The violence in Iraq – even the horrifying sectarian mass murders last week – have failed to derail the tortuous political process. That’s hugely good news. It’s not surprising that there should be last-minute renegotiations, brinksmanship and the like in forging a new constitution in a fissiparous country. That’s called politics. It hasn’t been practised in Iraq for many, many years. Its emergence – however imperfect – is wonderfully good news. Instead of lamenting this wrangling, we should be encouraged. What we’re seeing is something you simply don’t see anywhere else in the Arab-Muslim world: negotiation trumping violence. This isn’t a path to democracy. In important ways, it is democracy. The first true post-war victory is ours – and, more importantly, Iraq’s.
THE PANDESCENDERER: John Kerry’s history of political acrobatics makes Bill Clinton look resolute. My take, now posted opposite.
THE CHURCHILL PARADOX: Winston won a war and lost an election. Bush hasn’t even won the war yet … but the lessons could still apply.
BLAIR ON ‘IMMINENCE’: The British prime minister devastates the conspiracy theorists and retroactive spinners on why he went to war:
It is said we claimed Iraq was an imminent threat to Britain and was preparing to attack us.
In fact this is what I said prior to the war on 24 September 2002: “Why now? People ask. I agree I cannot say that this month or next, even this year or next he will use his weapons.”
Then, for example, in January 2003 in my press conference I said: “And I tell you honestly what my fear is, my fear is that we wake up one day and we find either that one of these dictatorial states has used weapons of mass destruction – and Iraq has done so in the past – and we get sucked into a conflict, with all the devastation that would cause; or alternatively these weapons, which are being traded right round the world at the moment, fall into the hands of these terrorist groups, these fanatics who will stop at absolutely nothing to cause death and destruction on a mass scale.
“Now that is what I have to worry about. And I understand of course why people think it is a very remote threat and it is far away and why does it bother us. Now I simply say to you, it is a matter of time unless we act and take a stand before terrorism and weapons of mass destruction come together, and I regard them as two sides of the same coin.”
When I read this man’s speech with its clarity and foresight on the terrifying nexus of WMDs, terror-states and terrorists, I am both relieved and depressed. Relieved because a leader of the moderate left understands that this should not be a right-left issue. It is a life-death issue. Depressed because John Kerry seems utterly immune to Blair’s perspicacity.
HOW LIBERAL IS KERRY? Not as liberal as Clinton or Carter or Kennedy. Or so says a poli sci professor.
The Dish 