War on Iraq – Prog Gold

Gee, it’s not like we were warned

Published on March 16, 2015Leave a comment

Reviewing two new books on the UK involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, Robert Fox draws some conclusions as why these campaigns became the mess they were:

The campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan were planned to be short and sharp. In the end they were neither. British troops became an occupation force, fighting a difficult guerrilla war while attempting reconstruction and nation building, tasks which none expected and for which none was trained. The human terrain was tricky, impacted, tribal and clan communities where the most profitable line of business was criminality.

[…]

In both Iraq and Afghanistan the UK forces tried to do too much with too little – and the conspiracy of events and politics in Whitehall, Westminster, and at the Joint HQ at Northwood kept it that way. Given the resources available in the British defence machine, running the two campaigns at the same time should never have been attempted. Yet the Chief of the Defence Staff of the day, General Sir Michael Walker, assured the prime minister that his forces were well up to the twin tasks.

I hate to say I told you so, but: we told you so. All those unrealistic antiwar protestors, accused of defeatism and appeasement and everything else up to treason, who didn’t see the clear task the UK had in Afghanistan and Iraq? We were right. Nothing good has come of British involvement there (or any other country’s for that matter) and it has only led to a decade and a half of worsening conditions in the Middle East as a whole.

Be honest: isn’t there anybody who’d not like to trade the Middle East as it is now for how it was on September 12, 2001?

Last time Blair was humanitarian, a million Iraqis died

Published on November 27, 2014Leave a comment

Pseudocharity Save the Children presented Tony Blair with an humanitarian award. Their staff is not happy:

Amid widespread criticism on social media, many of the charity’s staff have complained that the presentation of the award has discredited Save the Children (STC). An internal letter, which gathered almost 200 signatures – including senior regional staff – in the first six hours of dissemination, said the award was not only “morally reprehensible, but also endangers our credibility globally”, and called for it to be withdrawn.

It said that staff wished to distance themselves from the award and demanded a review of the charity’s decision-making process.

“We consider this award inappropriate and a betrayal to Save the Children’s founding principles and values. Management staff in the region were not communicated with nor consulted about the award and were caught by surprise with this decision,” it said.

The move has also raised questions about Save the Children’s (STC) integrity and independence because of close links between the former British prime minister and key figures at the charity’s helm.

You do wonder about people still sucking up to Blair years after he left power, this sycopanthic pandering to the illusion of power that was also behind e.g. Obama’s Nobel Prize before he even was in office. It neatly shows how little organisations like this have to do with actual charity or wanting to make the world a better place and how much it is there to salve the egos of monsters wanting to think of themselves as “liberal”.

Blair Disease

Published on April 12, 2014Leave a comment

In the Financial Times of all places, Simon Kuper writes about the most serious malady afflicting ex-leaders, Blair Disease:

If you are super-rich, you probably have an ex-leader working for you, like an overpaid tennis coach. Blair, for instance, has shilled for JPMorgan Chase, Qatar and Kazakhstan’s cuddly regime. Then there’s the modern ex-leader’s staple: giving paid speeches to rich people. Blair’s Queen Anne mansion outside London differs from the “museum of corruption” recently vacated by Ukraine’s ex-president Viktor Yanukovich chiefly in degree, taste and the period when the money was made. Both men got rich through running countries. It’s just that Blair’s version was legal.

The Blair premiership was when it became clear that in the new capitalism none of the parties with a shot at power were actually there to listen to the people, all shot through with people who see politics either as a handy advertisment for their real career fellating the rich afterwards, or as a way to keep their own wealth safe. It was the War on Iraq and the way it was pushed through against the wishes of most of the UK, that made it clear to anybody not paying attention. Blair’s reward came after he left Number 10; he’s a millionaire now, in no danger of ever being prosecuted for warcrimes.

Why war on Iran is inevitable

Published on February 6, 2013Leave a comment

Eleven years of non-stop war later and the US political establishment is as moronic as ever:

Instead of doing penance every single day for the rest of their natural lives for the deaths of 4,422 Americans and, according to a survey from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, the deaths of at least 650,000 Iraqis, the architects and principal advocates of the Iraq war angrily brayed for more: more aggression, bigger military, more wars. And the non-neo conservatives, the ones whoâ€™ve been proven definitively right by history, seemed to just meekly nod along. The DNC didnâ€™t even issue a press release all day. And so all the lessons that could have been learned are unlearned.

The Waiting Room: Iraqi refugees in Syria

Published on June 14, 2011

Sarah Glidden is a Jewish-American cartoonist whose breakthrough comic How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less was published by Vertigo last year. Working with the Common Language Project she has written and drawn the above comic explaining the situation the two million Iraqi refugees in Syria find themselves in. Not just a good primer on the plight of Iraqi refugees in Syria, it’s also a great example of how to do journalism through comics. Even at their most banal comics draw you in like no other medium can do and a good cartoonist like Glidden can hold your attention even through the dry recital of background information because the pictures complement and add to the text you cannot achieve through photos.

Waiting Room is published at Cartoon Movement, a website dedicated to political cartoons and comics journalism.