Twenty years ago I was still in the UK, having spent my vacation time with Sandra trying to stop the War on Iraq when the news came through that we had failed.
It had been clear from the start that the war was inevitable, that it was going to happen regardless of how many of us marched or protested against it. Bush and Blair had decided they wanted it and damn the consequences. If I had any illusions left at how politics worked in the “free west”, they were gone now. Nothing in the twenty years since have brought them back. Democracy only matters if you stay within the lines of what your rulers decide and any horribly destructive project they want can be realised by the simple expedient of lying your face off and smearing any opposition to it. The victims don’t matter, those are just statistics, the only things that matters is if you get your way.
At the time it still felt like we could achieve something, if not prevent the war, limit the damage. In hindsight Sandra was right when she remarked later that only if the big demonstration in London on the 15th February had marched straight to Parliament and seized power there and then the war could’ve been stopped.
Nobody responsible for the war has had to account for it. Alistair Campbell gets to play the wizened political commentator on BBC television, Bush is rehabilitated as a kindly old grandpa making bad self portraits and even Blair is still seen as somebody to respect. For all the pious press coverage this deeply sad anniversary will get, any desire to dig for the truth behind the war will be limited. As with every disaster that followed it, the media and politicians, in the UK, US and elsewhere were equally guilty in making it into a reality. Everybody else who could see it coming?
Well, we don’t matter. We never have.
