The tragedy of the Iraq invasion is that there won't be another

[Barrett808]

Three years on: the tragedy of the Iraq invasion is that there won't be another
Tim Hames

FOR SOME REASON, and for a number of years, I have been on the e-mail list for the Stop the War coalition. This is bizarre, though in fairness to them each newsletter explains how I could “unsubscribe” should I wish to. Having never subscribed in the first place, and finding these manic missives entertaining in a macabre sort of way, I have never removed myself from their records. After this column, they might do it for me.

Anyway, the latest call to (non) arms arrived last Thursday. It asked: “Where will you be on March 18?” The supermarket would be the truthful answer but not the one that was being solicited. Where they would have prefered me to be was Parliament Square for the demonstration marking the third anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.

The e-mail contained rhetoric that has become familiar, though fatuous. It railed against “lies about weapons of mass destruction”, an “illegal war”, “Abu Ghraib” and the “expropriation of Iraqi resources”. All the words so often employed about Iraq were there, except, of course, “Saddam” and “Hussein”. In any case, the entire episode started in March 2003 was condemned as an “occupation” that has “brought nothing to the Iraqi people except ever increasing death and destruction”.

I suppose it depends on how you define “nothing”. If two elections, one constitutional referendum, a free press, an independent judiciary, greater religious liberty, the lifting of economic sanctions, reintegration into the region and the wider international community count for “nothing”, then nothing is a reasonable assessment. As many leaders of the anti-war movement have nothing but contempt for “bourgeois democracy” and hate capitalism and its manifestations, then, for them, “nothing” is entirely accurate.

The rest of us, however, might reach a more rounded conclusion. When told that Iraq has been a “tragedy”, we might agree but not in the way that those who use that term take it. The tragedy is not that troops went into that land in 2003 but that they did not arrive earlier or in larger numbers. For the first tragedy of Iraq is that this is the third and not the seventh anniversary of its liberation. I am not one of those who thinks that it would have been possible for the US to have pressed on to Baghdad in 1991 after expelling Saddam’s conscripts from Kuwait. The older President Bush opted to take the “UN route” and was thus shackled by its limited mandate.

(more)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2093847,00.html

Where do they get these guys?

[Brotherjohn]

1. 1999... Ohhhh! So it was CLINTON'S fault!

:sarcasm:

[Faygo Kid]

2. Can definitely use the word, Warmonger, to ID this guy

He is deeply saddened that Iraq has limited the ability to launch limitless aggressive war. Don't worry, pal, Bush and Blair will do it anyway, and make you happy. This clown probably identifies himself as a "christian." Yeah, sure. They get these guys by picking up rocks and looking under them, would be my guess.

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. Sounds pretty good Tim, care to make a visit to Baghdad?

I didn't think so.

[spag68]

4. war

You must be some kind of an idiot!!!! grow up, it is the 21st century and we all should be working to rid the world of these childish games. Stop killing each other before it's too late even some of the repucks are starting to wise up, how about you. look in the mirror, you can't like what you see

[RazzleDazzle]

5. Unbelievable. K&R