Politics
Royal British Legion celebrates universally condemned Iraq war
The Royal British Legion (RBL) have announced an Iraq War ’15 years on’ memorial event. The veterans charity, which is backed by major global arms firms, said the event would be held in Staffordshire in May 2025 at the National Arboretum.
The Arboretum is a national site for military remembrance, and is known for partnering with military-linked firms.
The Legion’s press release says:
We will remember the lives lost and those affected and pay tribute to the professionalism and dedication of the men and women who served, from the initial invasion to the crucial rebuilding of Iraqi institutions and infrastructure.
That last little bit is particularly deceptive. It makes Iraq sound like a humanitarian mission, rather than a war crime-riddled heist.
Iraq denials don’t hold water
In fact, one Iraq veteran told the Canary that the RBL’s claim was flat wrong:
When I was on Telic one [the Iraq invasion] there was a planned campaign of arresting anyone that had membership of the Ba’ath party (this was after the government had fell). In effect teachers, dentists, doctors, or anyone with a skilled job, had to be members of the party under the old regime, or they wouldn’t have been allowed to work.
In effect, anyone that knew how to do something in society was removed, and when we questioned this on the ground, we were told that this policy had come from the very top (Downing Street)
So it wasn’t just the military campaign it was also the removal of all people that ran Iraqi society. At the same time the army was pretty much made redundant.
The institutions and infrastructure wouldn’t have needed building up or repairing without this.
When we asked the RBL about their links to corporate sponsors, they told us:
The RBL Iraq 15 event will not have any corporate sponsors.
Which certainly doesn’t clear up the issue of their corporate sponsors as an organisation. And, when we asked the Iraq veteran about the Legion’s links to arms firms, he told us:
Yes the RBL are basically partnering with the arms business, which surely must be against the principles of when the organisation started.
The truth is that the Iraq War was illegal and killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people. The war destabilised the entire Middle East region, leaving a lasting impact on those who carried it out. By all measures, it was an unmitigated disaster. Yet, bizarrely, figures like Trump’s secretary of state Marco Rubio are clamouring to revive colonialism. Regime change in Iraq clearly taught them that war is profitable for the West.
In the pockets of Big Death
Since the ousting of the pre-2003 government, Iraq has become a lucrative cash cow for certain players, including global arms firms — what I prefer to call Big Death. Welcome to the military charity-industrial complex.
What makes the Iraq event and comments from the Royal British Legion striking is that both the legion and the National Arboretum proudly state their connections to the global killing business.
BAE Systems is a major partner of the RBL — to the tune of £400,000. The Arboretum’s website names Amey, Key Systems, Briggs Equipment and Jaguar Land Rover among its partners and supporters. All of these firms make profit from war and global instability.
The press and RBL did not even attempt to reflect these galling truths in their coverage of the event.
Flattening Iraq: literally and ideologically
Instead, the Mirror led with stories about veterans horribly wounded in the war — yep veterans, not the countless Iraqis killed as a result of the war.
Certainly, these are awful and harrowing tales involving terrible injuries. But the point, my friends, is that the choice to focus on individual stories is deeply political.
In 2018 Professor Paul Dixon wrote a report called Warrior Nation: War, militarisation and British democracy. Dixon recently published a much-expanded book on the same issue.
In his original report, Dixon identified many different tactics used by pro-war groups and individuals to de-politicise and flatten discussions about war. One of these is ‘personalisation”.
As Dixon has it:
The personalisation of war refers to the focus on human stories and the plight of the troops. This may serve militarists well in ‘depoliticising’ the war (which is, ironically, to conceal the highly political motivations of those behind the war) diverting attention from wider questions as to why it was necessary to fight these wars.
He adds:
Personalisation can be combined with deflection in which opposition to the war is presented
as opposition to military personnel, militaristic ideals and the nation. War becomes ‘a fight to
save our own soldiers… rather than as a struggle for policy goals external to the military.’
These military elites, Dixon argues:
[often] claim to be non-political, [but] their history suggests a close relationship with the political right, sympathy for monarchy and imperialism, and hostility to liberalism, socialism, feminism and democracy.
The British military produces far-right ideologues? Quelle surprise.
Britain’s war machine
It might seem odd that major arms firms and the powerful UK military charities are so closely linked. But, this is what it has always been.
You could read about the historical links between the Legion and the military establishment in my second book Veteranhood. Except you can’t. Why? Because an Israeli AI bro bought the publishing house and now myself and load of my fellow authors are boycotting our own work and giving any future royalties to Palestinian causes.
And if you want to understand militarism in the UK and globally — and how it’s enmeshed with global capitalism — one of the best places to start is by scrutinising military charities (which are themselves big firms) in bed with the war trade.
Because underneath the rhetoric about remembrance, sacrifice, and courage you’ll find that what arms firms and these big charities really do is re-write, obscure, and mythologise as noble what is, in fact, the UK’s violent, counter-productive, imperialist foreign policy. Lipstick on the pig, if you like? They limit the space to critique those policies, to make them harder to challenge and to conflate criticism with disrespect for ‘the troops’.
The real face of that war is much less marketable, as another Iraq veteran told us:
I’m 38 now. I had only just turned 20 when i deployed, I redeploy most nights. Waking my partner up – kicking & screaming. You come home, but bits of it stay with you — and your family carries it too.
He pointed out the lack of accountability too:
Chilcot told us what went wrong, but nothing really changed at the top. Blair is still a free man. If remembrance means anything, it should mean telling the truth, rather than white washing the nations war crimes.
But the truth is, when you see and hear about the dead and wounded in wars like Iraq, the real disrespect lies in failing to criticise, probe, and challenge the ugly consequences of war.
Featured image via Peter Kennard and Cat Picton-Phillipps