The Middle East, again (or still)
Someone who doesn't like Jews: Mel Gibson.
Someone who really doesn't like Jews: the guy in Seattle who shot and killed six Jewish women because they were Jewish women.
People who really really don't like Jews: Hizbullah.
Just hoping to add a sense of proportion.
I was talking to my godmother today. I love my godmother and owe her a lot, not least my copy of Pilgrim's Progress, but she is one of those socialists that can only be so because they are from the comfortable middle-class, and who has perennial fits of nostalgia for the good old days of nationalised industry (in today's case, British Gas).
It sounds so plausible: one producer, one supplier, no need to pander to shareholders: why, in fact, aren't nationalised industries the way forward?
That's for another time. Today's point is that the entire Middle East problem was caused by the removal of Palestinian land, the consequent lack of hope among generations of Palestinians, America's use of Israel as a 'pawn,' America's invasion of Iraq for nefarious reasons (alluded to but not specified by my father), and our need to improve the quality of life in these countries that produce terrorists, and also (incidentally) reclaim the moral high ground by not overdoing the response to any terrorist act.
I know that I appear to have become, by default, America's biggest supporter in the UK, but I can't be the only person slightly perturbed by the definite sense that America and Israel are big enough to 'take it' and that we only antagonise terrorists by going on the offensive.
The awful thing about this, of course, is that it's totally plausible. It all boils down to a simple question: do you believe that there is a serious existential threat to the 'western' way of life? And then if so, what do you propose to do about it?
Which is why it can still be argued that Iraq was the least bad option to take. It's bothersome to hear arguments like 'at least Iraq was stable under Saddam' (and presumably he made the trains run on time), but again, it's more than a little true. It depends how highly you value stability and freedom, and whose stability and freedom. I have no concern in theory for the political system under which a country operates, which is why I wish American commentators would stop trumpeting Israel's democracy as a de facto halo, but I have even less time for the view that the millions of Iraqi voters were merely 'playing at democracy.'
Look: there are people who don't want a democratic Iraq, and often the same people want to kill their fellow Iraqis. This is hardly a step backwards from Saddam and not much of a step forwards; but now there isn't a genocidal maniac in charge who wants WMD. And, apropos Vicki Woods' curious piece in Saturday's Telegraph, the fracture of Iraq may not be such a bad thing after all. I'm constantly told it was only a British invention anyway.
And, despite my father, I still can't think of a more plausible reason for the Americans going into Iraq than the one they gave.
Someone who really doesn't like Jews: the guy in Seattle who shot and killed six Jewish women because they were Jewish women.
People who really really don't like Jews: Hizbullah.
Just hoping to add a sense of proportion.
I was talking to my godmother today. I love my godmother and owe her a lot, not least my copy of Pilgrim's Progress, but she is one of those socialists that can only be so because they are from the comfortable middle-class, and who has perennial fits of nostalgia for the good old days of nationalised industry (in today's case, British Gas).
It sounds so plausible: one producer, one supplier, no need to pander to shareholders: why, in fact, aren't nationalised industries the way forward?
That's for another time. Today's point is that the entire Middle East problem was caused by the removal of Palestinian land, the consequent lack of hope among generations of Palestinians, America's use of Israel as a 'pawn,' America's invasion of Iraq for nefarious reasons (alluded to but not specified by my father), and our need to improve the quality of life in these countries that produce terrorists, and also (incidentally) reclaim the moral high ground by not overdoing the response to any terrorist act.
I know that I appear to have become, by default, America's biggest supporter in the UK, but I can't be the only person slightly perturbed by the definite sense that America and Israel are big enough to 'take it' and that we only antagonise terrorists by going on the offensive.
The awful thing about this, of course, is that it's totally plausible. It all boils down to a simple question: do you believe that there is a serious existential threat to the 'western' way of life? And then if so, what do you propose to do about it?
Which is why it can still be argued that Iraq was the least bad option to take. It's bothersome to hear arguments like 'at least Iraq was stable under Saddam' (and presumably he made the trains run on time), but again, it's more than a little true. It depends how highly you value stability and freedom, and whose stability and freedom. I have no concern in theory for the political system under which a country operates, which is why I wish American commentators would stop trumpeting Israel's democracy as a de facto halo, but I have even less time for the view that the millions of Iraqi voters were merely 'playing at democracy.'
Look: there are people who don't want a democratic Iraq, and often the same people want to kill their fellow Iraqis. This is hardly a step backwards from Saddam and not much of a step forwards; but now there isn't a genocidal maniac in charge who wants WMD. And, apropos Vicki Woods' curious piece in Saturday's Telegraph, the fracture of Iraq may not be such a bad thing after all. I'm constantly told it was only a British invention anyway.
And, despite my father, I still can't think of a more plausible reason for the Americans going into Iraq than the one they gave.
posted by BoB at 3:14 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home