Sorry, no. They were the shallow, the callow, and the terrified. In other words, exactly the people who should have never been placed in positions of responsibility and decision-making in the first place.

Especially its enlightened classes. This mess is a construct of US exceptionalism and perogative. It’s been around a lot longer than the massive power of the evangelical right and its form of US exceptionalism. Just as the Sunni/Shiite divide had not exploded into the present chaos until the neo-con agenda of divide and rule (generated by feckless kids of rich fathers and elite university educations, if you look at most of their backgrounds) came to Iraq. This has in turn been exploited by feckless kids of rich Saudi Arabian and Egyptian fathers who sent their kids off to ‘enlightened’, secular educations at Europe’s and the US’s top colleges.

Given this, Baber, we should be jetting out the working class Iraqis and leaving the rich feckless kids to sort it out between each other.

These bloody messes are given further life by idiots like those who signed the Euston manifesto demonising entire peoples except if they act in an ‘enlightened’ manner.

The enlightenment was an enormously complex thing but one of its chief hallmarks was that it relied utterly on exploiting a large part of the world and its people in order to thrive.

I am a little surprised that you are a doctor. Although I shouldn’t be. The articulate advocates of mass murder in the twentieth century were often Doctors.

I’ve consistently opposed the Iraq war from the start, in fact before the start when I demonstrated against it with about 30 people, when no one else seemed to be paying any attention.

So, roger, if pulling out now and bailing out Iraqis who will be targeted as collaborators is mass murder—what do you propose? Hanging in to police Iraq until the war of all against all is over—in the long run when we’re all dead?

I thought that what was going on now was mass murder. You think it it would be worse if we pulled out and let the warlords and gang-leaders sort it out amongst themselves—without American presence to provoke additional violence on top of that?

You bet. I have a deep and visceral dislike of all people who are not members of the educated, cosmopolitan elite committed to Enlightenment values—including the American working class who have been instrumental in promoting the religious right hereabouts. That’s why I oppose intervening in their tribal clashes. Let these jerks kill one another off—just get the educated middle class out.

Of course, it would be even better if these jerks, in Iraq, the US, and elsewhere had the wherewithall to join the educated, cosmopolitan elite committed to Enlightenment values. But removing their local demogogues, dictators and warlords, bombing them and bulldozing their countries isn’t going to do that.

I’m not a racist—I’m a snob.

The American system of representative democracy has lots of safeguards against direct popular control of government, and these have been effective. It used to have safeguards against rash military initiatives by the executive (the mythical or extinct “checks and balances”) , but these have been steadily diminished during the whole life of the republic, and since 1941 the US has been almost continuously mobilized (with a tiny hiccup in 1945).

The state machine has its own logic, and democratic control of the machine is a long shot proposition.

Well, the Vietnam anti-war movement came much later in a cycle which involved the deaths of a huge number of American servicemen across the class divide. The middle class became fully engaged because many of their kids were either under threat of being drafted, at war or confronting the law.

This antiwar movement was crippled from the beginning by the flight of the pro-war liberals (who in the media dominated the op-ed column inches), a void of accurate information and inadequate democratic tools to bring the governments in the US, UK and Australia to account. No pressure coming from the politicians. And three messianic idiots in Blair, Bush and Howard.

In terms of maintaining our virginity, it seems to me that you can argue both the ethical illegitimacy of the invasion and the need to internationalise the effort – or whatever – without contradiction or even breaking stride. I think many antiwar people did just this.

However, I think you hit the nail on the head when you say “I don’t think, mind you, that the Bush administration would have paid attention”. We were irrelevant. The plausibility of internationalising the effort was utterly lacking from a few standpoints.

In countries like the UK and US where there are few institutional tools for citizens to rein in government power, anything short of a general strike or waves of massive demonstrations would be unlikely to have any effect and the anti-war movement didn’t have that sort of pull with a pretty complacent citizenry.

I don’t think you place enough emphasis on the institutional inertia that was constructed by the US and UK after 911. It has been like righting a huge vessel that was swamped by the thickest type of bullshit. It takes time and patience.

I actually hold this pretty lively anger at the failure of the antiwar movement to move into an anti-occupation movement – to adapt to the war, to make demands that were timely about what was going on, instead of keeping all that virginity intact about opposing the invasion. Because I think that, too, helped kill many many more Iraqis. During the Vietnam war, the antiwar movement was much more adaptable, much more involved in what they wanted on a real time basis. The invasion as the original sin thesis worked – just as it has worked in Christianity – to cover a multitude of after the fall sins.

I find the question of mishandling is a lot shallower.

The invasion was the war crime – regardless of how the occupation was handled. And it permits us to simply ignore the larger questions around using massive violence in pursuit of Western aims and how it is that we, a few rich countries, have arrogated an entirely different and unaccountable set of international norms for ourselves.

The mishandling simply flowed from the reasons the US and the UK went there. It seems to me Iraq was handled very correctly given the aims. What wasn’t acounted for was the reaction to this correct handling.

Without this handling it is hard to see how the US could have got the Iraqi cabinet to pretty much concede, in the last few days, one of the major aims of the invasion – control of its oil. Ditto with regards to ensuring Iraq would not provide a threat to Israel.

This was not just a war against Saddam, but a hostile war in pursuit of Iraqi resources, the dissolution of oil contracts with non-US/UK players and also the fragmentation of Arab power vis-a-vis Israel.

Given its underlying hositility, its total oppositional nature to Iraqi interests and feelings, the handling could only have been done better if they had achieved complete, unnoticed oppression of Iraqis – who presumably would thrive within the bounds of a democracy fulfilling its international (read US) obligations. Like H.G. Wells’ Eloi.

My take is that the ‘incompetence dodge’ better applies to Afghanistan. Then again, I remember listening to World Service reports in the early 1990s, when the country had been left to the warlords.