What's happened to Iraq?

For a moment I thought something was going wrong with the plan to oust President Slobodan Milosovic by dropping bombs on his people. Instead of all the Serb militias slinking back home with their tails between their legs immediately the first high explosives fell from the sky, they stepped up their campaign to boot out all the Albanians.

Then I realised that what appears to be a fiasco perpetrated by imbeciles is in fact a brilliant master plan, devised no doubt by the man history will lionise as the most astute and outstanding statesman of our time, Defence Secretary George Robertson.

He and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook will no doubt be remembered for formulating the groundbreaking New Labour foreign policy of 'cowardly infantile reductionism'.

Following the American lead as usual, the policy goes something like this: pick a world leader, preferably one who has not got the capacity to retaliate, describe him as 'a naughty, naughty boy who needs a good spank' and then drop bombs on the population of the country he leads.

Following on with the NATO analogy that world affairs can be handled in the same way a stern matron would govern a nursery, I am tempted to state in my most schoolmasterly voice: "Bill, Tony, Robin and George! Just look at what you have done now."

If it wasn't for the vast tide of human misery unleashed by the bombing missions the situation would be laughable.

But I still can't understand if, as has become apparent, the solution to the Kosovo crisis was all along to have the Albanians come and live in Western Europe, why NATO leaders didn't say so in the first place.

I wouldn't mind betting that half the desperately poor native population of Albania are packing their bags and tearing up their identity cards at this moment in order to join the mass exodus of Kosovo Albanian refugees to the rich part of the world.

It just goes to show how difficult it is to sort out foreign affairs. Take the BBC for instance, only two days into the war and all their reporters completely forgot what job they were supposed to do.

Instead of presenting an accurate and balanced report of what was going on, they immediately joined the NATO forces as public relations shock troops and last time I looked at the news, Kate Adie was presenting thoughtful, critical and objective reports from inside a NATO warplane as it guided the bombers in.

And the leader of Scottish Nationalist Party Alex Salmond was completely confused.

In a statement made last week he mistakenly thought he was just stating the blindingly obvious by pointing out that NATO's warmaking policy was crassly stupid, unnecessarily bellicose, and a demonstrable failure.

But no, Foreign Secretary Mr Cook had to point out to his fellow countryman that what Mr Salmond was actually doing was singing the praises of Milosovic and helping his militias to murder Albanians.

But the more I examine the events, the less I understand. I thought we were still at war with Iraq? What has happened there? Are we still bombing Iraq or have we stopped? If so, when are we going to start again?

Without so much as a by-your-leave, those poor people in Iraq must have awoken one morning to find the skies completely empty of our brave boys dropping bombs on their heads.

It is completely irresponsible on behalf of Britain and America. Those wretched Arabs suffering under the yoke of the evil Slobodan Hussain were relying on those bombs.

Just a few more years of high explosives and child-murdering sanctions would have seen the end of the evil man with the moustache and his replacement by another man with a moustache.

But now the jealous Iraqis have been unceremoniously dumped in favour of those lucky Kosovan Albanians who are now enjoying the obvious benefits of our fickle NATO war machine.

Perhaps if our legendary unbiased BBC news reporters can tear themselves away from the gunsights of NATO warplanes, they might want to go to Baghdad where I imagine there are mass demonstrations of Iraqis demanding to be bombed and starved by NATO.

That's the trouble with American-led world peace and humanitarian missions, there just aren't enough bombs to help everyone.

I'm probably wrong but I always thought that killing for peace was akin to fornicating for chastity.

Or perhaps it's just a case of violence must be eradicated, kill all the violent people you know.

l The views of this column are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the newspaper.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.