Thursday, March 20, 2008

Five Years On

"The battle in Iraq is noble, it is necessary and it is just," says George Bush.

It is necessary because we needed a cheap source of oil, a pliant state to feed our cars.

It is just because the people who bankrolled his presidential campaigns got first dibs on the liberated oilfields.

It is noble because Saddam was uniquely evil (and no more use to us).

Civil war, four thousand soldiers shipped home in bits, eighty-two thousand innocent Iraqis dead (and that's only the least worst estimate). Was all this noble, just and necessary, too?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

they fight to preserve our way of life.

nobody asks whether our way of life is worth preserving.

Michael said...

Or why five billion people have to live in shit just so we can stay the same...

rossinisbird said...

Michael, if you haven't already, try Greg Palast's excellent book Armed Madhouse. His conclusion on Iraq is that it wasn't about cheap oil, but about who controls the price of it.

damo said...

The major problem with it all is that nobody who made the decision to invade will ever be accountable for the evil that the Allies have visited upon Iraq.

Here's an interesting thought - you reckon if Al Gore had been elected the US would have gone to war?

Michael said...

Thanks for the tip, Rossinisbird.

Damo: the answer to that question is no, or not in Iraq anyway.