The US, UN & Iraq III

Also, it seems that some in this thread have argued that the U.S. is as much to blame as Iraq because the U.S., simply put, gave them WMD (or precursors, etc.), as if that argues towards...what? Then, when the U.S. sees the evil of its ways and tries to correct what that argument implies as a bad situation turned worse, the U.S. is suddenly a bad guy...again. From this one can only draw the lesson that if one has a history of aiding a fellow nation (As France and Russia actually has by selling Iraq armaments) and that nation "goes south" then one must convert to UN obstructionism to cover up the initial mistake while letting the problem bloom.

Some fears have diminished. The US tanks that shot their way into the city have lost their menace. Children now go right up to the US soldiers, smile, and swear at them in Arabic, finding it hilarious that the troops think they are being friendly.

The Iraqi communists have set up their own office in this formerly one-party state. In living rooms all over the city, intellectuals are plotting the launch of their own parties.

Young louts sit in the sun calling out obscenities at women passing by. Graffiti has appeared on walls kept clean by Saddam; many of the scrawls say, "pull out the tanks", or "No to Saddam, no to Bush, yes to Islam".

Some liberals persuaded themselves of the justice of the war on Iraq, even if they knew perfectly well it wasn't immediately necessitated by those weapons which may or may not have existed. But this very point was addressed in the House of Commons - not this year in the debates over the Iraq war, but in 1854 in the debates over the Crimean war, when there was a riveting exchange between Benjamin Disraeli and John Bright, the most eloquent opponent of that war.

Using a fascinating phrase, close to what our own liberal warriors have said, Disraeli called it "a just and unnecessary war". In reply, Bright said that "every war undertaken since the days of Nimrod has been declared to be just by those in favour of it", but that "I may at least question whether any war that is unnecessary can be deemed to be just." That is really the question which MPs, and the country, should also now be asking.

[...]What is truly puzzling is that the prevailing American ideology is still underpinned by the view that US power is basically benign and altruistic. This surely accounts for the outrage expressed by US pundits and officials that Iraqis should have had the gall to resist at all, or that, when captured, US soldiers were exhibited on Iraqi TV. Apparently this is much worse than showing rows of Iraqi prisoners made to kneel or lie spread-eagled in the sand. Breaches of the Geneva Conventions are invoked not for Camp X-Ray but for Saddam, and when his forces hide inside cities, that is cheating, while high-altitude bombing is playing fair.
This is the most reckless war in modern times. It is all about imperial arrogance unschooled in worldliness, unfettered either by competence or experience, undeterred by history or human complexity, unrepentant in its violence and the cruelty of its technology. What winning, or for that matter losing, such a war will ultimately entail is unthinkable. But pity the Iraqi civilians who must still suffer a great deal more before they are finally 'liberated'.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n08/said01_.html