OF NAOST AND AOST

From the poem ‘Arabia‘, “He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia / They have stolen his wits away.” Or have they (?) - judge for yourself.

‘Those who have lived among the Arabs discover that granite hard-headedness coexists with romantic sensibilities in about the same proportions as we find, say, in Scotland. The paradox is vivid and defies explanation.’
 - Mark Allen.

“Who gave Alex Salmond the right to speak for Scottish soldiers (?),” thunders the Hen Broon of Scottish political journalism, Alan Cochrane. Simple answer: the people of Scotland. He is the First Minister of our government, isn’t he? Has nobody let Mr Cochrane know? Mr Salmond claims that Scottish soldiers - across the spectrum - embody the thoughts and feelings of all Scots. Or doesn’t the play ‘Black Watch’, for example, speak for anybody?

Somebody badly needed to address ‘Iraq‘, given the narrative and credentials of those who have spoken for Scotland hitherto; such as John Reid who once boasted of knowing the IRA songbook from cover to cover. Scotland? Iraq has proved to be the defining issue in the political discourse across the globe, after all. And it has changed Scottish politics, perhaps for ever. It’s the least of it, but in its Imperial deceits and mendacity, ‘Iraq’ has made the writer a Nationalist.

Alex Salmond is often accused of hubris. Well, better a bit of that than the cringe to which our nation has been subjected for so long. Previous Scottish “spokesmen” on Iraq have included Tony Lynton Blair and his boss George Walker Bush. Others will seek to speak for us in the future; more of them later. And what exactly were their credentials? Let‘s have a look at Blair‘s performance for starters.

‘Shock and awe’ was the Coalition’s chosen tactic with Jeffersonian democracy to emerge as soon as we entered through Assassin’s Gate into Baghdad itself. Prior to that, and Blair’s first failure, was to be so absorbed by his favourite ploy - his overweaning belief that he is always right - Not An Obvious Scottish Trait (NAOST). When that policy proved less than successful he produced his disastrous dossiers, central to his plan to convince those most opposed to the war. Although written by a man who can play the bagpipes, Alastair Campbell, it was NAOST again. For the sexy dossiers went down like a burst tartan balloon. Then the biggest mistake of all - making the WMD the “casus belli” and their discovery the litmus test. You got it, and what your granny meant when she warned of ‘baskets and eggs’ therein.….

And so we come to the man with supposed Perthshire ancestry, George Walker Bush, not so much “granite hard-headed” as empty-heided. Since my Grandfather whose name I bear came from Perth (and was in the Black Watch, incidentally), I live with the dreadful thought that we might be related. What’s Dubbya saying now? He‘s “moving on” as Blair would say and he’s saying that the “world is a safer place“, because of the criminal invasion and the removal of the bad guy. But is he flying in the face of the facts? - NAOST again. Now one should never "misunderestimate" George - as he once put it - anent issues such as these. However, and as far as I know, the last objective attempt to calibrate whether or not the "world is a safer place" was carried out by Bergen and Cruikshanks (B&C) last year. Au contraire, they found that danger globally had increased seven-fold as triggered by the invasion and occupation. Could George W. just be wrong, I wonder?

AOST - AN OBVIOUS SCOTTISH TRAIT enters both our thought processes and narrative here.

When I lived and worked in Baghdad (1984-87) I took great interest in epidemiological work focused on water supply systems for which I had major responsibility across the Central Region of Iraq now known as the Sunni triangle. Epidemiology, the study of occurrence, distribution and control of diseases in populations, has much in common and overlaps with death-by-conflict studies such as B&C's. I recall, in particular, when Donald Rumsfeld came to town in 1984 to exchange data on bubonic plague and monkey gland tissues with Saddam. This included hardware, the real deal as they say. "Stanley", as we called him, was our pal at that time. "Stan" also did some practice work with gas at Halabja involving the Kurds, although the USA were still denying that it was Stanley's fault six months after the rest of the world had formed that very conclusion. - NAOST. By 1991 his stockpiles had degraded and were thus useless (true) although our “Scottish” spokesmen, George Walker Bush and Tony Lynton Blair, were still saying as late as 2003 that they formed an integral part of his larger WMD ordnance stockpile (untrue).

So George W's latest judgement that the world is a safer place should be treated with some circumspection - AOST. As Orwell (and he lived in East Kilbride after all) said words especially when uttered by politicians are often just "a bag of wind". In a little over nine months Senator John Mc(sic)Cain, who claims his great, great, great granny came from Scrabster (?), may occupy the Oval Office. He is constantly depicted as a "war hero". Can anybody explain to me how it is that dropping bombs from 35,000 feet on innocents in Vietnam, not to mention Laos and Cambodia which were neutral at the time (May1969 to March 1970), is "heroic"? Just thought I'd ask.

But back to George W. who once declaimed: "Another Senator, Bill First, has joined us..... He married a Texas girl. I want you to know that Karyn is with us today - a West Texas girl just like me" - Nashville, Tennessee, May 2004. NAOST or AOST? I’m not sure. If I were Bergen and Cruikshanks, I'd be putting the fieldwork in place now for use in the Tehran area, just a few short miles across the desert from Baghdad. And if I were Macavity Brown..... ...but I'm glad I'm not.

When in Iraq, I’d suggest, with due modesty, NAOST morphed into AOST since I embodied that Scottish tradition of sending our engineers to far flung lands - “Harnessing the forces of nature for the benefit of mankind“, the Institution of Civil Engineers used to term it. Very AOST indeed. And the money was good - AOST again.

So I’m Glad Alex Salmond spoke for Scotland last week not least and because Macavity Brown is a fully paid up member of the NAOST tendency as is wee Des Browne who is in the NAOST cadet corps. My hope is that Alex will do so again and when he does that we will listen and applaud. That is if we are ever to exit (with even a scintilla of honour), the Land of the Two Rivers, which I loved so much. Shakran in anticipation, Alex.

Dedicated to my Iraqi friend ‘William’ who lived and died there.

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