Ned Temko, chief political correspondent
Sunday October 23, 2005
The Observer

The government has been dealt an embarrassing double blow in its battle to convince the public it is beating insurgency in Iraq and the threat of terrorism at home, according to confidential reports leaked to today’s newspapers.
One claimed nearly half of all Iraqis sympathised with violent attacks against British and US coalition troops; another said that at home, Tony Blair’s high-profile strategy to counter the terrorist threat was proving disjointed and ineffective.

Downing Street, while saying it would not comment on ‘allegedly leaked reports’, told The Observer last night that Britain remained firm in its commitment to stay in Iraq until the elected government felt it was ready to take over security responsibilities.
The figures on Iraqis’ views about attacks on coalition troops came from a nationwide opinion survey, commissioned by the Ministry of Defence and leaked to the Sunday Telegraph

According to the report, fewer than one in 100 respondents felt the presence of American, British and other allied troops was improving security in the country.

Forty-five per cent countrywide were said to believe that the attacks on the troops were justified – a figure that rose to 65 per cent in the Maysan, one of the provinces policed by the British.

No fewer than 82 per cent, according to the report, declared themselves ‘strongly opposed’ to the presence of coalition troops.

The findings prompted the Conservative shadow defence minister, Andrew Robathan, to call for a review of Britain’s role in the country.

‘I am not advocating a pullout,’ he emphasised. ‘But if British soldiers are putting their lives on the line for a cause which is not supported by the Iraqi people, then we have to ask the question “What are we doing there?”’

Alibi for militarist interventions, sacralization for the tyranny of the market, ideological foundation for the fundamentalism of the politically correct: can the ‘symbolic fiction’ of universal rights be recuperated for the progressive politicization of actual socio-economic relations?

I was kind of hoping one of the esteemed members of this here blog would at some point do a post on this, but it seems to have gone unoticed (perhaps deservedly so?). I don’t agree with much of the essay, well if I’m understanding it correctly which given the high academic prose style I’m not sure I am, but it is ultimately worth reading. I think…

Can you give an answer, or would doing so be an arrogant assumption of Godlike authority, and probably racist?

soru

I tremble: Abb1 may be close to realising that, in fact, I am not his ominiscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God. Shhh! Nobody tell him. With any luck Abb1 will wander from the Highway of the Freakin’ Obvious to frolic upon the Pastures of Impenetrable Metaphor…

‘you have no doubt that you can go deep in the bush and separate the sheep from the goats there.’

Indeed, a sheep in the bush is worth two goats in the hand.

The point is that you can’t, though – and we may be sitting in the same building on the same floor right now. Yet you have no doubt that you can go deep in the bush and separate the sheep from the goats there. Oh, well.

Abb1, that is true, and I could wipe out your miserable existence in an instant. But I have decided, in My mysterious wisdom, that I shall leave you alive, that your perpetual whining may test the charity and perseverance of your fellow man. Don’t all thank Me at once, mortals.

You should talk to the Serbian guy who sits next to me here about ‘heavily armed criminals’ asserting ‘that they have a cultural right to commit mass murder’. He’d say that’s you, Dan.

So what I’m basically saying is that, more than nine times out of ten, if someone says “hey don’t go out Thursday night because there is a brand new sitcom on television”, the sensible thing to say is “I don’t really watch sitcoms because they are almost always crap”, and a similar attitude ought to be taken to wars.

(the other way that wars are like sitcoms is that it is impossible to predict who will like which ones. I know for a fact that several of the most furious supporters of the Iraq War were equally furious opponents of Afghanistan and confidently predict that many of the big opponents of Iraq, quite possibly including myself, will sign up for the next fucking great disaster to be sold to us as a humanitarian intervention)

This is great.

I liked “Sledgehammer”. And “Sportsnight”. And Afghanistan.

Sure- just with a bit more mass death and mutilation, and stuff.