at pains to establish that there is a hierarchy of baddies and goodies, and that in any event Saddam Hussein has taken over the entire baddie slot, and so they can only be the goodies. Unfortunately, a large section of the ``quality'' press is not buying this. In fact, after months of news coverage that focused on Saddam Hussein's bloody-minded intransigence there have been, in the last week, some reports of how seven years of sanctions have hit ordinary Iraqis.
In what is as much an image war as anything else, the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has written in The Guardian contesting its front page news report about the horror of living under economic sanctions. Cook insists that whatever theproblem, it is Saddam Hussein's fault. Difficult questions are side-stepped. Neither Cook nor his American counterpart are willing to answer questions like: What would happen if you actually exploded an anthrax facility?
In the absence of answers the media is gearing up for the war. Full page advertisements in British newspapers promote CNN as the TV company that brought ``democracy'' to the world as it brought the Gulf War into their living rooms. The BBC has abandoned any pretence of neutrality and has taken to pressing the British government's case emphasising the dangers of the man Tony Blair called the ``evil dictator''. Reporters who covered the Gulf War are at pains to point out that what you saw on your TV screens then, was only what you were allowed to see.
If Annan's mission to Baghdad is a failure, and Iraq is bombed the British government can rest secure in the fact that although a large number of people here are acutely sceptical about bombing Iraq, a majority of people in this country, arehappy gun-slingers who variously want to ``get rid of Saddam'', ``teach Saddam a lesson''.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
