Monday, June 02, 2003



"Liberating" Iraq

One of the reasons given by the US for the war was the liberation of the Iraqi people. The US army was going to free them from an unelected dictator, and install a genuinely democratic Iraqi government.

Unfortunately, those plans have now been shelved. The Americans are no longer planning on holding a political conference to build an interim government acceptable to the people of Iraq; instead they're just going to appoint whoeever they feel like. Democracy? Sorry, the Iraqis might elect someone the US doesn't like if they're allowed to genuinely express their political will.

Those who backed the war on the grounds that it would liberate the Iraqi people should be appalled. There is no "liberation" here; this is simply the substitution of one unelected prick for another. Getting rid of the Ba'ath and Saddam's secret police? Great - but not if you replace them with hyperaggressive US soldiers with twitchy trigger fingers, who kick in people's doors, search their houses, and machine gun anyone who looks at them funny.

So, they lied about WMD, and it looks like they lied about liberation as well. This was an unjust war, and the sooner the Iraqis rise up and start trying to kick the Americans out, the better.

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