Paul Thomas: A callous indifference to the people of Iraq

The most surprising news of the week was that a successful election took place in Iraq.

Quite a few people didn't vote out of apathy or cynicism or despair and the outcome could leave a significant chunk of the population under-represented but the same could be said of most countries' elections.

First impressions were that a majority of Iraqis took it seriously and seized the opportunity to have their say.

Beforehand, much of the reporting coming out of Iraq and the analysis from all points of the compass had predicted that ordinary Iraqis would vote with their feet and the whole process would collapse into bloody chaos.

The question here is: in how many cases was the wish father to the report?

I don't think we need to tiptoe around this.

Too much blood and treasure has been expended, too much infrastructure obliterated, too much abuse exchanged and too many tears shed for there to be any point in polite reticence.

It is pretty clear some of the critics of the Iraqi project (regime change and transition to democracy) actively want it to fail. For a variety of reasons.

Some want it to fail because they have predicted failure from the outset and have a personal - and in some cases professional - interest in being proved right.

Some want it to fail because they hate the United States, or at least George W. Bush's America.

Some want it to fail because they believe military force has no place in international affairs and if this adventure ends in disaster, it will be a fair while before an American president tries to make the world a safer place by going to war.

Some want it to fail so that images and accounts of slaughter and suffering will no longer appear on news bulletins and front pages. This could be called the Three Monkeys position (hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil) given that the slaughter and suffering which marked Saddam Hussein's reign of terror rarely passed the newsworthiness test.

All of this reasoning might have some validity but it does expose the proponents to the same charge they have levelled at the advocates and architects of war - that of callous indifference towards the Iraqi people.

Its one thing to want to see the US humbled, although I wonder if those in the West who would dearly love to see that happen have entirely thought through the likely consequences.

It is another thing to want to see Iraq plunged into a protracted civil war or consigned to another quarter century of psychopathic tyranny, whoever's fault that would be.

In his inauguration speech Bush talked a lot about freedom. Freedom, in fact, is the new weapon of mass destruction - only this time the Americans are bringing it with them rather than playing needle in the haystack.

Not surprisingly the new spin drew a cynical response. Besides, many find the notion of invading a sovereign state to depose a dictator and impose democracy just as frightening and unjustifiable as barging in to see what's cooking in their secret underground laboratories.

The Falklands War was derided as a post-imperial folly by a second-rate power, all for the sake of clinging on to a windswept rock in the South Atlantic occupied by a handful of yokels who couldn't be bothered learning Spanish.

Yet defeat precipitated the fall of Argentina's military junta which had maintained its hold on power by eliminating all opponents (and their families and friends; an estimated 30,000 Argentines simply disappeared).

It has been a bumpy ride at the best of times but 20 years on Argentina is still a democracy.

Those who blunder in with confused motives and only the easiest notion of what to do next can certainly do more harm than good but there is nothing admirable about inaction when it involves turning a blind eye to inhumanity.

We should be wary of justifying a tainted status quo in the name of order and stability or of assuming that other people don't want to be free as much as we do.

The least surprising news of the week is that the American rapper, Snoop Dogg, has been accused of rape.

Pornographers are charged with treating women as if they are objects, among other things.

The standard rap video set-up involves the rapper and his entourage partying with a heaving mass of scantily-clad women who pose and parade provocatively, just in case any male present hasn't cottoned on to his role in proceedings.

The often indecipherable lyrics don't make for pleasant reading unless you happen to be a misogynist.

It would be tempting to dismiss it as posturing by young men who have gone from the ghetto to the mansion in short order if it wasn't for the fact that harpers seem intent on living up to their pimp-gangster self-image.

Mr Dogg, for instance, has spent three years in jail on a drugs rap and another three getting out from under an accessory to murder charge.

There is nothing new in rock stars cultivating an outlaw persona or treading a fine line in their sexual swagger.

The Rolling Stones celebrated sex with minors in Stray Cat Blues and Midnight Rambler came very close to celebrating rape.

Unlike Sir Michael Jagger and friends, however, these guys seem to mean what they say.

* Paul Thomas is a Wellington author. John Roughan returns next week.