GULF WAR THREE March 2003 saw the long awaited outbreak of GULF WAR THREE. More people talked about it being an oil war rather than the opening scene for World War Three. Richard Dawkins wrote a 'mea culpa' style of lament as to why an advanced civilisation could allow itself to be run by bullies. Bush is a member of the 'Skull and Crossbones' society while Blair is a lawyer with messianic tendencies; the Robespierre of the Third Way. The 'Compassionate Bombing' of Kosovo and Serbia was perceived as a symphony in the Concert of Great Powers. The absence of major peace treaties since Gulf War One and The Collapse of Communism shows that the a 'concert of great powers' is a very discredited notion. What you got was an impromptu 'Jazz Band' of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. At that time the French president Chirac was willing to host the party. Richard Dawkins titles his article "Bin Laden's Victory". He asks how a civilisation which produces Nobel prizes and science can be so miserable when chosing those in power. This is the same lament heard about a civilisation which produced Goethe and Mach going on to pledge allegience to Kaiser Wilhelm and then Hitler. Bush and Blair both make public shows of Christianity. So did Bill Clinton. Richard Dawkins makes this clear in his article. Gulf War One lasted about eight years, and its estimated cost is up to a million lives lost by both Iran and Iraq. Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, could count on the support of both the USA and the major Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Because of Iran's oil reserves the budding Islamic Republic could buy arms on a fairly open market with important agencies in Israel and Singapore. The concert of Great Powers played a totally cynical diplomacy based on the underlying assumption that the mutual annihilation of young Iraqi and Iranian school leavers would be the ultimate benefit to Western Civilisation. Press reports of the time show the results of missile bombardment of the capital cities, Baghdad and Teheran, along with pictures of trench warfare on the Al-Fao peninsula. Both sides tried to interfere with the oil exports of the other. Kharg Island and Kuwait Port were both subject to repeated rocket attack. The war was ended in 1988, following a decision by the Ayetollah Khomeini and other Iranian leaders to halt the bloodshed and renounce Khomeini's personal war aim of achiving regime change in Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein. Hussein and Khomeini had become personal enemies after Saddam had put an end to Khomeini's exile in Kerbala, which Khomeini had been using as a base to launch tirades at the American backed Pahlavi regime in Iran. Khomeini was a legal expert. He made much of the fact that an American living in Iran might be able to run over a man's wife and escape punishment while an Iranian who ran over the dog of an American would most likely be prosecuted and punished. He also wrote popular books on halal sex including temporary marriage. To this day Islam has many converts from all races because of its liberal attitudes. After the end of the First Gulf War there were attempts to send a UN force to the border areas of Iran and Iraq to monitor the ceasefire and oversee disarmament, but these attempts were opposed by the USA. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia had backed the Iraqi regime during the first Gulf War with extensive subsidies. There seems to have been major disagreements as to whether these subsidies were gifts or loans. In August 1990, Saddam sent his army into Kuwait, and occupied the city state. The invasion was denounced by most of the world's countries and it was a disaster for hundreds of thousands of migrant workers. The plight of Palestinians workers caught up in Kuwait was catastrophic. They suffered drastic reprisals later on because of Yasser Arafat's attempts to benefit from the incident. America, with the backing of France and the UK, and token help from Syria, managed to destroy Saddam's armies around Kuwait, and force Saddam to abrogate his claim to the territory. The Americans stopped fighting in March 1991 and observed the massacres of Iraqi rebels who had wanted to oust Saddam and the Ba'ath party. In America and Europe the Second Gulf War was treated as a TV spectacle carefully managed by a league of military spokesmen, far right businessmen, and media corporations. The suppression of Shiites in the river delta area continued anabated during the 1990s while the Kurds to the North achieved some degree of autonomy, marred by the tribal infighting of their patriarchic clan leaders who seemed to love provoking allies and neighbouring governments by their constant treachery to each other and their own supporters. For sheer bloody mindedness you have to think of the way generations of Scottish chieftains tried to play off Denmark and France against England. About the same time that the Second Gulf War ended the Jugoslavian civil war started. The first shots were fired in Slovenia where the majority of energetic young people recognised Slobodan Milosevic as a leader from the same mould as Saddam Hussein, and his wife as a combination of Qiang Qing, Imelda Marcos and Margaret Thatcher, with ideas of racial purity. Small arms fire brought down a couple of army helicopters in Ljubljana, and Milosevic voluntarily gave up the most prosperous and advanced province of the former Kingdom of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes. International diplomacy refused to countenance a peace treaty with Iraq. The regime was caged, to serve some as yet unknown future purpose. In the meantime there was a series of political detonations in Georgia, Chechenya, Croatia, and Bosnia, and the post Gulf War Two peace initiative in Israel and the occupied territories claimed by both the Zionist state and its military, and also the Palestinian people who have been trying to live there ever since the British war cabinet signed up to Zionism during the First World War. Most diplomacy of the 1990s was dominated by attempts to play down serious conflagrations and massacres: Najibullah in Afghanistan, Muslims in Srebenica, victims of the militarized cocaine wars of Latin America, the mauling of Angolan, Eritrean and Ethiopian youth by expensive modern weapons, and the massacre of even more Africans with machetes and spears. Mountain ranges and watersheds have also seen bitter and long lasting conflicts including the the Caucuses, the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas. The Kashmir conflict threatens confrontation between two nuclear powers. Politically Western Civilisation has suffered a sort of moral implosion. 'Third Way' doctrines have become vogue amongst power brokers who want to allow their cronies in business unrivalled power to manipulate and exploit people. Anglo-Saxon Capitalism, with Calvinist notions of a single God who helps those who help themselves, has become a dominant ideology. Calvin's burning of Servetus showed great human vigour may be needed to enforce the supposed supremacy of God. Enlightened Christian Europe tempered the force of the military by creating the nobility of the robe: intellectuals such as Cranmer and Fermat became important in state affairs, as a counterbalance to the bloodthirsty barons. Nowadays we see the nobility of the guitar with the idolisation of pop singers. Karaoke has taken over. World leaders mime their songs to tunes written by other people. TROTSKY'S VICTORY In March 2003 assassins gunned down Zoran Dzindzic in the streets of Belgrade. Zoran had been a key agent in attempting to bring American style capitalism to the Balkans. Trotsky himself had advocated this course of events when writing about the Balkan Wars of 1911-12. Trotsky saw nationalism as a purely destructive force: a whispering Satan that could seduce socialist believers. Opponents of socialism cite Trotsky's running of the Russian civil war after 1918 as a defect of socialism, rather than necessary defence of the gains made by the workers in overthrowing a corrupt and inefficient empire. In fact the measures taken by Trotsky including the direction of labour and military conscription were and are quite normal in any modern state. David Lloyd George, the British wartime leader, had been quite prepared to sacrifice political ideals, including his own Liberal Party, in order to save the state from military defeat at the hands of the Germans. Lloyd George's program included military conscription, the direction of labour, and curtailment of the availability of strong liquor. What's more, all of these things were achieved in a democracy. Trotsky left power in the 1920s. His personal rivalry with Stalin lead to Trotsky's death at the hands of an assassin in 1941. In the meantime the Germans were getting a surprise when so many people in Russia seemed so willing to defend the odious Stalin regime. Much real opposition to the war comes from the American people themselves. Opposition has made itself known on the streets of Washington, New York and San Francisco. Communications technology has failed to be a milk cow for greedy capitalists, but it has empowered drug dealers, prostitutes, and guerrilla publishers. Global competition in satellite TV is exposing the blunders of the leaders in real time. Reports of suicide bombing in Israel and Sri Lanka expose the futility of violence and the dangers of oppression. School children in developed countries across the world have demonstrated against US Imperialism. Large demonstrations have taken place in Europe and East Asia. The Arab world has seen heavy handed repression of rather smaller demonstrations except in countries such as Syria and Jordan where activists have the option of going back to Iraq to fight there.