In Edward Wong’s NYT piece about the mini-theocracy being created in Basra (which differed from the usual fantasy NYT pieces about the secular free marketers aching to declare Basra and southern Iraq independent. That group, which includes Chalabi, has already proven it has no electoral support whatsoever, but American newspapers like to see America in every foreign country they report from), there was this nice image of the results of the invasion, to contrast with the fruits and flowers that flowed to the Coalition forces coming in:

“The growing ties with Iran are evident. Posters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Iranian revolution, are plastered along streets and even at the provincial government center. The Iranian government opened a polling station downtown for Iranian expatriates during elections in their home country in June.”

So please, let’s end the joke about fighting Osama bin over the soul of democracy—on one side, you have sharia and anti-americanism, and on the other side, you have sharia and the use of americans to wipe out sunni. That’s this war.

Saudi Arabia is a genuine US/UK client state – billions of dollars of arms deals, training of the security forces, and, until recently, deployed troops. And, in all probabilty, that is the primary reason Osama attacked the USA, in order to cut off that support.

Saddam wasn’t anything comparable – there were plenty of morally vile or just plain stupid decisions taken by the US (not sure of UK involvement), but he did not really owe his survival in power to the US to any significant extent.
—For example, the syntax over Bosnia in Soru’s statement is highly ambiguous and misleading. The Tories ‘appeased’ the Yugoslavian government over not because they were spineless and weak (omission) but because they were on the side of the Serbs (comission).—
To actually stop the US invasion, the UK would have had to take a similarly pro-active stance (and there’s no guarantee that would have dissuaded Bush).

Doing nothing would have just meant UK troops being involved in the occupation and not the war, which really changes nothing (other than perhaps making their lives more difficult, if they had to take over from US war-fighting troops who had already antagonised the locals).

soru

Actually, they mostly have gone away. The KKK is a very small shadow of what it once was. The ‘militia movement’ seems equally inert (I can’t remember the last story I read about it, and I live in a state that was home of one of the most prominent ‘militias’). The whole Ruby Ridge/Waco/Oklahoma City ‘cycle of violence’ now seems as finished as, say, the anarchist bombings of the early 20th century.

Jasmindad

i wasn’t really arguing ‘against’ soru, more adding context. Most of us, for example, can get straight in our heads the idea that Marxists have a point when they talk about the various ills of Capitalist society, while also understanding that in most cases the Marxist ‘cure’ would be worse than the original disease. Equally, I can hold the following two thoughts in my head at the same time:

Osama Bin Laden has a point when he talks about the various US puppet states littering the Middle East

Osama Bin Laden’s solution to this problem would actually make things worse.

CF my point about Hitler and Versailles.

I also find the conditional tense in Soru’s argument strange. Of course the UK and the US were to a great extent responsible for keeping Saddam in place when it suited them, and most Iraqis (unlike most British people or Americans) are well aware of this, which is why they don’t trust us. And they are right. I don’t trust us either.

I also don’t accept that there are ‘sins of commission’ per se from individual countries. There may well be of the international community as a whole but that’s a different matter. I don’t see that the US and the UK have such sterling moral records that it is their (our) duty to ride in on our white horses and save the day whenever anything goes wrong in the world.

For example, the syntax over Bosnia in Soru’s statement is highly ambiguous and misleading. The Tories ‘appeased’ the Yugoslavian government over not because they were spineless and weak (omission) but because they were on the side of the Serbs (comission). The sin of the British in the 90s was not that we did ‘too little’ but that we did entirely too much (cf Douglas Hurd).

I doubt very much that (for example) Chinese or North Korean terrorists will attack us for not overthrowing their own governments (after all, they know the state of their countries is nothing to do with us). I find it quite easy to imagine Saudis or Turkenistanis or others attacking us for supporting and, in many cases, creating their dictatorships.

Well, that’s just exactly the attitude of deranged murderers on both sides.

Clause 4 you mean? I stood against them for SSIN for the NOLS Presidency in 1982 or 3 in York. “Tankies” we called them, for the obvious reasons. My characterization stands.

I yield to no one in my loathing of the Saudi rulers, but OBL’s objection is a bit rich. So you think that somehow we would be more moral by removing support from a medieval, fanatical, tyrannical Wahhabi government and letting even more medieval, fanatical and tyrannical guys under OBL take over?

……

Brendan then segues into, “…So the issue of the Kurds seems irrelevant. Just ask the Kurds in Turkey.”

This is intended to be a reply to Soru saying, “If the UK had been instrumental in leaving saddam in place, in the same way it was in delaying action over Bosnia, would a hypothetical suicide bombing of London by a Kurdish or Shi’ite group have been ‘understandable’?”

I don’t see at all how you are being responsive to Soru. Lots of people here are ready to assign Blair a share of the moral responsibility for the London Bombings on account of UK’s acts of commission in Iraq. Soru is asking a reasonable question about the moral responsibility in acts of omission, enough to “understand” any Kurdish or Shiite terrorism in UK?

Which agreement the UK does not need to rescind becuase it never implemented it. The UK never felt secure enough, apparently, to relax border controls.

and our Muslims would be as happy as theirs. And things would be better how?

I’m not suggesting that the UK emulate France in detail, but turning less of a deaf ear to fire-and-brimstone fundie Imams / terrorist recruiters would be positive step for both saftey and perhaps relations with the moderate mass of UK Muslims as well.

“No, not “name calling”, but an accurate characterization of someone who used to go around brandishing a copy of Denver Walker’s Quite Right Mr Trotsky”

Err, that book was actually fairly popular in the 1980s with a big chunk of the non-Trot membership of NOLS (national organization of labour students) – some of whom are now (or, well, before the last general election, at least) in positions of considerable responsibility.

Walker was nutty as a fruitcake, but for the budding Trot-basher it was a useful primer for some choicer quotes of Mr. Bronstein.

Also useful for the Leftist Trainspotter types was “As soon as this pub closes”, which was a short but comprehensive geneology of the ultraleft in the UK.

The UK was and is instrumental in leaving these dictatorships in power (not least, to repeat, Saudi), whilst removing those that get uppity (the Taliban, Saddam), and replacing them with governments more to our liking. So the issue of the Kurds seems irrelevant. Just ask the Kurds in Turkey.