Let's Bomb Iraq Into A Democracy

Mr Bush goes for the kill

Online commentary: There is a "moral case" for taking out Saddam. But what about everybody else?

Terry Jones
Sunday March 9, 2003

Mr. Bush is right, Saddam Hussein is a nasty man and nobody I know has the least objection to Mr. Bush killing him. It's just the way he proposes doing it that worries me. Dropping 3000 bombs in 48 hours on Baghdad is going to kill a lot of other people who, as far as I am aware, are not nasty at all.

That's the bit of the 'moral' argument I don't follow. It's a bit like the police saying they know a murderer comes from the south of England so they are going to execute everybody in Epsom.

Then again why does Mr. Bush need to drop 3000 bombs on Saddam Hussein? I would have thought one would have been enough to take him out, if he knows where Saddam is. And if he doesn't know where he is, what on earth is the moral justification for dropping any bombs at all? Doesn't Mr. Bush realise they are dangerous things and tend to kill people when they land?

Or does Mr Bush simply enjoy the idea of taking out a lot of Iraqis? I appreciate Mr. Bush's argument that because Saddam Hussein has refused to take any notice of the UN, Mr. Bush should teach him a lesson by dropping a lot of bombs on him. But now he's telling us that if the UN won't give him permission to do it, he's jolly well going to drop a lot of bombs on Saddam anyway. In which case won't Mr. Bush be guilty of the same thing he's accusing Saddam Hussein of? Apparently not because, according to the President's advisers, if the United Nations won't give him permission to drop a lot of bombs on Saddam Hussein, it will have ceased to be a Responsible World Organization and therefore he doesn't need to take any notice of it.

But doesn't the same thing go for Saddam Hussein? If the United Nations ceases to be a Responsible World Organization how can the fact that Saddam Hussein has refused to take any notice of it be something so evil that it justifies dropping bombs on the poor people living under his heel?

And that's another thing - everyone seems to be very certain that dropping a lot of bombs on Baghdad will get rid of Saddam Hussein. But will it? - any more than devastating Afghanistan (and killing maybe 20,000 people) got rid of Al-Qaeda? A recent UN report reckons that if and when the US starts bombing as many as 100,000 Iraqis will die.

I can't really believe that the President of the United States gets his rocks off by having people killed. That's more like Saddam Hussein.

And yet it worries me that Mr. Bush says that one of the reasons he wants to kill a lot of Iraqis is because Saddam Hussein has also been killing them. Is there some sort of rivalry here?

Back in 1988 Saddam killed several thousand at once, in the town of Halabjah. Since then he's been carrying on the good work, but on a piecemeal basis. In fact, for all I know, since his 1988 spree, he may not have killed any more of his own citizens than George W. Bush did as Governor of Texas. When Mr. Bush became Governor in 1995, the average number of executions per year was 7.6. Mr. Bush succeeded in quadrupling this to a magnificent 31.6 per year. He must have had the terrible chore of personally signing over 150 death warrants while he was Governor. I suppose the advantage of killing Iraqis is that you don't have to sign a piece of paper for every one of them. Just one quick scribble and - bingo! You can kill a hundred thousand and no questions asked! What's more, nobody is going to quibble about some of them being mentally retarded or juveniles, which is what happened to George W. Bush when he was Governor of Texas.

I'm not saying that George W. Bush shouldn't be allowed to kill as many people as he wants. After all he is the unelected leader of the most powerful country on earth, so if he can't do anything he likes, who can?

And, in the years to come, we can confidently look forward to a lot more killing all over the world - certainly a lot more than ever Saddam Hussein managed in his own country.

· Terry Jones writes regularly for The Observer. To all those readers who have written in to ask if this Terry Jones had anything to do with Monty Python, the answer is yes.