What if ...

"One of the hardest things to is to realise that your fantasies are just that — fantasies. And before we all get too excited let me clarify that I’m not talking here about imagining Hillary Clinton dressed in Highway Patrol leathers and swinging a night-stick, or any such run-of-the-mill sexual reverie. I’m talking about what we imagine without clear evidence to be true, such as the causes of our illnesses or what might have happened if it hadn’t been for X or Y."

Read all David Aaronovitch's article in The Times

Reading David's piece (some of which I'm persuaded by, some of which I'm not) I was struck by the force of the vitriol directed at David personally. I wrote the brief contribution below. It was posted to the comment response section of the original article. I believe we need to re-discover constructive debate if the nihilists and adventurists are to be resisted successfully.

I have exchanged views with David about the invasion of Iraq for all the years it has been a live issue. We share an anti-Saddam past (going back over 25 years) but we disagree about the war.

I do agree with David, however, about the redundancy of 'what-if' or 'if-only' analyses of histories that never actually took place. I would rather contribute to debate that seeks a progressive and hopeful way forward through the most difficult period of my fifty years on the planet. It seems to me the world is complex enough in its real form.

I'm about as opposed to Dick Cheney's world view as I can imagine but I truly don't want to subscribe to poisonous polemics based on the arithmetic of his death and my life's too short to speculate now on what might have happened four years ago in Iraq if something different had happened six years ago in Florida. That's the politics of luxurious delusion.

Don't those of us with opinions for or against the war need to engage with questions such as those David poses? In the real world, what do we do now and next?