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I hope you're right, autopilot, that this is different. The persistence of popular opinion in the UK and "Old" Europe in opposing military action to is heartening, given the furious propagandising coming from Bush, Blair and buddies. That the political machinations are more upfront than they have been in the past is no doubt a large part of people engaging sufficiently to protest in great numbers. Enforced régime change, such as the ousting of Allende in Chile, was certainly not openly discussed and advertised.
I can see how that gives you encouragement. Perhaps you're right; ignorance is rarely bliss and never empowering. However, my problem with the unabashed aggression heralded by the White House (with TB yapping at George's coattails like a chihuahua and having as much sway) is that they have no doubt and no shame and can therefore afford this confidence and can dismiss our opposition because we are an annoyance and noit an insuperable obstacle.
As Flyboy pointed out at the threadhead, many of us are just feeling tired and defeated, precisely because we can feel the strength of the argument against war and can see it widely shared but it still feels like it will make no difference in the face of George's desire to reshape the map of the Middle East.
It's their wilful blindness to the aftermath of their actions that scares me. I listen to Bush reading out his script from Disneyland, where fluffy bunnies inherit the Earth and the Iraqis are set at last on the right path, as we infallible Western Powers dictate it, and I can't believe anybody would buy that scenario.
The Law of Unintended Consequences got us into this mess, in large part, with our drafting of national borders in that part of the world to suit ourselves after the Great War and our years of venal arms and infrastructure business with these régimes we affect now to despise.
The Law of Unintended Consequences (not to mention Murphy's Law) will, in my opinion, cause those advocating this war to rue the day in a future time but who cares as long as Bush, the John Waynesque war leader, can drive up his poll ratings back home?
I would love to be less cynical and more optimistic about it. I wish Xs was right and, if those preferring the use of such blunt instruments of diplomacy are proved right then egg on my face is a small price to pay for Saddam rotting away in some Saudi suburb and a functioning democracy (admittedly, it would be one of the few) in the arab world.
Back to what Flyboy said up top, I'm just tired of trying to make the argument. There's nothing new or more compelling for us to say. The arguments for the war utterly fail to convince me and I am not a rabid peacenik nor a naïve sloganeer. I genuinely do want to hear an argument for the war which has enough force to give me pause, just one convincing case made that the outcome would be better than the policies of containment have been since Saddam last breached his boundaries.
If I were an Iraqi about to be bombed, I'd really want to hear a good reason. I just don't usually engage in the argument any more because my frustration makes me snarl and I don't think that is a strategy to convince anyone to question their position. It keeps me off some other boards entirely now because it's just too depressing to see the tidal wave of war drums and rhetoric sweeping sense away.
There are stupid people and some utter bastards on both sides of the argument, without doubt, often callous and unashamed in relating it all to their own interests. The great majority in both camps are not fools however and not bad people. The outcomes they desire are probably pretty much the same but the argument is about means, in the end. It just seems to me that warfare, particularly such an assymetrical battle, is so evidently neither effective nor justified as means.
Words, words, words. What earthly use are they? All these crap 1939 analogies, all this taunting and white feathering. We've all thought about it and jumped, most of us, one way or the other. The die is surely cast.
I'm off down the pub - the ostrich strategy, wiggling my arse in the air. |
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