PD CHAIR'S SPEECH TO OXFORD UNION

"I am not a pacifist. In fact I am probably one of the few people in this room who has fired an AK 47. But I have seen enough of what war does - and does not - achieve, to speak for this motion.

I am not going to talk about morality. I’m going to talk facts…six practical reasons why this house should not fight for Queen and country.

100 years ago 80% of those killed in war were combatants, 20% were civilians. Today that ratio has reversed.

Look at Darfur, where a few thousand government forces and Janjaweed militia have killed between 200,000 and 400,000 civilians.

If you’re thinking, “Yes but that’s a different situation than the one western troops face”, then look at what has happened in Iraq. By the most conservative and careful tally, some ten to twelve and a half thousand civilians – many of them women and children - have been killed by US-led Coalition forces since the invasion in 2003, as compared to 4,251 Coalition troops. The direct contribution of the US military to the civilian toll recorded by Iraq Body Count stands at around one eighth of the current total of nearly 90,000 documented violent deaths.

More US military veterans have been committing suicide than US soldiers have been dying in Iraq. At least 6,256 US veterans took their lives in 2005 alone, according to figures from CBS News.

Official British figures show a different picture: that at least 23 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans had committed suicide from 2003 to the end of 2006. But numbers for reservists are not known, and suicide usually happens many years after war. Falklands war veterans' groups estimate that 300 men committed suicide due to the 1982 conflict compared with the 258 killed in action.

Combat Stress, a charity that assists UK veterans with mental health issues, is dealing with a 27 per cent increase in GP referrals of veterans - 1,200 new cases a year. More than half of those reporting psychotic nightmares, depression and suicidal thoughts have not been granted a war pension and are, therefore, not eligible for specialist psychiatric help.

The 1990s witnessed a striking change: for the first time more wars ended by negotiated settlement (42) than by military victory (23). This started a trend that accelerated in the new millennium. Between 2000 and 2005, 17 conflicts ended in negotiated settlements; just four ended in military victory.

The evidence must be overwhelming, because the Pentagon is beginning to recognise it. In December last year, a man bit a dog in the US. Not just any man, and not just any dog. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates decried the vast disproportion between America's annual investment in the Pentagon - something like $700 billion - and what is spent on the State Department - about $35 billion. That's less, Gates said, than the Defence Department spends on healthcare. The total number of foreign service officers is about 6,600 - which is less, Gates said, than the number of military personnel serving on one aircraft carrier strike group. The Secretary of Defence identified himself as the man biting the dog when he called for "a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security - diplomacy, strategic
communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development."

Last time I did the sums, the amount that the UK Government devoted to conflict prevention and conflict resolution was minute compared to amounts spent on military intervention. The conflict resolution Joint Pools budget, plus the overall peace-keeping and enforcement budget, came to less than £600 million per annum; in other words, less than2% of what we were then spending on military measures. The percentage would be even lower now.

So far, (as of 5th February) the war in Iraq has cost the US taxpayer $491 BILLION dollars.

That is
$275 million per day
$4,100 per household.

We must compare this to the costs of building international security in other ways. In the year 2000, world leaders estimated that it would require between 25billion and 35billion US dollars annually to raise levels of health and welfare in Africa to Western standards. UNESCO estimate that all the world’s children could be educated if we were to spend 7 billion dollars per annum for ten years. Clean water and sanitation could be provided for everyone in the world for 9 billion dollars annually.

No. The use of force increases terrorism.

In January 2003 I visited Iraq as part of a delegation seeking methods by which war could be avoided. After discussions with Tariq Aziz (deputy prime minister), Naji Sabri (foreign minister), and Omer Rashid (oil minister) among others, proposals were developed through conversations with specialists in Washington and London, and presented to the UK Prime Minister in February 2003. Too late.

But any carpet seller on the street would tell you of the blood-letting that would take place immediately upon a US/UK military intervention. After two decades of Saddam’s tyranny, so many people were itching to settle personal scores and everyone warned of the internal bloodbath to be expected if an invasion took place.

Why then did we not have a post-invasion plan in place?

What precisely were the intelligence community doing?

Why was the catastrophe of Fallujah allowed to develop?

Al Fallujah in January 2003 was not hostile to American-led efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Saddam’s call to rise up against the invasion was formally rejected by the city authorities. There were no reports of foreign insurgents in the city.

But less than two years later, after a series of blunders and the use of overwhelming military force, the Coalition was battling with an estimated 6,000 insurgents in Fallujah. In November 2004 American forces – the so-called liberators - actually destroyed Fallujah, killing hundreds if not thousands of the civilians they were pledged to protect.

Here is U.S. Army Col. Douglas A. Macgregor:

“Most of the generals and politicians did not think through the consequences of compelling American soldiers with no knowledge of Arabic or Arab culture to implement intrusive measures inside an Islamic society. We arrested people in front of their families, dragging them away in handcuffs with bags over their heads, and then provided no information to the families of those we incarcerated. In the end, our soldiers killed, maimed and incarcerated thousands of Arabs, 90 percent of whom were not the enemy. But they are now.”

No. Non-violence works better.

Recent research compared the outcomes of 285 non-violent and violent campaigns to resist dictatorship in the 20th century and found that “major non-violent campaigns have achieved success 55% of the time, compared to 28.4% for violent resistance campaigns.”

Just look at what the mounting power of civilian-based action over the past 70 years has achieved:

• the Indian Independence Movement, whereby Gandhi’s campaign of non-violent action ousted the British from India
• the US Civil Rights Movement
• the Polish Solidarity movement of the 1980s that ended Soviet control of Poland;
• the Philippines – dictator Marcos overthrown in 1986
• the non-violent movement that ousted the Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, in 1987;
• the collapse of Communist governments all over eastern Europe in the ‘Velvet Revolution’
• the student-led movement that non-violently ousted Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic in 2000;
• the demise of Mongolia’s authoritarian system in 1990 through mass civilian organisation
• South Africa: the 600 civic organisations that forced Botha from power, and avoided civil war enabling Mandela and De Klerk to end Apartheid
• the Rose Revolution in Georgia, supported by civic resistance movement Kmara.
• the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, supported by Pora.

I offer this house these six powerful, factual, practical reasons not to fight for Queen and country.

I also offer a practical alternative. You can become a Champion of one of the ‘Unarmed Heroes’ who are brave enough to oppose violence and killing without the use of force, in Iraq, Kenya, Colombia and the Congo through Peace Direct.

It could only make sense to fight for Queen and country if there was a defined threat out there, and if by fighting we could repel it (keep the enemy from our shores). But it is becoming increasingly clear that the main threats we face today are not from outside but from within. It is our own profligate lifestyles that are causing the global catastrophes (climate change, resource depletion, poverty, etc.) that endanger human life and civilisation. Currently Britain is a very large part of the problem, and a very tiny part of the solution. So, to save "Queen and country" we need to devote our resources to transforming British society and changing the way people think and behave. For more on sustainable security, please see the website of Oxford Research Group (founded by Scilla in 1982) for their work on the real threats to our security. "