Ruminations on Russia

Fred has some of the usual problems that those of us who oppose the aftermath to the war in Iraq face. His most recent post "Silence means.. is aptly titled. What he says implicitly is as important as the explicit. As always he is open to debate and willing to listen to other points of view. There is reference to an email discussion with "his friend Steve" who replied;

I said all of this to Steve, who replied that, "it was specious to speculate what one life, 100 lives, or 1400 lives was worth", and that "The attempt to create an alternative to radical Islam - even at the expense of significant blood and treasure - is not only worth it, but is necessary and unavoidable." He went on to say that "it's either thousands of lives now or hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of our kids lives later".

I lack some of Fred's willingness to listen to multiple points of view maybe because I expect an argument to be based on some form of agreed upon facts. His "friend Steve" implicitly states that Iraq is creating an alternative to radical Islam. This is a non-fact. Iraq was an alternative to radical Islam before the invasion, it was the only truly secular state in the Middle East (Persian Gulf). It had plenty of other failings, not least of which was a disregard for human rights that make Abu Graib and the Brits in Basra look like white collar crime. That it is now a breeding ground for radical Islam does not mean that stopping radical Islam can be used as a post-facto justification. Anymore than WMD or connections to Al Qaaeda were are or ever will be. You cannot have a discussion whose starting point has no basis in fact.

So the campaign for 2005 is honesty in all communication. Lets start with: We invaded Iraq because the regime was brutal, would go out of its way to piss the US off and the forecasts for oil over the next decade meant that we should ensure that it was on our side before Saudi Arabia ends up in revolution.