If Trump is re-elected in November, will we be able to absolve the Americans this time?
Like all snobs, we’ve taken the view that the current president does not really represent US values, writes Robert Fisk
At some point in the next two months, we are going to have to decide whether to absolve the American people if they re-elect Donald Trump. There was a time in 2016 – although Michael Moore was already describing the candidate as a “wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full-time sociopath” – when we might have excused the US electorate if it turned out that they had made a mistake the first time around.
Even Democrats were still braying stupidly after the election that perhaps Trump would become “presidential”. But those excuses are no longer available.
For some nations, it doesn’t matter. Ask the Arabs. It’s an odd phenomenon that when Arabs are forced to vote for their local tyrant in totally fraudulent elections, we forgive them for their choice on the grounds that the polls are a farce or that they have no alternative, or because – let us speak frankly – they are only the Arab “masses” and we westerners far prefer to deal with their masters on the basis of whether those dictators do what we want them to do. It’s even more bizarre that the higher the fake election percentage dreamed up by the autocrats – and the more they are “onside” – the more we acknowledge their power, and go along with what they say.
Thus after Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi – whose security services had killed thousands of Egyptians, imprisoned tens of thousands more and destroyed free speech – “won” the 2018 Egyptian presidential election with 97 per cent of the vote, Trump called Sisi on the phone to offer “sincere congratulations”. A year later, he was calling Sisi his “favourite dictator”. But when poor old Alexander Lukashenko boasted a mere 80.1 per cent of the presidential vote in Belarus this month, Trump talked of a “terrible situation” in the country.
This goes on and on. No one questions the affection of Jordanians for their plucky little King Abdullah – although no one has ever asked Jordanians to vote in a monarchical (or even presidential) election. Anyway, we know what the results would be. As for the old Shah of Iran, he didn’t need to win non-existent elections after Jimmy Carter notoriously spoke of “the respect and the admiration and the love which your people give to you” when he dined with the Shah in Tehran in 1977. This was almost Trumpian in its unreality. It was a bit much, needless to say, when Saddam Hussein won a 2002 referendum with 100 per cent of the vote – after all, we were already setting him up as the Arab Hitler for the following year’s invasion.
But in 2014, Assad claimed an 88.7 per cent presidential election victory, which Russia approved – charitably acknowledging than an awful lot of Syrians could not vote because of the civil war – and for which Assad was congratulated by none other than Alexander Lukashenko and by Afghanistan (whose fake presidential elections brought forth Barack Obama’s congratulations for Hamid Karzai in 2009). Trump’s “advisers” managed to dissuade him from also congratulating Assad.
So when it comes to the citizens of these countries, we don’t really take them into account. We know what their votes are worth. That’s why, so conscious are we of the oppressive nature of their Arab regimes that when we are about to bomb them, we go to great lengths to assure the Arabs who live in the Middle East that we are not actually against them – only their dictators. Of course, whenever a US president announces that he is “not against the people of Libya/Iraq/Syria” (delete as appropriate) – and merely against their tyrants – you can be sure that the millions of civilians living within their borders should take to their air raid shelters. The enormous respect, admiration and love that we feel for the Arabs when we go to war is not going to save them from our missiles. Look at Tripoli, Baghdad, Mosul, Raqqa.
In fact, Iraq provides the most potent example of why Arabs should be wary of all those American professions of affection. Of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who died most terribly under American firepower in the years following the overthrow of Saddam in 2003, many undoubtedly possessed the democratic vote specifically vouchsafed to them in the elections that followed the Anglo-American invasion. They actually did, thanks to the invasion, have a say in the future of their country. Much good did it do them once they were dead.
When it comes to the west, however, a different set of standards applies. On this day, the anniversary upon which Britain and France “drew the sword” for more-or-less democratic Poland in 1939, it’s worth recalling that despite massive violence and intimidation, Hitler never did win a majority in democratic elections in Germany – it was the Nazis’ subsequent “Enabling Act” which gave him dictatorial powers. However, no one doubted that the majority of Germans supported Hitler once the Second World War began, and so there was little sympathy for the German civilian victims of that conflict (save for folk like the Bishop of Chichester, Vera Brittain and, once, Winston Churchill). They were not absolved from Hitler’s crimes.
Interestingly, we gave the Italians an easier time, although Mussolini, after violence and intimidation, did win a majority in the 1924 elections. Perhaps because he was a buffoon and less obviously evil than Hitler – and especially because the country changed sides in 1943 – the Italians were forgiven. Mussolini, like Trump, was preposterous, wicked, wretched, ignorant, sociopathic – Moore’s words do apply here too – but was dispatched with a bullet and a ritual gas-station hanging (upside down), which somehow absolved his people. We shall necessarily avoid here all mention of fascist dictators Franco and Salazar (because they helped the Allies when Hitler was obviously going to lose). Portuguese neutrality was thus more worthwhile than Irish neutrality, which was undoubtedly supported by the people who democratically elected Eamon de Valera as their Taoiseach. But Britain wanted the old royal navy treaty ports back in 1940 and the Irish would not give them back – so Churchill did not forgive them. Nor, later, did the Americans; Ireland’s attempt to join the new United Nations was delayed.
In Europe today, I suppose Hungary’s Orban – a bit of a buffoon but autocratic nonetheless – comes closest to Mussolini, although no one challenges the right-wing populist results of Hungary’s elections, even though its conduct was flawed. New legislation allows Orban to rule by decree. It’s the sort of sleight-of-hand we might have expected to see in the 1930s. Poland’s elections have a better track record, albeit with xenophobic election campaigns, and so there’s not much we can do to change the undemocratic aspects of its results. But these are eastern (or central) European countries and we probably still have a guilty conscience for leaving them – especially Poland – to endure Russia’s hegemony for more than four decades.
When the UK voted to leave the EU, we could claim – with very good reason – that the electorate had been bamboozled, lied to, indeed that the very referendum was ill-constructed. Many Europeans – and an awful lot of Britons – regarded this as an aberration. Last year’s general election changed everything, however. There could be no more washing-of-hands on Britain’s behalf. Its people could no longer be absolved of their sins. Claiming that the UK’s retreat from Europe merely reflected its retreat from empire – Palestine, India, perhaps the last hurrah at Suez – was no longer enough to forgive its people for their folly.
Where does this leave America? We’ve all more or less decided to hold our breath until November on the grounds that this will be the country’s moment to turn around, regain its old prestige, and for its Democratic victors to say “sorry” to us all for the insane Trump years. Like all snobs, we’ve taken the view that Trump did not really represent American values – any more than the Arab dictators reflect the views of their people. In fact, we’ve rather treated the United States as if it really was a tyranny, its demented president a cross between the glitz of Mohammad bin Salman and the brain-cracked Gaddafi. My colleague Patrick Cockburn has slyly spotted the parallels with Saddam.
We’ve hoped and prayed and fooled ourselves into believing this was only a temporary autocracy, a deviation, an old and reliable friend suffering from a serious but ultimately curable mental illness. Yet the more I watch the Democratic elite lining up behind the deeply uninspiring Joe Biden, tiptoeing between condemnation and cliche – who would believe we would hear the old man talking to his supporters this week about “healing” and “moving forward”? – the more I wonder how we will view Americans if the Trump years become the Trump era; or if his dreadful, ambitious family transform themselves into the Trump Caliphate. Certainly, the old Stalinist and Iron Curtain language about imperialism and its “running dogs” will re-emerge in new form.
How will we react if the line is crossed, if the America we felt we could always ultimately rely on – when they’ve straightened out their little Trump misadventure – turns into the nation we can never trust?