Johann Hari on George Galloway. posted by Richard Seymour

In a recent review of George Galloway's new book, Johann Hari has resorted to dissembling, distortion and extreme Zionist propaganda to produce an incoherent, childish rant. How come?

There could hardly be a more fair-minded commentator on Harry's Place than Johann Hari. Not to damn him with faint praise, then, I'll also add that he is one of the more intelligent supporters of the war - and, let's be honest, the pro-war camp desperately needs intelligent support. However, having read his venomous review of George Galloway's book I'm Not the Only One, I remember that everyone's political honesty has limits. Wish fulfillment abounds in most political analysis, and you could hardly find a more compelling example of this than in Johann's review. Having peremptorily dismissed 90% of the book's content as "unconvincing", "hazy Lennonist idealism" etc., Hari gets to the business of his review. Galloway is guilty of "Ba'athist propaganda", the extent of which is "staggering":

All those who, in the past, have denied that Galloway has mutated into a Saddamist will simply have to recant when they read this book. For example, Galloway actually refers to the Shi'ites Saddam murdered in the 1980s as "a fifth column" who actively undermined the Iraqi war effort in the interests of their countryís enemy." Nobody outside Saddamís squalid regime used this terminology; it was purely a justification for the mass slaughter of the dictator's enemies. It has been extensively documented that very few Iraqis supported Iran. They were killed because they opposed Saddam, not because they backed Iran, and Galloway must know it.

Now, before I proceed to deconstruct this breathtaking misrepresentation, I'll give you Galloway's quote in full:

"Iraqi society remained remarkably solid during the eight long years of war with Iran. The Shi'ite majority in Iraq proved that they were Arabs and Iraqis first and co-religionists of Khomeini second. But there was a fifth column, Shi'ite elements who actively undermined the Iraqi war effort in the interests of the country's enemy. As in all authoritarian regmes, this fifth column was ruthlessly annihilated wherever it was found." (Page 114).

So, before we're even off the ground, Hari's penultimate sentence is confirmed. Galloway is indeed aware that "very few Iraqis supported Iran" because he specifically says so. And what of the "fifth column"? Galloway nowhere denies that many Iraqis were killed simply for opposing the regime. In fact, he specifically says so:

"Saddam was a ruthless and cruel man who thought little about signing death warrants of even close comrades, and still less about ordering the merciless crushing of potential threats to his regime." (Page 126).

Hari is fully aware of this, since he later (mis)quotes precisely this passage. Nevertheless, in describing those in sympathy with Iran as a "fifth column", you might think Galloway was trying to impugn their motives or imply that they deserved what they got. In fact, Galloway both opposed Saddam's brutal assault on Iran, and supported an Iraqi overthrow of their regime:

"Saddam could have had no legitimate complaint if living by the sword - ruthlessly cutting down any and all opposition - he had died by the sword (or rope) at the hands of the Iraqis." (Page 103).

Galloway is accused, then, of saying something he hasn't said. He has not said that all the Shi'tes Saddam murdered in the 1980s were a fifth column - merely that such a faction existed. And he notes it was a minority. And, given his hostility to the regime and to its war with Iran, he cannot even be accused of opposing this "fifth column". But Hari has more:

How about the passage where Galloway defends Saddam's claim to Kuwait, describing the province as "clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion"?

This is a blatant - and I must conclude intentional - misrepresentation. Here is Galloway's actual quote:

"For Iraqis of all political persuasions, Kuwait had been stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion - Great Britain, the former colonial power." (Page 42).

He does not describe "the province" thus - he describes Iraqis as having that perception. Galloway could be wrong in this assessment, but that is immaterial since he did not say what Hari says he did. In fact, Hari seems to be the one in doubt of Kuwait's legitimacy as a nation, since he is the one who describes it as a "province". (Province: "A territory governed as an administrative or political unit of a country or empire." ) What can Johann mean?

Additionally, Galloway specifically rejects Saddam's right to invade Kuwait:

"In 1990 I was an enemy of the Iraqi regime and had, purposely, never visited the country. The sympathy I had for former colonies undoing the fake boundaries of colonialism could not support the naked aggression committed against Kuwait. That action copied elsewhere in the developing world would be a recipe for endless chaos and bloodshed." (Page 45).

You could make excuses for Hari. Perhaps he didn't see this passage, perhaps he read the book in a hurry, racing toward the salacious Saddamism he hoped to find. But such a conclusion is annihilated by Hari's next move:

For example, he says that in the First Gulf War, "I made my stand with Iraq." No you didn't, George. You stood with Saddam; conscript Iraqis - most in their teens - were being sent to be slaughtered in the name of an invasion they did not support.

That quote is the sentence immediately following the cited passage on Page 45. It is even in the same paragraph. Hari even uses the statement to imply that George Galloway "stood with Saddam" in his invasion of Kuwait while "conscript Iraqis" were being forced to die in an invasion they didn't support. I don't know about you, but I would think that - since it is logically impossible that George both supported and opposed the invasion of Kuwait - he was referring to his opposition to US planes pounding Iraqi cities and killing as many as 200,000 people. Hari continues:

Or how about Galloway's claim that Saddam's mass murder of democrats, Kurds and other anti-Saddam forces in 1991 was a "civil war" that "involved massive violence on both sides"? Again, only Ba'athists have ever used this language or narrative. The reality is very different. In 1991, a vicious tyranny exterminated its enemies. For Galloway to claim that two morally equivalent sides were simply fighting it out is staggering: he is equidistant between a poisoner and the medical crew waving an antidote.

I see no reason to revisit Galloway's position on the ouster of Saddam by Iraqis. Just scroll up if your mind has gone blank all of a sudden. But to describe the 1991 uprising as a "civil war" is no more apologetic than it is to describe the Nepalese uprising as a civil war, or the Kosovar uprising as a civil war. And did the Iraqi uprising not involve "massive violence on both sides"? Of course, describing facts is rarely neutral - context is all. But as I have already indicated, the context in which Galloway is writing is one in which he considers an Iraqi uprising just. Galloway nevertheless stands accused or "relativising" Saddam's crimes:

The most bizarre example of Galloway's moral relativism is when he says, "Saddam was a ruthless and cruel man who thought little of signing the death warrants of even close comrades. In this regard he was little different to the leaders of most regimes: we just don't know it in our own countries yet." As if Tony Blair is about to start gassing the SWP and the Tories. As if George Bush is going to start building mass graves in California.

Do you know, I don't think George Galloway is actually saying that? It may in fact be that Hari has mis-quoted Galloway again:

"In this regard he is little different to the leaders of most regimes; regime survival is the ultimate priority of most systems - we just don't know it in our own countries, yet." (Page 126).

Okay, so Hari has left out a subclause and a comma. No big deal. I'm not saying he is a sloppy reviewer, because the phrase "sloppy reviewer" is a tautology when it comes to the press. However, the misrepresentation is so comically obvious that I merely wish to point it out, then move on - Galloway is saying that most regimes in the world, if threatened with revolution, will react with extreme violence. He is not justifying such actions, but rather broadening the net of his critique to include nations beyond a relatively small corner of the Arab world. Everyone clear? Need I underline it any further?

Galloway dares to criticise Christopher Hitchens as an "apostate", when in fact he has consistently been opposed to Saddam and in favour of getting rid of him.

But that is precisely what Galloway cannot stand. There are even large slabs of praise for Saddam in this rancid book. "Just as Stalin industrialized the Soviet Union, so on a different scale Saddam plotted Iraqís own Great Leap Forward," he says, and amazingly, this isn't a criticism. "He managed to keep his country together until 1991. Indeed, he is likely to have been the leader in history who came closest to creating a truly Iraqi national identity, and he developed Iraq and the living, health, social and education standards of his own people."

Hari would be well-advised to consult Hitchens' 1991 writings if he thinks the latter has been "consistently" in favour of regime-change. He adamantly, and eloquently, opposed the first Gulf War, and was even vague on the most recent Gulf War until late 2002, telling Salon that he did not support an invasion of Iraq, although he did support a "confrontation". But when Hari claims that Galloway's comparison of Hussein with Stalin "isn't a criticism", I feel bound to inform you that once again he s mangling his quotes. Saddam, says Galloway, resembles Stalin inasmuchas

"Both were determined to industrialize their countries, whatever the cost. Both had chips on ther shoulders. Both built police states believing the ends justified the means. Both ruthlessly suppressed all tendencies toward the break-up of their country, believing in a strong central authority (themselves) ... And, of course, both could be murderous in pursuit of their goals". (Page 111).

The next part of Hari's quote comes on Page 128, where Galloway notes that Saddam:

"[D]eveloped Iraq and the living, health, social and educational standards of his people. But the brutality of his regime and the sheer lack of democracy meant tha he could in the end be isolated and defeated."

Hari, suffice to say, does not include the last sentence. Nor does he note the sentence, "Stalin gave his factional opponents a show-trial and then killed them. Saddam just killed them." (Page 111). What an apologist! Hari proceeds:

Perhaps the most obscene statement of all come when Galloway libels the Arabs he claims to love. "A majority of Arabs and Muslims [believe] the good Saddam did was more important than the many debits."

That's from Page 129. I better add that Galloway's final sentence on that subject is "For them, in the land of the blind the one-eyed mand is king". This is not an unusual judgment. Take this , for example:

Hussein is also one of the few Arab leaders to have been able to stand up to the West on a regular basis, asserting Iraqi and Arab independence from Western interests and power. This, rather than the brutal repression of his own people, has become the point upon which many Arabs and Muslims have focused the most. In a region which has had few powerful leaders to whom people could point with pride, Saddam Hussein has become something of a folk hero. As poor of a hero as he is, the lack of any better candidates has assured him a position of respect and honor for Arabs and Muslims for generations to come.

Or consider the fact that most Arabs told pollsters , before the assault on Iraq, that a US invasion would bring less democracy. I am not endorsing such views, any more than Galloway is, but it is a simple matter of fact that most of the Arab world feels this way.

"Not odd of God, the goyim annoy 'im."

Hari is also incensed at Galloway's attitude to Israel. Unsurprisingly, the views he adduces are not those to be located in the book. For instance:

Galloway is too cowardly to explicitly oppose a two-state solution, but his wild rhetoric suggests he seeks the very opposite of peace - the destruction of Israel itself, an impossible, loathsome aspiration that is condemning both Palestinians and Israelis to eternal war. For example, he describes the whole of Israel - not just the illegal outposts on the Occupied Territories - as "the West's settler-state sentinel"; how could such a state ever be acceptable? How could it ever deserve to exist? He never mentions the ideal of two states in this book - not once.

Galloway won't say he opposes the two-state solution, but he must mean it. And why? Because he describes Israel, accurately, as "the West's settler-state sentinel". He could have done better than this, actually. One propagandist for British imperialism described Israel as "a loyal little Jewish Ulster" . (Coming from Northern Ireland, I can only say that this rings a bell or two.) How could such a state be acceptable? Hari seems oblivious to the fact that most Palestinians also think of Israel in such terms, yet support a two-state solution. Still, since I'm not "cowardly", I'd just like to affirm my opposition to a two-state solution and indicate that Israel is emphatically not acceptable in its present form. And I will just note in passing that Galloway does, in fact, mention "the ideal of two states" in his book (Page 34) - once.

Hari continues that Galloway "even skirts very close to praising the tactic of suicide bombing". How close? He says that

"Saddam's endless protestations of fidelity to the Palestinian cause were sincere and, as the families of the martyred and wounded know, he put Iraq's money where his mouth was."

How this syllogism is supposed to work, I have no idea. Hari continues:

Galloway pointedly evades the main reasons why the state of Israel was created - or the 800,000 Jews ethnically cleansed from Arab countries in the years that followed.

Hari combines two outlandish assertions in a single sentence, then. Galloway, in fact, does discuss why Zionists set out to create Israel. On Page 31, he specifically tags European anti-Semitism as the culprit. He also notes that anti-Semites like Arthur Balfour had reasons to do with imperial prerogatives in supporting the existence of a "Jewish Homeland". (Hari presumably wants Galloway to say that the Holocaust is the reason why Israel was created. It may in fact be the reason why Israel gained the support of Jews worldwide, but it is not the reason Israel was created. The movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine was up and running long before the 1930s, and in fact the Zionist Federation of Germany sought to take advantage of Hitler's anti-Semitism, entreating him to help them build the Jewish state outside Europe). The second outlandish assertion is that 800,000 Jews were "ethnically cleansed" from Arab countries after 1948. Only the most ardent Zionists actually proclaim this to be the case. The Sephardic Jews of Arab countries migrated to Israel in waves , doubtless because of Arab repression and discrimination in many cases. (Click here for instance.)

Further, and more importantly, why does this count as "the other side"? Are Palestinians responsible for this? Is Galloway obliged to stipulate, every time he expresses support for the Palestinians or denounces Israel's actions, that he also has enormous sympathy for the plight of Sephardic Jews and the hardships they endured in the Arab world? Could we not take this axiomatic and move on?

Hari issues, suffice to say, a profusion of inaccurate and incredible charges against Galloway. He accuses him of wanting to see global capitalism replaced by "a proliferation of neo-Stalinist dictators". Unsurprisingly, Hari keeps the evidence on that one to himself. He avers:

Lawrence stood with Arab tyrants too, arguing that Arabs were too stupid and culturally backward to govern themselves, and were temperamentally suited to "strong men". So does Galloway.

Strange to relate, Galloway spends much of his book attacking racist notions about the Arabs, arguing that they are perfectly capable of governing themselves without the help of Western bombs, and attacking the Arab regimes, including Saddam Hussein's. But in Hari's world... and the sad thing is, he's not the only one.