I don't think any of you are familiar with the British liberal magazine Spiked, but its editor, Brendan O'Neill, wrote a colossal 3500 word long article a few days ago. He narrates the story of the Iraq War - or rather how every single article the magazine has written on it has stood the test of time.

There are many issues on which I disagree with Spiked, but on the issue of this war, I think they are pretty spot on. Spiked has the advantage, compared to most others who have campaigned against the war, of having been consistent and focused in their position towards the war from the very beginning. They have torn to shreds the arguments of the those who supported the invasion, but at the same time, they've been highly critical of most of the arguments coming from those who have opposed the war. Many anti-war activists have spoken of the Iraq War as the beginning of some sort of a neo-colonialism, built on the conviction that the rulers in Washington are evil and diabolical men plotting about the future of the world - attacking countries to steal their oil and creating on the back of oil profits some sort of an American global empire. On the contrary, Spiked argues that ever since "major combat operations" ended in Iraq, the US and its allies have tried whatever they could to scale down operations and leave. And in some sense, they have already left. Politically and emotionally, if not physically, the Coalition of the Willing had already "cut and run" from Iraq by late 2003.

Spiked is even more critical of people who supported the war but now oppose it on the basis that "they were lied to" about the evidence. The "debate" over Iraq has thus been reduced to an evidence-based affair, where the only question is over which facts are true, which aren’t, and who made up what. This is politics with the politics taken out - where principle and judgement have been replaced by technical squabbles, and where no one is prepared to take responsibility for what is going on in Iraq. The basic fact that was ignored from the start is that outside interference in another country's affairs always makes things worse. As Spiked says:

"[Liberation] simply cannot be imposed from without – and thus Operation Iraqi Freedom, as the Coalition named its invasion, was a mad, bad and dangerous idea from the very start. A people can only liberate themselves, spiked argued. In April 2003, shortly after the war began, we said: ‘What we have seen in Iraq is liberation as farce. Liberty, freedom and democracy for Iraq could only come about through the struggles of the Iraqi people themselves. The process of liberation is not just one of freeing people from the constraints of their regime; it is about them deciding how they want to rule themselves, how they want to organise and govern their society. It is in fighting for freedom that people gain a sense of what they want freedom to look like.’ This is a lesson that those calling for Western meddling in Sudan, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Tibet and elsewhere should take on board: spiked offers support and solidarity to people around the world who want to be free, and who fight to make their freedom a lived reality, because we recognise that freedom cannot be delivered on a silver platter by caring, benign, superior outsiders. That is not freedom; it is patronage, which in Iraq’s case meant that ‘the Iraqi people have found themselves washed up in a post-war landscape that they played no part in creating’, said spiked in 2003."

The conclusion Spiked reaches in the article, which is aptly titled "Why haven't they learned the lesson of Iraq?", is not very uplifting:

"And in Iraq, we have what spiked labelled in September 2006 as ‘the world’s first Suicide State’: ‘Iraq looks like a country committing suicide rather than aspiring to independence and liberty. This new Suicide State is not quite as foreign or “evil” as commentators and officials would have us believe. Rather, it seems to have been shaped by some very contemporary political trends, and by the denigration of international politics over the past decade.’

This is the end result of five years of war on Iraq: increased political doubt, disillusionment and cynicism in the West, and a hole in the heart of the Middle East where an Iraq run by its own people ought to stand. Yet rather than face up to and hotly debate these facts, all the better to ensure that such a thing never occurs again, those who supported the war now call for more interventions in ‘dangerous hotspots’ around the world, while some of those who criticised the war want Western troops in Darfur, Kosovo and Tibet. They have learned absolutely nothing. Those who truly value freedom and self-determination around the world should reject both the inexorable interventionism of our hollow Western rulers and the fearful isolationism or ‘liberal interventionism’ demanded by the anti-war critics, and instead state the case loudly and clearly against outside interference in others’ affairs."

I urge everybody to read this article. It's very long, but fantastically well written and very much true.

http://spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4902