Prospect essayist Bartle Bull wrote a piece on Iraq, which struck me morally bankrupt and politically disingenuous. Fired up in my usual way, I submitted the thoughts below:
One tries, truly one tries to find some redeeming feature in Mr Bull's manifesto. The best one can achieve is this question: even if it all turns out for the best in the best of all possible worlds … in the end ... and not even BB seems to expect that end to come soon (maybe a decade, maybe more) ... at what cost to Iraq, Iraqis, the region and beyond ? What's the fair global price, Bartle, measured in human lives, social disintegration, the loss of moral authority, self-inflicted wounds to liberal democracy and hard cash of the political insanity of the Bush doctrine, to which not even his most fervent acolytes from 2002 - 2003 (and not even his dad for pity’s sake) still subscribe?
You know, it truly doesn’t take a political genius to work out that people can’t sustain forever the ghastly toll of the last four years. But BB managed to take 4,000 words to assert that one day all this will be history and things will be better … maybe. Perceptive stuff BB, perceptive stuff.
Mr Bull would have us believe the answer lies in this type of vacuous analysis: "The assassination in September of Abu Risha—head of the "Anbar Awakening," an organisation of 25 Sunni tribes fighting al Qaeda in Anbar—while unfortunate, will not be material." Forgive me but don’t we need a moral compass any more now that “the dowager capital of Islam, is today a Shia city for the first time since 1534.”
Save us from such sophistry. This article isn't notable because it's the author's most controversial yet. One notes the piece because it's stupidity on a stick.
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