Thursday, August 18, 2005

Well Tim is as good as his word. One of his friends wants to interview me to get a nuanced pro-war view on Iraq for her dissertation. (Nuanced is Tim's word not mine before you think I'm getting overly impressed with myself.) I guess there aren't many pro Iraq war people in Friends of the Earth ;-) Still I stand by my original stance which is that I believed the war was right because Saddam's regime were a bunch of mass murdering gits who tortured their own people. Finding WOMD might have helped with the UN arguments - but to be honest I don't see WOMD as a pre-requisite for getting rid of evil dictators.

2 comments:

Stephan said...

Nobody has ever claimed that getting rid of evil dictators is a bad thing. And I even don't have a problem with interfering in the domestic politics of a foreign sovereign nation per se. Modern day realpolitik states that might does make right.

My only issue comes in the justifications/excuses made to the people and the fact that the UN was devalued and denigrated to the extent that it is now as weak and ineffective as the US always said it was. Self-fulfilling prophecy or what...

DeathOwl said...

I disagree with the US treatment of the UN as much as the next man. I sympathise to an extent with their view that an enlarged number of permanent security council seats will have a negative impact on the UN's ability to make decisions (it already struggles to be decisive in times where rapid decisions are needed). But then I see that as less of a problem if new permanent members aren't given vetos. I certainly think that at the very least Japan and India should be given non-veto wielding permanent seats.

As for the use of WOMD as a justification which turned out not to be true. Yes I agree government lied, and that was bad. It was even worse when they tried to pass the blame onto the BBC, which with hindsight it turns out had reported accurately anyway. But that doesn't chance my stance on Iraq, because it was never the WOMD argument that sold the invasion to me, it was always about getting rid of a bastard.