Iraq War
Daniel Finkelstein claims supporting the Iraq war was like trying to predict the score of last week's Chelsea v Sheffield United- a sensible person would support the war and predict a Chelsea victory:Now, seven out of ten times this would have been correct and you would have won the fiver. A couple of games might have ended in a draw. But once every so often, Sheffield United will pull off a victory. The pundits will pore over the game trying to work out how it happened, but no one will be completely certain. And you? You might feel mildly foolish.
Yet did Sheffield United’s victory mean that your bet was the wrong one? Of course not. To have predicted a Sheffield victory would have been silly, since most of the time it would have been wrong.
This is a rather strange analogy, given in last week's game Chelsea beat Sheffield United, 2 - 0, yet the Iraq was has not been a success. But nevertheless it's an important piece as it means he admits the war itself has been a disaster (as a prediction of a Chelsea victory would have been in this imaginary world in which they lost to Sheffield United).
Finkelstein didn't used to be so dismissive of outcomes and how they affected the rightness or wrongness of decisions. Back in the glory days of May 2003, when he assumed he'd backed a winner (and all this betting talk does make you wonder whether he sees it in that light) Finkelstein told us that:
'The war's feeble opponents clutch at a last straw: Was it a quagmire? No. Did the Arab street rise? No. Did it plunge the Middle East into a crisis? No. Did the Iraqi people fight the occupiers to the death? No. Did they prefer Saddam Hussein to the Americans? No. Every single thing that the anti-war protesters predicted would happen if we invaded Iraq did not happen. They were utterly wrong. Yet they still cling to one small sliver of hope. We have not yet found Saddam's weapons of mass destruction".
Well it's lucky those feeble opponents got the quagmire, occupier fighting to the death and middle east crisis wrong, isn't it?
posted by Matthew @ 11/01/2006 06:19:00 PM
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