David Seaton's News LinksOpening Pandora's Box or the Gates of Hell, feel free to choose your metaphor. What is beyond argument is that due to the criminal idiocy of Bush, Blair and friends we are all in for a world of pain... Well as Rumsfeld said, "stuff happens". DS
The link with Iraq - Leader - Guardian
Abstract: When it argued for the invasion of Iraq, the British government placed the national interest at the centre of its case. Not only would the invasion contribute to international order, Tony Blair said, but it would cut off at its roots the threat of terrorism in the UK. Many disputed the link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein and pointed out that war and occupation might assist extremist organisations recruiting British Muslims, giving terrorism a spurious (but, to the wrong-headed, compelling) moral justification.(...) Can it be denied that the invasion encouraged a growth in al-Qaida's threat and influence? It is time for a new prime minister to revisit these arguments. The daily carnage in Iraq is perhaps hard to acknowledge for members of the cabinet involved in the chain of events that led finally to this hellish instability. Each and every day ordinary Iraqis are victims of the sort of mayhem planned for London and Glasgow last week. Most civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are at the hands of non-western forces, yet it is still the west that gets the blame - and, indeed, it has some responsibility for the context in which they happen. That techniques from Iraq - petrol and gas canisters placed in cars - seem to have been exported to the UK is more than symbolic. It is not proof of a direct link with al-Qaida, nor should it absolve the would-be bombers from condemnation. Yet it is wrong to claim there is no link to Iraq. Indeed, this past weekend there appeared to be some striking, if grotesque, parallels.(...) Gordon Brown's new government has to find a form of words that acknowledges Britain's role in creating - unintentionally - the conditions for instability, civil war and mayhem. It has to find not just the will to disengage over time (such a will already exists) but the language to convince listeners that this is now the government's settled purpose.(...) After Suez, Britain's friends in the world held faith with a confidence that decent parts of our public life never wavered in their opposition to the ill-fated adventure, and represented another side of the British character. As a new prime minister seeks to rebuild Britain's international reputation, an early signal that this tendency is winning the argument, and shall prevail, would be both right and in our national interest. READ IT ALL
1 comment:
Not only would the invasion contribute to international order, Tony Blair said, but it would cut off at its roots the threat of terrorism in the UK.
My understanding is that the NeoCons intended the invasion to destroy the existing international order, and wanted to replace it with the unilateral exersize of force in pursuit of American interests. They had no interest in the subject of terrorism at all, apart from propaganda, and I think an argument can be made that they are correct not to care. In comparison to what is being inflicted on Iraq and Afghanistan, Islamic terror directed at the West is virtually non-existant. It certainly doesn't begin to compare what Americans do to each other with guns, for example.
Post a Comment