I was tempted to list additional points preceding yours, as well as add a parallel list covering the politics. But that can keep for another day.

I do, and that is why I am hoping you would take this as an opportunity to clarify your rationale.

Sunny’s post is very clear, and I’ll paraphrase: we are dealing with a network of highly dangerous well-connected people who had and will have again access to the most powerful force in the world. They have little regard for democracy, international law or bounds of behaviour. Their narrative must be rejected wholesale, and they must be put on a watching brief.

1. sell him weapons: 2 million dead
2. let him buy weapons from others: 1 million dead
3. prevent him buying weapons: half a million dead
4. invade him: quarter of a million dead

(all figures dubious, but the order will be about right).

The problems of the Iraq war aren’t ones you can see when you look at things that way.

“I understood your comment to mean that we would have to kill more people through sanctions (which had already claimed 500,000 children, and according to Madam Albright ‘a price worth paying’), so why don’t we get it over and done with and go for the shock and awe option.”

That is a very cynical and flawed interpretation of my statement.

Please give me some credit.

I understood your comment to mean that we would have to kill more people through sanctions (which had already claimed 500,000 children, and according to Madam Albright ‘a price worth paying’), so why don’t we get it over and done with and go for the shock and awe option.

It only claimed around 1,000,000 and look its changed the face of the middle east.

I think if you killed a million in Europe it would change the face of Europe too.

I understand the ‘nothing to do with us, guv’ argument. It wasn’t us, we only killed 50,000. It was Al Queda – look how blood-thirsty they are.

I am afraid this really isn’t a justification, unless you are a neo-con, who are supremacists clothed in altruistic language. And for them any price is worth paying for permanent hegemony.

I think you guys need to start thinking it through. Not me.

‘Also, I rather have Saddam Hussein and his cronies removed than have half a million children die or be malnourished due to the sanctions regime.’

was the justification put up by a prominent Tory for his support for the war.

I hope one day you will think that through.

Yet, Iraq today is a democracy, fragile may be but it is one. Millions of Iraqi people came out to vote in elections under death threats and many have played a key role in getting rid of Al-Qaeda. These provincial elections saw Iraqi security forces taking care of security and the Iraqi people voting against religious or extreme secterian parties. Don’t forget the young teenagers who come back from school to stand guard so that Al-Qaeda operatives cannot come back into their neighbourhood.

So, would the pure left (not idiots like me who supported the war)feel comfortable with the achievement of Iraq so far? Isn’t the left that is so anti-military option and claiming that resistance in Iraq is appropriate is undermining democracy and the wishes of the people of Iraq?

By supporting the insurgency or accepting it as fait accompli, I think the pure left ie so anti-war is ending up glorifying those al-Qaeda and sectarian operatives?

Don’t for a minute think that I do not regret the massive human tragedy that has befallen so many of Iraqis but their resilience and fortitude and courage must be respected. Not bang about the same old arguments over and over again as it seems Iraq is going to be a democratic nation in the Middle East.Something that was unthinkable a decade ago.

Coming to think of that it could be George Bush’s biggest legacy — I am no fan of the guy but he did transform Iraq and probably the Middle East. The true left would surely love that.

Been really busy with work but I will check out the thread and might even add a few more bits and bobs. And it is good to be back — and I for one am glad that you took on Blah.

S

Thanks Jai.

No problem, Sid. Thanks for letting me argue against Blah’s double-standards, propaganda and unashamed bigotry. His attempts at what could be called “historical takfiri” were ridiculous. I’m not normally interested in writing lengthy posts these days but Blah’s hypocritical triumphalism and modus operandi needed to be exposed.

The guy’s a lot more transparent than he thinks and nowhere near as clever as he presumes himself to be.

*********************

Shamit,

Great to have you back, mate. There have been some fireworks here during your absence. Check out Sid’s Al-Jazeera thread from a few days ago for an example.

I guess it is needless to say that I disagree with the premise that those in the left who supported the Iraq war (myself included) are war mongers or share similar values of the neo cons.

Speaking for myself and some others I know, I could honestly affirm that my support for the war was to remove a genocidal dictator who did use weapons of mass destruction. Also, I rather have Saddam Hussein and his cronies removed than have half a million children die or be malnourished due to the sanctions regime.

While sad and very much unfortunate, there are times when the military option must be used and Saddam was one of those occassions. And there have been many success stories which Sunny of course has not mentioned such as East Timor, Sierra Leone, many other small examples such as Indian armed forces protecting the Maldives government against a coup. Falklands was a good example as well.

However, I am willing to accept that we did not run the operation in Iraq better after the conflict ended and we could have and should have done better.

Leon and Sunny have always argued for conversation with people who do not abide by human rights and other international laws. Well, the Pakistani and the Afghan Government have recently tried that with the Taliban. Guess what, their bottomline to stop indiscriminate killing was impose the Taliban version of the Sharia law which means no girls could go to school. And, if the Government did not follow through with that then they would kill, throw acid and burn schools. Leon, I know you are against war but you can’t reason with some groups.

I am not a war monger and niether are most people on the left who support military intervention. But believe it or not, this group in the left who refuse to take any option off the table are the reason, the left gets anywhere near power and that includes President Obama.

Sunny, I support your stand against Harry’s place and I would back you on that — but do you think its really worthwhile to kick all of us who believe in use of military power when justified (gross human rights violation are one reason I would support it).

I believe that not only British blood but innocent blood should be equally important to leaders in today’s world — where plots hatched in one country and injustices and torture inflicted in one country can manifest itself in others — I believe that we should all be willing to use force to protect rights of people to be free from tyranny, free to be educated, free to practice their faith without edicts from religious fanatics.

And, dont forget Iraq bloodbath was Al – qaeda and glorified religious resistance — which the Iraqi people demonstrated by voting overwhelmingly in two elections that they did not support.

Gotta run now but more on this later

I don’t blame Sid, but he is in a better position to help steer than you or I. I suppose the worst examples would be his own threads. I would suggest in cases like that a new thread is opened which would allow the ‘deviant’ discussion to be followed in some depth, by those that want to.

I wouldn’t have been so forthright if we hadn’t seen it happen on several threads.

With all due respect, buddy, this has happened on several threads (one of which also involved myself) because of the sheer scale of bullshit that “Blah” has been coming out with. The blame doesn’t actually lie with Sid for attempting to provide effective counter-responses.

and also:

At the time, I supported the invasion because I thought the Taliban were a threat to the stability of the entire South Asian region.

I don’t think both of those can be true.

What would probably be truer would be to say that the Afghan war was justified as being against al Qaeda. As it turned out, it ended up doing little if anything to weaken them, but a lot for the people of Afghanistan. The current risk, which pretty much everyone considers scary, is of falling back to the pre-war status quo.

The Iraq war was mostly justified as being for the people of Iraq, but ended up killing, displacing and impoverishing way too many of them. However, it does seem that, as least as long as an accommodation with Iran can be reached, to be leading to a fairly stable self-governing islamic national democracy, like a non-secular Turkey, that will end up as something of a bulwark against Islamist imperialism.

This probably owes more to al Qaeda’s incompetence than anything else…

‘That’s silly – sometimes threads go off topic. But there’s no need to get protective about it.’

Generally I don’t mind off-topic, you tend to learn new things that way. But not always. Tonight I found that I was having to scroll through several threads full off lengthy ctrl+V comments, none of which looked enticing and all seemed to be Sid and Blah.

I was going to suggest getting them a room, but didn’t feel they deserved it. Best to leave them out in the cold, Sid with his snowman and Blah with his snowballs.

Thanks for your honest response. Much appreciated.

I still am not convinced that Iraq alone is sufficient a framework for using such a broad-brush term as, ‘pro-war left.’ As my old grand dad used to say – if you feel you are being tarred with the same brush you might just be standing too close to the target.

Best of luck to you.

“Ben, what helped change your mind?”

Reading about Iraq, mostly – how it was promoted and how it was carried out. Once one looks at it with any sort of depth it becomes acutely difficult to make any case for military interventionism (as just about everybody else already knew).

Also, though, my own opinions were never built on firm grounds, but were a sort of hodgepodge of reaction, assumed opinion and adolescent pomposity. I sniped at Galloway and co. more often than I considered rational grounds for regime change.

Ben