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I came across this article, via Jim Henley, and the piece does raise some uncomfortable – to put it mildly – questions about how advocates of the recent Iraq war should feel if it turns out that Bush and Blair told untruths (perish the thought) about the existence and scale of WMDs in Iraq.
If Bush, Powell and the Rest lied deliberately to us to boost the case for war, then that is baaaaaad news, in my view. For starters, pro-war folk like me who took the stance we did on proactive self defence will feel betrayed. We have been made to look like twerps. Yes, I know that you might argue that we should not have been so naive in the first place (ever trust a politician?), but the WMD threat seemed to be pretty genuine, if only because of what happened under Saddam’s rule these past two decades or more. And of course the onus was on him, not us, to comply with the terms laid down by United Nations weapons inspectors. He didn’t as even Hans Blix’s report made clear shortly before hostilities commenced. Even so, the feeling of betrayal will be immense if turns out that Bush and Blair seriously exaggerated the evidence.
Which may suggest that our whole approach to self defence needs a major rethink. It suggests to me that the CIA and other intelligence services in the west require a massive overhaul, if not outright abolition. I haven’t seen any examples in the media of such folk getting the sack. Far too many of them have been allowed to stay in their cushy jobs despite manifestly screwing up. If it turns out that they gave false info to gin up the case for war, that is very bad.
And in case any warbloggers’ blood pressure is rising dangerously about the above two paragraphs, no, I am of course thrilled we stiffed the Ba’ath regime in Iraq, but forgive me, that wasn’t the original reason why we committed blood and treasure to deal with Saddam.
Although I was always a supporter of the armed liberation of Iraq primarily on the grounds that overthrowing a tyranny is justification in and of itself, I have always been highly sceptical of the ostensible reasons quoted by the US and UK governments.
Nevertheless, I still supported the actions even if the reasons were suspect. Although sometimes a war may amount to the lesser evil smashing the greater evil, that is not reasonable grounds for opposing the overthrow of the greater evil… for example I was quite happy to support the ghastly communist Vietnamese regime’s invasion of Cambodia and their overthrow of the utterly demonic Khmer Rouge regime, so supporting a US/UK ouster of Ba’athist Socialism is a no-brainer.
I am probable-to-puzzled on the WMD issue: I suspect they do indeed exist but I suppose only time will tell. But on the much trumpeted Iraqi secular Ba’athism – Islamic fundamentalist Al Qaeda link however, I have been scornfully dismissive.
It would seem I was quite wrong. It looks like the Saddam Hussain – Osama bin Laden link was indeed true!
The Christian Science Monitor, which is not exactly a regular read for yours truly, says it has further documents alleging that Labour MP and all-round jackass George Galloway was on the take from the late unlamented Iraqi regime. Well – we shall see.
A point strikes me – is a man’s views about certain issues automatically more suspect if he has been receiving cash payments? It is sometimes claimed, for example by anti-smoking fanatics, that the views of libertarians on the smoking issue are invalid if they have, for example, been working for a big tobacco firm like BAT or Philip Morris. But surely we need to focus on the validity of the views themselves, and not whether they were given by people receiving money.
Ultimately, whether Galloway did or did not receive payments will not substantially alter my views of him. Even if he had not received a single penny from Saddam, I still regard Galloway as a vile individual for his shameless defence of Saddam’s regime over many years. In some ways, if he held his views for free and was truly sincere, it almost makes it worse.
Well, the hunt is still on for possible instruments of Mass Death in Iraq, and so far, from what I have seen and read, not a great deal has yet been found.
Should advocates of military action to deal with this possible menace like yours truly be now eating vast amounts of humble pie, agree that non-interventionists like Jim Henley were correct all along? Well, not quite.
For starters, it hardly needs to be pointed out that one cannot fight or not fight wars on the basis of 20/20 hindsight. Nothing that Saddam did over the past 12 years, including his devious treatment of UN weapons inspectors, led one to think that simply keeping Hans Blix and co in situ for another year or so would suffice. And I think that Saddam’s past record, such as his gassing of Iraqi villagers, made me doubt he was either deterrable or that he could be made to bend to the will of the arms inspectors.
However (gulp) I am beginning to detect among some pro-war types a clear shift in their stance. We have, so it appears, shifted from the “war is justified to rid Iraq of WMDs and then getting to terrorists” stance to a “Let’s bring peace and democracy to Iraq”. The first stance can be clearly based on self defence, which as a libertarian I have no quarrel with, though interpretation is the hard part. The latter stance, though, however idealistic and admirable as an ideal, smacks of hubristic social engineering.
The Daily Telegraph is running an impressive scoop of documents allegedly proving that George Galloway MP was in the pay of Saddam’s regime. George Galloway has long been ridiculed as the “Member for Baghdad Central” for his defense of Iraq; now it appears that he was motivated by pure greed rather than just a love of controversy.
It is impossible for outside commentators to be absolutely certain of the authenticity of these documents. Perhaps they have been planted by British intelligence. Perhaps they were written by the Iraqi foreign office as a prepatory insurance policy, for blackmail. Perhaps there is even an innocent explanation, though I do not see how there could be.
Occam’s razor, however, suggests that George Galloway MP was corruptly attempting to change government policy towards an hostile nation from the floor of the House of Commons, that he was giving aid and comfort to the enemy for personal gain.
I believe there is a legal term for that.
Blogger Sina Motallebi has been arrested by Iranian authorities for the ‘crime’ of giving interviews to Persian language radio stations outside Iran and for his blogging (in Farsi).
I suspect giving his plight as much publicity as possible may give the notoriously intemperate Iranian security services at least some motivation to play it cool if they think the spotlight of world opinion is on them.
It is a good thing we in the west have freedom of the press and internet, eh? No way would such heavy handed tactics be tolerated in somewhere like the USA, right? Right?
That the Russians should be such buffoons by backing Ba’athist Iraq long after it became clear they were going to suffer the full weight of an Anglo-American attack is remarkable. That the Germans should have done so is nothing less than astonishing.
Just as in the Falklands War, when Britain’s ‘ally’ France did not withdraw military assistance from Argentina until it no longer actually mattered, we have seen the European Union’s two most influential nations, France and now Germany, actively collaborating with national socialist enemies of Britain overseas.
Tony Blair has just lead Britain into a spectacularly successful war, but at a cost in British blood and treasure. Will even this revelation get Tony Blair to finally see the €uro-fedarists for what they are? Are these really the people he wants to bind the future of Britain to?
Wake up!!!
In British military vernacular they are called ‘bumpy jumpers’, but they are a sight more chilling to the very hearts of Islamic fundamentalist extremists than an approaching squadron of B-52s wheeling in for an attack run.
Women without veils…
Good looking blonde women without veils…
Good looking blonde women without veils with guns!
I have been out of communications for the last week or so. Due the inability of Vodafone customer service to ring FEDEX to get a check delivered, I have yet to get international service running on my mobile. Living without a mobile phone is a terrible thing. How do people exist in the dark ages Before Mobile?
I’ve also been without ethernet connection since I do not yet have an 802.11b (wireless) card. So I may sit thirsting Ancient Mariner like in a cafe filled with wireless internet chatter but unable to drink.
Although I was well connected in Connecticut, I was totally occupied with an R&D job there and barely took time to skim Fox News each night before falling into an exhausted sleep.
So that is why I have not been commenting much on the war. I had thought it might at least last long enough for me to get a few licks in before the end. That was not to be. Modern warfare, like modern culture and technology have speeded up to an almost post-human time scale. If I had gone on business for two months during WWII little would have happened. Or perhaps I should say, little in terms of modern hyperspeed warfare. A major battle might have been engaged and fought to conclusion; a invasion might have established a beach head; the Battle of Britain might have started and be reaching a peak of ferocity… but the war would not seem to have changed in its’ essence.
Contrast 1938-1945 with March-April 2003. It started as I left Belfast and its’ effectively over as I sit here in DC barely a third of the way through a series of consultancy jobs. They held a war and I’ve mostly missed it.
It’s a fast old world we live in.
More evidence, as published by Reuters today (and not in its “oddly enough” pages) is coming out that Saddam’s Iraq was a key supporter of Islamic terror. Looks pretty damning to me.
Come on peaceniks, please tell us this is all a CIA-inspired plot.
When it comes to the British International Development Secretary, Clare Short, any attempt to analyze her views are bedeviled by the fact she is such a mass of contradictions and illogic. Yesterday at a briefing in London she was asked by a journalist if she thought the death toll of Iraqi civilians was a price worth paying for the overthrow of Ba’athist Socialism, to which she replied:
I do not think that the death of any human being is a price worth paying
Let us ponder that remark… that the Ba’athist regime was mass murderous is beyond doubt and clearly something of which Clare Short would be cognisant. So what is she saying? She is not saying that what even the hilarious Iraqi Minister for Information admitted was a small number of Iraqi civilians killed was too high a price to end two and a half decades of tyranny.
No, she is saying that the loss of even a single life is not a price worth paying… paying for what? To prevent the murder of thousands of Iraqi people every year, that is what. The term ‘absurdity’ seems inadequate somehow.
Face it… Clare Short does not give a damn about the Iraqi people. She is more concerned about preserving the sanctity of her surreal world view. Why else would she say such an idiotic thing if not because trapped within her dogmatic meta-context, she is simply incapable of saying anything else regardless of florescent evidence suggesting better moral theories.
As I have written before, to oppose the war on the grounds that the domestic cost in Britain or the USA in blood, treasure and encroachment of the state is too high a price for the sake of the Iraqi people, is at least a coherent viable argument… but to oppose the war on ostensibly altruistic grounds that the price to the Iraqi people of overturning the Ba’athist Socialist status quo is too high is simply ridiculous, given that the scale of that Saddamite tyranny was hardly a secret.
To have taken such a position at before the war or in the early stages of the campaign was at least somewhat tenable, at least for a person with a poor understanding of the military and technological realities, on the grounds the cost in blood would indeed be mind bogglingly high.
But to still use that argument after we know that the ‘massive casualties’ scenario has not proved to be the case is bizzare. Pictures of tragic little Ali Ismail Abbas are truly heartrending for sure, but how does that change the cold hard facts about the butcher’s bill if Ba’athism had not been overthrown?
To argue on a ‘what is best for the Iraqi people cost/benefit analysis’ means the likes of Clare Short cannot have it both ways… unless all that matters is not that a ‘single life’ is lost to violence but only who did the deed. Although Clare Short’s logic is hard for me to fathom, perhaps she is saying that preventing thousands of Iraqi civilians dying every year in Saddam Hussain’s jails and torture chambers is not worth a single Iraqi death if a British taxpayer funded soldier was the one who ended the ‘single life’ in question. Or maybe she means nothing of the sort.
So who exactly does Clare Short care about? What does she mean when she opens her mouth and makes noises that sound like English? I cannot figure it out.
People in Baghdad have been protesting to US troops regarding the breakdown of law and order in that city and elsewhere in Iraq. The solution is simple… when the protesters turn up, lead them to one of the large piles of abandoned small arms dotting Iraq, issue each one of them with a Kalashnikov, 30 rounds of ammunition and a fluorescent yellow armband with the letters INW (Iraqi Neighbourhood Watch) in Latin and Arabic letters, and then tell them “Scram… this is your city so take care of the problem yourself and only call us if things get really out of hand”.
At a stroke the Iraqis are given the means to stop the looters, they are empowered to take their post-Ba’athist future into their own hands and they are shown that the coalition is serious about Iraqis running Iraq.
Will this mean some weapons get into the hands of the wacko bad guys? Sure, but those guys are already armed. However the upside is that for every one of them, there will be many dozens of normal armed Iraqi people who just want to live a normal life and who then will be able to say “never will be suffer this nightmare again”… and say it with a Kalashnikov in their hands. Ba’athist or Islamist thugs swaggering around your neighbourhood? Now that the Iraqis have had a taste of freedom, let them cap those bastards.
All political power does indeed grow out of the barrel of a gun… so lets make sure everyone has one.
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