Thursday 12th June

It is now 11 years since the Iraq war, or massacre as it should really be called.  There was never any doubt of the winner, just how long it might take.  America, the greatest military power in the world bombed the place to bits, and we went along to provide cover and some sort of political fig-leaf for naked aggression.   A few years ago Tony Blair, giving evidence at Chilcott said that Iraq was a far better place now without Saddam Hussein.  But is that really true.

The trouble is that the country is, like many Arab countries, riven by internal strife.  I don’t pretend to understand the rights or wrongs or even the differences between Sunni and Shi-ite – all I know is it is a bloody mess, and it is getting worse.  Forget for a moment the reason we went to war.  Oil and revenge and global domination aside, the ostensible argument was to free an oppressed people and to introduce Democracy.  Well, they have a form of democracy and it patently isn’t working.

Even here in the ‘educated’ West democracy barely works.  Most Governments get elected by less than 40% of those bothered enough to even vote.  In fact probably less than one in four people actually vote for any one party.   And our half-baked form of democracy has taken four hundred years to achieve this level of imperfection, so how do we imagine we can impose “Democracy” on a totally different culture.

And now Civil War has broken out again.  It may be decades before the country returns to anything like the wealth and standards of living it had under Saddam.  The same in Afghanistan too of course.  Does anyone really imagine we will leave that wretched land in a better state than when we so righteously went in.  Guns may win wars, but they never win the hearts and minds of the defeated.