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November 27, 2006

Lying Us In - And Lying Us Back Out

Gary Younge writes in the UK Guardian today that Bush and Blair "lied their way into Iraq. Now they are trying to lie their way out." He makes a case for his view that the issue is no longer whether Coalition forces will leave in defeat, but when they will leave and the political rationale that will be used to explain it. And he believes the explanation that will be given to people will entail finger-pointing and lies intended to shift blame away from Bush and Blair and onto anyone else – particularly the victims of the occupation.

Franco-German diplomatic obstruction, Arab indifference, media bias, UN weakness, Syrian and Iranian meddling, women in niqabs and old men with placards - all have been or surely will be blamed for the coalition's defeat. As one American columnist pointed out last week, we wait for Bush and Blair to conduct an interview with Fox News entitled If We Did It, in which they spell out how they would have bungled this war if, indeed, they had done so…

It is absurd to suggest that the Iraqis - who have been invaded, whose country is currently occupied, who have had their police and army disbanded and their entire civil service fired - could possibly be in a position to take responsibility for their future and are simply not doing so…

[I]t leaves intact the bogus premise that the invasion was an attempt at liberation that has failed because some squabbling ingrates, incapable of working in their own interests, could not grasp the basic tenets of western democracy. In short, it makes the victims responsible for the crime.

Younge calls on the anti-war movement to change its focus, to point out why the invasion failed and highlight our responsibility to the people of Iraq.

If we don't, we risk seeing Bono striding across airport tarmac 10 years hence with political leaders who demand good governance and democratic norms in the Gulf, as though Iraq got here by its own reckless psychosis. Eviscerated of history, context and responsibility, it will stand somewhere between basket case and charity case: like Africa, it will be misunderstood as a sign not of our culpability but of our superiority.

The immediate response to Younge's post in the British blogosphere reveals that Britain has its own version of our smug right-wing bloggers. British blogger Dizzy writes of Younge's editorial, "I was so shocked by this, apparently everything is either America or Britain's fault." Of course, Dizzy points out, he will not lower himself to argue Younge's points – like most conservative know-it-alls in the U.S., he simply belittles the man and implies that his opinion is so obviously flawed there is no need to debate it.

I have personally concluded that the situation is far too complicated for anyone to have truly anticipated what would happen, which is why we ought not to have gone into Iraq in the first place. I see no good reason for our having done so. Now we've opened what amounts to an overstuffed box of snakes and we can't get them put back in as quickly as they're crawling out. Few of us think walking away from our mess is the right thing to do, and few of us believe any hope remains that we can fix it. We all know who was responsible for creating this mess – the very people who are pointing the finger everywhere else. And thanks to smug idiots like Dizzy, they believe they can keep pointing the finger and get away with it.

Posted by Becky at November 27, 2006 10:11 AM