Shorter John Lloyd: The Iraqi people have proved unworthy of me. And all those soldiers of ours are a bunch of girlymen.
You think I’m joking?
But we did not anticipate that Iraqi forces who hated the US – including those loyal to Saddam – would dominate after the invasion, that the population would not be active in ensuring democratic choice as it had been in, say, Poland, and that the west had limited staying power.
Unlike Lloyd, who went once as a journalist to offer solidarity to the Iraqi trade unions (i.e. go to some meetings), says so right there in the piece. Doesn’t mention that they needed solidarity against the authorities John Lloyd wanted to impose on them.
Not even bothering with a shorter for Tony Blair:
The fact is, yes, there are people who will be very abusive, by the way I do walk down the street, and by the way, I won an election in 2005 after Iraq
Yes, after you promised to resign in favour of Gordon Brown.
Meanwhile, the polls:
The approximately two-to-one balance of opinion against the Iraq war broadly applies across both sexes and every age range. Every nation and region of the UK also retains a clear anti-war majority…
The marchers are also vindicated by opinion up and down the social scale, although the 49%-36% balance of opinion in favour of the marchers among the so-called AB occupational grades is somewhat more balanced than the crushing anti-war majorities among working-class voters….
there is no partisan slant in the public’s opposition to the war. Conservative supporters believe the marchers were right by a 57%-30% margin, statistically indistinguishable to the 57%-29% support for the marchers found among Labour voters. Supporters of the Liberal Democrats, the only big party in 2003 to offer a united anti-war stance, are only marginally more strongly behind the marchers – they are split 59%-24%. The 54%-33% anti-war majority found among Ukip supporters confirms Blair is judged to have been on the wrong side of history, right across the political spectrum.
Like most people of his ilk, Lloyd brings into the argument a complete red herring: the Right to Protect. There was no humanitarian crisis in Iraq in 2002; the invasion subsequently caused one. Blair blathers on about terrorism in his Newsnight interview, while most people’s complaint about invading Iraq was that we should have been paying more attention to Al-Qaida. Why do these people get opportunities to bullshit?
Permalink