Roman Joch: Support for the war against Iraq

Opinion polls indicate that around seventy per cent of the Czech public opposes the war against Iraq. But, just hours after the American-led attack on Iraq began on Thursday morning, I spoke to Roman Joch, one Czech who is part of the other thirty per cent of the population that supports the war. Mr Joch is a political commentator from the Civic Institute in Prague, and he supports the war because he regards Saddam Hussein as a threat to his own people and the world. Mr Joch cites Saddam's Hussein's oppressive regime, his aggressive wars against his neighbours and his desire to amass weapons of mass destruction as the reasons why the Iraqi leader should be removed by war. But why does Mr Joch think that so many Czechs are opposed to a military attack?

Roman Joch: Support for the war against Iraq

Prague, photo: CTK

"I would say that the first reason is that many honest people just don't estimate that the regime of Saddam Hussein is such a grave threat, as I do. So it is a prudent disagreement, and I respect that. However, some other protesters are, in my opinion, less honest and even stupid, I would say. They are pacifists by nature, they are against any use of force, especially of lethal force. However, it seems to me that they are just blind to reality. In the course of human events, sometimes you have to resort to arms, to weapons. And in that case it is a prudential issue. We can compare the situation to that of Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s. The choice at the Munich conference between France and Britain was either to appease Hitler's Nazi Germany, or to decide for war. The decision, as all of us know, was on the side of peace, it was in fact appeasement. However, the choice for peace, for the appeasement of Hitler, did not prevent a more horrible war a year later. So, that's our position: it's definitely better to have a small, limited war today, than a big scale nuclear war tomorrow."

What do you think of the Czech government's reaction to the Iraq crisis? How would you assess it?

"You know, we have a coalition government of Social Democrats, Christian Democrats and a liberal party, the Freedom Union. And Czech Social Democrats are split internally over the issue of war. Some politicians, including our defence minister Tvrdik, are very hawkish, real hawks in the administration. However, many MPs from the Social Democrats are deeply opposed to the war: some of them even threatened a new vote of confidence, or rather no confidence. In this situation the cabinet of ministers has tried to play on both sides. However, the recent announcement was that the Czech Republic would back the efforts of the United States."