Two years since Unite Against Terror
It's just over two years since the internet campaign, "Unite Against Terror", was launched. The
site seems pretty moribund now, although I think they have renewed the URL for another year.
On the face of it the campaign sounded a good idea. Britain had just experienced its worst terrorist outrage, killing 52 people from London and elsewhere. Unfortunately, the aims of the project were never clearly stated, and for reasons that are still unknown, some of the leading figures to sign the petition got the impression it was a campaign against "the left".
Nick Cohen
called the left morons, failed to condemn the bombings, and added, "What we have witnessed is a sinister attempt by liberal opinion to deny legitimacy to the very liberals, feminists and socialists who have a right to expect support. The authentic Muslim has become the blood-crazed fanatic rather than the reformer. The authentic liberator has become the fascist rather than the democrat. This is a betrayal on an epic scale which casts doubt on whether it is now possible to have a decent left."
Stephen Pollard
raved that the "The Guardianista fellow-travellers of terror, who stress its supposed causes, are the useful idiots of the Islamofascists" and in language that I can scarcely believe even two years on, declared that there was an 'enemy within', which "it is imperative that those of us who believe in democracy and liberty stand up and fight. Not just against the obvious enemy, but also against the enemy within - those who claim to be on the Left, but whose views have nothing in common with the decency for which the Left ought proudly to stand."
Peter Tatchell, bizarrely,
declared that the left should not pretend to be upset by the bombs, and "We are witnessing one of the greatest betrayals by the left since so-called left-wingers backed the Hitler-Stalin pact and opposed the war against Nazi fascism. Today, the pseudo-left reveals its shameless hypocrisy and its wholesale abandonment of humanitarian values."
To quote the last is a little unfair of me, as Tatchell subsequently apologised for the language, proving, perhaps, that there can be a decent Decent left.
Labels: campaigns, Decent Left, Iraq, Nick Cohen
Was the Iraq War fought because Britain still owed the US £243m from its post-WWII loan?
I'm not sure I agree with
this argument of Nick Cohen's from April 2002. £243m just wouldn't be enough money, not given the war must have cost a multiple of that (and that such a cost was easily foreseeable).
Ruth Kelly, the Treasury Minister, told Parliament the other day that Britain still owed £243 million. Rather than relieve the debt of Third World peasants, Britain, she said, intended to meet the bill in full by 31 December 2006. Ms Kelly is a revelation. Until her statement, Blair's sudden enthusiasm for a needless war against Iraq was a mystery; his failure to tell Bush that British troops can't be both peace-keepers and combatants in Afghanistan, a dereliction of duty; his inability to force a concession from Washington on any issue from Kyoto to steel tariffs, a national humiliation.
Now what was baffling is clear. Debtors are in no position to demand concessions from creditors. They must do as they're told. According to the Treasury, Britain will be free to have an independent foreign policy on 1 January 2007. I'll leave it to you to imagine how many wars Blair will have fought by then
Labels: economics, Iraq, Nick Cohen
US military to arm some insurgents in Iraq
So says
The Guardian., which notes it is a 'high risk strategy'.
Labels: Iraq
Bernard Kouchner, Nick Cohen, Oliver Kamm & Neil Clark
In today's Observer, Nick Cohen
turns away from moaning about the plight of the 'less fortunate' couples on £100,000 a year and turns to Bernard Kouchner, the new French foreign minister. And promptly gets a lesson in the facts from Conor Foley (also - did Jacques Chirac really support Iran's efforts to get a nuclear bomb?).
Oliver Kamm
criticised Neil Clark over Kouchner earlier this week, with the latter claiming he was in favour of the Iraq war and the former saying that he wasn't. I think Oliver is probably [1] right in that the exact words Neil used were wrong, as he talked of Kouchner's 'welcoming' the Iraq war, ie before it happened, and that is not correct. However the wider story is it's certainly true that Kouchner was in favour of the war after it had happened, as he told Robert Graham of the Financial Times in early 2004 - "it was right to intervene". The FT link isn't working, but here's one from Norman Geras's
blog.
[1] I've edited this to add 'probably' as there were certainly people -- one being of the calibre of
John Lloyd in this whine - who at the time thought Kouchner was in favour of a war.
Update: Matthew 'unquestionably the 2nd most powerful country in the world' Jamieson
says that Kouchner was the most senior French politician 'to support the Iraq war' - I think that's game over for Neil Clark.
Labels: Decent Left, France, Iraq
Amis & Blair
I would say an odd couple, but they seem perfectly suited. Anyway as the British military attache
tells Chatham House the surge isn't working, apparently Martin Amis of these views' fame:
There’s a definite urge—don’t you have it?—to say, “The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.” What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation—further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan.
was travelling with him :
Accompanying him was Martin Amis, the novelist who is writing about Mr Blair's final days in office. Downing Street declined to say whether Mr Amis's work was of a biographical nature.
It must have been quite a trip for Martin. Almost everyone in Iraq 'looks like they're from the Middle East' - his urges must have been unbearable.
Labels: Blair, Decent Left, Iraq, Martin Amis
Less than 42%
The ever optimistic Foreign Office
responds to a new Chatham House report on Iraq by noting that most insurgent attacks occur in four provinces, which contain "less than 42% of the population". So 41% then - about the same as the share of London and the South-East in the UK's population.
Labels: Iraq
The Shame of the Left, part XIVIII
Next week's
Evening Standard column brought to you this week.
What kind of moral sewer has relatavism got our left-wing academics into when they can
describe the execution of Saddam Hussein as "one of the worst days of my life.I was just so upset, even on the verge of tears". And did you know Kate Winslet can't get a parking space at 9am outside Fresh & Wild in Islington? And why didn't Gordon Brown's budget do more for the hard pressed couple on £100,000 a year?
Labels: Decent Left, Iraq, middle class, Nick Cohen
Hitchens on Iraq
It's
fighting talk, but not as we've known it.
He's not happy with the new Bush policy, as the title of the article suggests: "How Bush is blowing our last chance", I think on the grounds that he believes it will undermine his idea (itself not fully thought out, one fears) that the US Army is the 'militia for those who don't have a militia'. He adds: "if the Iraq to which they stick is in fact symbolized by Maliki's surly confessional regime, then the United States is not baby-sitting a civil war so much as deciding to take part in it". He doesn't suggest an alternative proposal.
Labels: Iraq
Iran taking control of Basra
At last
another nation has stepped up to the plate and taken on some of our responsibility in Iraq. Maybe this could be the green light for our boys to come home.
Labels: Iraq
Gerard Baker
So at the risk of finding myself in the dock with him [Tony Blair] when the modern elites have their Nuremberg, let me take issue.
In
The Times. Do you think he might take himself a bit too seriously?
Labels: Decent Left, defence, England, Iraq
2006 Review of Matt T Blog year - Jan to June
Truth be told, not a vintage year. Here's the first half.
January 2006Nothing, sorry.
February 20062nd:
Alcohol aides night drivers, declares a 1950s textbook.
5th: Dan's favourite singer, Mick Hucknall, discusses
politics.12th: I
transform Tony Blair using a new face-transforming website.
March 20068th: I attack an
Alice Thompson column as the 'most self pitying' I have ever read.
18th: And then
Gerard Baker comes along and beats her.
29th:
I take issue with Oliver Kamm's positive obituary for Casper Weinberger, and argue that Iran-Contra negates everything else.
April 200612th: "As if I were a black trying to purchase food in a Mississippi diner in 1955" -
yes it can only be Carol Gould trying to buy a drink in a London pub. 18th: The Euston Manifesto arrives! I
create a handy cut out and keep guide to which project each British Decent has signed up to, and criticise the manifesto on two grounds - first the whinge about a lack of media coverage given many of them are senior people in the media, and second, their criticism of other people for spending more time attacking the domestic left and not enough time helping Iraqis, given this seems exactly what they do. Looking back I think this latter criticism is really why I could never give it a chance - I am still shocked by Nick Cohen, Stephen Pollard and Peter Tatchell's reaction to being asked to 'unite against terror' and I think it says a lot about them (though Tatchell did apologise subsequently for his).
30th:
Pollard goes one better, declaring in his Maida Vale Manifesto, which still has less than 10 signatories, that "The mainstream Left has demonstrated clearly which side of the battle to preserve Western civilisation and freedom it is on. The Left, in any recognisable form, is now the enemy". I ask whether he is calling for the arrest of leading left-wing figures.
May 20069th:
YouGOV pay me my £50!
17th: In Rome, and I tell the hotel receptionist "Excuse me the phone in our room doesn't work". She replies,"This is Italy. Many things don't work."
30th: I
prove President Bush is not as unpopular as the polls suggest.
June 200612th:
I show that the Serie A is not the goal desert commentators think it is.
Labels: Bloggy, Decent Left, England, Iraq, Review of Year, Web
Iraq
Timothy Garton Ash's
excellent column on the disaster in the Middle East can be summed up in that stump speech of Al Gore's - all the things that should be going up have gone down and all the things that should be going down have gone up.
Labels: Decent Left, defence, Iraq
Christmas Frenzy of War
You can always rely on
Melanie Philips to trump everyone. Her hysterical reply to the Baker report on Iraq declares that the issue for G W Bush "who, until now, has operated through consensus" is now:
In the dying fall of his presidency, does he have the wherewithal to go for broke? On this lonely and frail figure the fate of the free world now depends.
I'm not sure about you but I get nervous when people start advising world leaders, particularly ones who are C-in-Cs of large armed forces to 'go for broke'. I think 'going for broke' is always a bad idea if being broke is a disaster, and as we are talking about the 'fate of the free world' here, I think it would be. Basically she wants him to declare war ('confronted and defeated') on Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
Labels: Decent Left, defence, Iraq, Melanie Phillips
Iraq
Do we stay or do we go? The Sunday Telegraph declares, and gets its two star columnists, Niall Ferguson and Matthew d'Ancona, to 'reach very differing conclusions on the recommendations on the Iraq Study Group'.
They're differing in what they think the recommendation is, but not in what purpose they think it serves, and really what they want to see, which is continued American presence. Niall Ferguson
believes it is a bit of media manipulation designed to make the American public think they are withdrawing when in fact they are going to stay in Iraq, but do it better. He thinks this is good. Matthew d'Ancona
thinks it is a bit of media manipulation to make theAmerican public think they have won, when in fact they have lost. He thinks this is bad.
Ancona repeats the criticism you hear from people like
Christopher Hitchens, that James Baker is the last person anyone, particuarly if they think they are progressive, should listen to on Iraq (note The Dupe is consistent here - he didn't support the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein when James Baker was going around the world advocating it as secretary of state.). There seems to me three obvious replies to this. First, after spending the last four years telling us how wonderful G W Bush -
G W Bush - is, the sudden distaste for very right-wing men from Houston might have come a bit late. Second, it's a measure of the scale and scope of the disaster in Iraq that people like Hitchens have helped shat us into that people like James Baker (and the dictators of Iran and Syria) might have to shovel us out of (this
Michael Kinsley article is worth reading though) and finally, whilst I don't think much of the plan, it is a least a plan.
This last statement might sound desperate. Dan attacked those who declared 'the status quo is not an option'
here (and
here) on the effective grounds that the status quo cannot be worse than the status quo, whereas doing something often was, but in this case there really is no status quo other than the empty mantras of 'stay the course' and 'we will prevail' and so it has become far worse than doing nothing. Criticism of the 'realist' school of foreign policy clearly have a lot to go on, but they seem to compare it with a version of neoconservativism that exists only in their heads, and in which the bloody evidence of the last three years has been completely ignored.
There are probably hundreds of better ways to attempt to fix Iraq, but much as David Aaronovitch scorned those who were waiting for the 'Nelson Mandela Peace Corps' to invade the country, I'm afraid the Euston Manifesto Group isn't going to be allowed to suggest one. There are only two on the table - the one from the right-wing Texan with the initials JB or the one from the right-wing Texan with the initials GB - and the latter's hasn't worked.
Labels: Decent Left, defence, Iraq
Good news from the Middle East
Apparently Iraq and Syria are going to have
full diplomatic relations for the first time in decades. This slightly confused me as I thought they had been best buddies over that time, but it seems not.
Labels: Iraq
