Skip to main content

The Cancer of Iraq

The Lancet has reported an estimated civilian death toll in Iraq of 650,000.

I think the situation in Iraq cuts to the heart of the really big issues.

What is a just war?

What level of violence can democracies allow themselves to inflict?

What is a civilian in a civil war?

In my heart of hearts I did wonder whether the Liberal Democrats were doing the right thing when we opposed launching the war. By all accounts, Charles Kennedy stood up in the whips office of the House of Commons and explained why the party was going to vote en bloc to oppose the launching of attacks and was actually rather inspiring. It was, I think, a real example of political courage.

I think now that Blair did the worst thing that a PM can do - he prosecuted an unnecessary and unjustified war. What we do now is not clear to me, but all the time the image of the helicopters in Saigon is in my mind. Blair is now unlikely to be Prime Minister for much longer, I hope that he can live with his conscience in his "retirement".

I don't know if the death toll reported by The Lancet of 650,000 Iraqis is the right number. I do know that "shock and awe", daisy cutters, the storming of Fallujah, the Green Zone and so on are not likely to be contributing much to a winning of hearts and minds.

We have given our troops an impossible job and an alliance with US forces that seem to do more to provoke than to pacify.

I think now that we should be working to a timetable to withdraw- whether we declare it or not. I see the more relevent- and more justified- war in Afghanistan moving towards an unwinnable end game too. Perhaps with more resources we could still- just about- win here. Yet it seems literally incredible to me that- given the long history of guerilla warfare in Afghanistan- the President of the United States thought that the situation was "solved" merely by the fall of Mullah Omar, and that therefore he could strip the country of troops to fight his family feud with Saddam Hussein.

Meanwhile our moral force has been blown away - from now on it is going to be extremely hard to confront North Korea, Iran, Russia and the many other bad guys out there.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I find it somewhat promising that your comments have been echoed by the head of the British army...
Cicero said…
Yes- not sure he should have said it publically though.

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop...

One Year On

  Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas, ...

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...