20th of March

I don’t discuss politics much here; with two pre-schoolers, a day job, and an addiction to cameras and books, I don’t follow the news as closely as I used to. It isn’t that I don’t care about politics–I do, strongly–I just don’t have time to put my thoughts into coherent words and I don’t have much interest in joining the straw-man slugfest that is politics on the internet. My own political tendencies are a little odd anyway–I’ve travelled a twisty path from liberal Democrat to Trotskyist to anarcho-syndicalist to anarcho-libertarian to liberal Republican to something a little more like a liberal Democrat again. Orwell’s “Tory anarchism” appeals to me; there’s not that much nuance in American politics these days, though, so I wouldn’t dare call myself that out loud.

Anyway–politically, I suppose I’m in the “loyal opposition” these days. And one thing that I loyally oppose is the war in Iraq. The “support our troops” mantra, which is a subtle retread of “love it or leave it”, disgusts me in its over-simplification and bullying tone; I grew up in the military, I know first hand what it’s like to have a father at war or away on the rough and terrible work of the army, and that’s precisely why this war offends me. We shouldn’t put our troops in harm’s way for any but the most important causes; and Iraq is not one of those causes.

The latest apology for the war is that it’s part of the “war on terror”, that the real enemy is al-Qaida. Of course, this ignores some basic facts: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11; Bin Laden was no fan of Saddam; and al-Qaida didn’t become a force in Iraq until we opened up a power vacuum into which they could spill. Having defeated al-Qaida in Afghanistan, we created a new training ground for them in Iraq. There’s good reason to be worried about Islamism, the new totalitarianism; but that was never the reason for the invasion of Iraq.

Today marks the third anniversary of the second Iraq war’s start. The Peter-Weiss-Stiftung/literaturfestival in Berlin has issued an appeal for a world-wide reading of Eliot Weinberger’s What I Heard about Iraq. Whatever your opinion of the war, it’s at least a fascinating history of the twists and turns and spin of the last three years; take a look, you may find it enlightening.

On 1 May 2003, I heard the president, dressed up as a pilot, under a banner that read ‘Mission Accomplished’, declare that combat operations were over…