Thatcher: Punish crimes, don’t celebrate them

Yesterday was always going to be a bit annoying. It was Monday, it rained for a bit and Margaret Thatcher died right in the middle of it all. I kept Twitter and Facebook at arm’s length yesterday while everyone said their piece. There were the “Thatcher was a necessary feministic, economy-saving dream-come-true” people and the “Thatcher was a horrible union-busting, dictator-entertaining monster” ones, while liberals skulked around in between. All in all it was a boring, annoying Monday when something symbolic happened that everyone knew was coming. We all know what Thatcher did at home and the majority of the debate in the wake of Maggie’s death has focused on her economic record: the Miners’ Strike, the cuts, poll tax, etc. When politicians die we tend to remember them in a Hollywood biopic sort of way: a complicated individual who had to make some tough decisions. “Was she right to do this? Find out in theatres Friday!” But instead of forgiving leaders in death, we should be using their legacies to improve our futures. Take Thatcher. In the West, she was famously good friends with US President Ronald Reagan. Tories won’t see any harm in that, both leaders represented the pinnacle of the neo-liberal good times. And as a bonus, they had that weird sexual tension that I imagine (I wasn’t alive until 1988) was probably like watching two ancient singletons trying to flirt at a Christmas do. Pin-striped libertarians love all that. Through direct and indirect support, Thatcher backed Reagan’s imperialist wars in Latin America – wars that turned the entire continent into a prison for the benefit of US corporations and geo-political and economic self-interests. Reagan’s moral duplicity went so far he even called the Contras – Nicaragua’s socialist-slaying militias – “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers.” It’s the perfect indictment of every single hypocrisy in US foreign policy but old Ronald didn’t mean it like that. Elsewhere, Thatcher made stranger friends. She used to have General Augusto Pinochet round for afternoon tea. A video of one such meeting shows her slavering over the Latin American fascist, saying: “We all know you brought democracy to Chile.” Our saintly prime minister protected the Khmer Rouge’s seat in the United Nations – after they had killed millions of Cambodians – and even sent the good old boys in the SAS to train them. She called Indonesian dictator General Suharto– responsible for the deaths of one million people in East Timor - “one of our very best and most valuable friends.” Like with Reagan, this went beyond diplomatic support. She saved Pinochet from justice and sold fighter jets to drop bombs on innocent civilians in East Timor. If it’s realpolitik, let’s call it realpolitik. Instead fawning tributes have celebrated Thatcher as a “champion of freedom”and for her “commitment to democracy.” Democracies with secret police, torture chambers and the sinking ships of Milton Friedman’s failed experiment in free market economics. If we acknowledged that our leaders’ explicit support for the worst kind of genocidaires, dictators and murderers was just that then perhaps we might have got a bolstered, robust Arms Trade Treaty at the United Nations? The new UN treaty aims to deny arms transfers to countries where it is believed international crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes) are being committed. But since the 1940s this has become a regular in Western foreign policy. The success of the treaty will depend on the cooperation of member states. According to Article 25 of the Rome Statute –the legal document that gave birth to the International Criminal Court (ICC) – an individual is criminally responsible if “for the purpose of facilitating the commission of such a crime [i.e. genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity], aids, abets or otherwise assists in its commission or its attempted commission, including providing the means for its commission.” Supplying weapons and diplomatic aid to countries committing genocide (Indonesia) or crimes against humanity (Cambodia) seems to fall under this category. If we lived in a just society – where we punished crimes instead of celebrating them – could Maggie have been put to justice after all? The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.