This week begins a propaganda offensive aimed especially at centres of Liberal and Left opinion in Britain, to plant a "Left" argument for the war--- its aim divide and conquer.

The argument is clever: (a) yes the West put Saddam in power, but only the west can now restore justice to Iraq (b) Sadaam is oppressing and murdering Kurds/women/he is a "war criminal" (c) this is a human rights crisis (d) those who talk about the 'sovereignty' of Iraq are betraying their liberal principles, and in another sense betraying their racism (after all don't the Iraqis deserve freedom too?) (e) support the war etc.

The strategy has been used before with great success. It is nothing but the old Liberal Imperialism of Victorian Britain given interesting new multicultural dress.

There are, at least, three kinds of antidote to this toxin:

(1) Look at War Present:
The tens possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who will die burned in their homes, suffocated by rubble, or wearing uniforms fighting loyally for their country against cowardly invaders who will bomb from the air; added to the hundreds of thousands of babies who for generations to come will bear the scars of depleted uranium munitition deformities; the housing and infrastructure which will be obliterated--- and despite the lies don't expect the West to rebuild anything-- just look at Kosovo or Afghanistan

(2) Look at war past:
Those of you old enough to remember the First Gulf War (1990-91) will remember those lovely buttons bearing the legend "FREE KUWAIT" which were delivered in bulk to student unions around the country. That was an easy victory-- of course, the West's victory meant the entrenchment of feudalism in Kuwait, less rather than more freedom, and the deaths over the last decade of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis because of sanctions.
Afghanistan and Yugoslavia were bombed into terrible suffering, and there has been no attempt to reconstruct, to fix the damage.

(3) War future:
There is no case of an American invasion, since that of Japan, in which the country which emerged afterwards has not been poorer, weaker, less healthy, less equal, with lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality whether one looks at Vietnam and greater Indochina (the first recipient of Liberal love via B52s), Grenada since the 80s, Panama since 89/90, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan. There is no evidence that invasions by the West produced happier outcomes.

And frankly, since Israel has never abided by resolution 242 of the Security Council passed more than thirty years ago in 1967, that should be a priority for United States intervention. But instead, no, we let the Israelis go on murdering Palestinians