"I have seen this movie. It was called Vietnam."
Finally finished Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks, just in time to call it one of my books of the year. (It was published in hardback last year, so it's officially one of the books of last year, but I read it in paperback this year, so fuck off. I rarely read books in hardback, so my books of the year are always books of last year. Ain't it always the way?) Thomas E Ricks is an American journalist with a sound CV of military reporting behind him - he's currently senior Pentagon correspondent at the Washington Post. This book, dedicated to "the war dead" is an exhaustive account of the occupation of Iraq up to mid-2006. It actually begins with George H W Bush's decision not to remove Saddam Hussein from power in 1991, but concentrates on his idiot son's reign after September 11, 2001, when "everything changed." Ricks constructs his narrative from testimony of everybody from the top down in the US military, quoting emails home from disillusioned grunts and memos sent between departments at the White House and Pentagon. If there is a villain of the piece, it's not George W Bush. He barely features, beyond unconvincingly cheerleading at press conferences and assuring the media that Iraq was going really well. This is not his war.
It's Rumsfeld's war - as set out in even more embarrassing details in Rumsfeld: An American Disaster by Andrew Cockburn, which I've also read and, hey, came out this year! Assisted by Tommy Franks, who certainly aimed to please his masters, if nothing else, it was Rumsfled who underestimated troop numbers, consistently failed to address post-invasion policy (which is why there wasn't one), and overruled the State Department, parachuting in loyal Republicans with no direct experience in the Middle East to help run the Coalition Provisional Authority under Paul Bremer, who also comes out of all this as a prize dick. So many mistakes were made through sheer arrogance: the failure to seal the border with Syria, through which sympathetic fighters poured when the great public order vaccuum was created; the failure to stop looting after the fall of Saddam, which decimated the infrastructure in Baghdad; the break-up of the Iraqi army (something Bremer seemingly ordered without direct say-so from anyone in Washington), causing further unemployment and fuelling the insurgency; the "de-Baathification" of Baghdad, which left the occupiers with only a few surviving Iraqi ministers to play with, despite the fact that under Saddam, many civil servants joined the Baath party because they had no choice and were not necessarily pro-Saddam fanatics; it goes on. As indeed does the occupation, way beyond the end of this book.
You come out of the other end of it not hating the military. How can you, when they are doing the job that is handed down to them? Certain commanders in certain areas of Iraq did a good job of dealing sympathetically with the locals and attempting to build bridges with them, but this good work was so often undone by a new regiment (with different tactics) taking over the same patch. Although Abu Ghraib is the cornerstone own-goal of the whole sorry mess - the flashpoint at which public opinion, even in flag-waving America, turned against the occupation - the impression given is that it really was a few bad apples on the ground. It would be wrong to imagine that all US troops in Iraq were idiot, hotheaded, frankly homoerotic racists. (It still amazes me that servicewomen were involved in prisoner abuse - and have no real defence as to why they either got involved with those awful photos, or stood by while others did. Just goes to show: you shouldn't have preconceptions, good or bad, based on gender.)
I'm now reading Imperial Life In The Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the much-admired book specifically about life inside the Green Zone, where a little America was recreated for those working in the CPA's inner sanctum. This book really brings alive what Ricks constructs through testimony. I realise I am obsessed with the Iraq war, or that must be the impression given. In a way, I am. After September 11, I really resisted the received wisdom that "the world had changed" that day. I resisted it because it seemed like a convenient, wound-licking western media concept, but as time has passed, I've come to realise that, sadly, the world did change. Because when American foreign policy changes, or is allowed to change, the whole world changes with it, such is that country's imperial power. Thus, the occupation of Iraq - botched, bloody, almost humorous in its surreal uselessness - becomes the key event of our times. Global security spreads out from the Middle East, and has done since 1991, when the US struck its bases in Saudi Arabia, and the likes of Osama bin Laden found a new focus for their war against the infidel. The rest is history, as they say.
Interestingly, I was stopped and searched today at the train station by police acting in accordance with our very own Prevention Of Terrorism Act. The stop was courteous and the search pretty flimsy - they looked in my bag, that's all - but it still involved my name, address and date of birth being taken down by an officer of the law, which made me feel indignant, to say the least. They gave me a leaflet, which I read on a bench as I waited for my train. Luckily, I got to the bit that said, "If you are stopped and searched you are entitled to a copy of the form, which is completed at the time of the stop." So I went back to the officer and asked for this. She was again courteous, and finished filling it in, so that she could give me my copy. In the reasons for stopping me, she had entered a section of the Act, mentioned that I was heading on a train into London, and that I was "also carrying a black holdall." This makes me a terrorist suspect. Before September 11, 2001, I don't think it would have. So well done, everybody. The other figure who barely gets a mention in Fiasco, the most complete history of the Iraq war, is Mr Tony Blair, who made anyone with a bag going to London a terrorist suspect with his puppy-dog enthusiasm for the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld project. What a shame his legacy goes pretty much unmentioned.
Jay Garner, first "viceroy" of Baghdad, replaced by the hapless Bremer, reported back to Rumsfeld and told him what he - a man on the shop floor - felt had gone wrong. Rumsfeld couldn't care less, saying, "Well, we are where we are, there's no need to discuss it." It was, by the way, retired Marine general Anthony Zinni, former chief, US Central Command, who provided the quote I have used for the headline. Try getting anyone at the Pentagon to nod sagely at that.
These faraway blunders affect us all. (Except: are they really blunders? It's convenient to think of the Bush administration as idiots, but they're not, are they? I just can't see, having read this and the other books on the subject, how the current mess can benefit them? It may even lose the Republicans the 2008 election, and that's no good, is it? Fiasco and Rumsfeld and Emerald City don't comment on the motives of the Bush administration. That's for raving nutters to speculate upon. But they don't paint a pretty picture, and they're Americans.)
posted by Andrew Collins @ 3:25 PM
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There can't be any 'blunders'. They're not an invading army of Keystone Cops. They're just like every other invading army. Using the word 'mistake' or 'blunder' in this context implies that there would have been a better way to invade Iraq, or that it could have been done 'better'. There could never have been a 'better' way. It was fundamentally wrong. If you take that as the starting point then everything that's happened makes much more sense.
WWII is seen as somehow 'just', but the motivations there were the same as they've been in every war- to consolidate power, to change the world stage to benefit some countries or ideologies at the expense of others. Hitler/ Churchill- same difference. Either way, the history books would have been rewritten and we'd be none the wiser.
And who's going to read the dissenters in 60 years time? They'll be a curiosity, like footage of anti war rallies in 1968. Life will go on. If Iraq is viewed in the same light as the Vietnam War in 30 years, so what? The main players will be dead, their sons and daughters will be living off the fat of the land and nobody will be asking how they got rich.
I am curious to see how it is all going to end. I cannot see any way but a bloody civil war with a hardline fundamentalist government taking over when the Americans levae. But the Americans cannot leave because than who is ging to protect the oil ? At this point my head starts to hurt.
I feel sympathy with the troops also. I watched aprogramme last year about Afghanistan. There was a female officer out there trying desperately to engage/bribe members of an Afghan village. By offering them medical treatment and the like. She just made a breakthrough when they were asked to go elsewhere. She said 'The Taliban will be back in this village within the week and all the effort is wasted. That is the war that seems to me to be an unending one. Even the Gordon Brown excepts we will be there for at least ten years.
I don't think Thomas Ricks represents a "dissenter", Stockhausen - he makes no editorial comment, just reports the facts, by way of exhaustive testimony. And if underestimating the number of troops required to effectively police a post-invasion Iraq isn't a "blunder" what is it? Surely if it was borne out of American arrogance, which certainly seems to be the case, the more you read about the run-up to invasion, that is a blunder, albeit one that has cost thousands of lives, on both sides. The invading army can only do so much. It's down to whoever's dishing out the orders, isn't it? Nobody gave the order for the US soldiers in Baghdad to stop the looters. Another "blunder", I'd say. Not the army's fault - they were just following orders, or waiting for orders in this case. Also, they were undermanned, due to the earlier "blunder". I think it's pointless to quibble over semantics. The outcome's the same. And I'd also argue that the anti-war rallies against Vietnam are far more than a historical "curiosity" - they help define the late 60s in America, as much as footage of bombs falling on Southeast Asia. To see the situation as it is does not necessarily equal "dissent".
Also, I'm interested to know which "fat" of which "land" the sons and daughters of the main players will be living off.
"WWII is seen as somehow 'just', but the motivations there were the same as they've been in every war- to consolidate power, to change the world stage to benefit some countries or ideologies at the expense of others. Hitler/ Churchill- same difference. Either way, the history books would have been rewritten and we'd be none the wiser."
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Well, I would say that British involvement in WWII was certainly more just than our involvement in Iraq. Would anyone with at least half a brain seriously say otherwise?
As for "Hitler/Churchill - same difference", well, that's just the stupidest thing I've read in a long time.
John
I think semantics are extremely important when we're talking about 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq over the last 4 years. A blunder, AC, is a bad decision that has a detrimental effect on the person that makes it. So Rumsfeld's blunder's cost him his job. The General's made a blunder carrying out his orders, and the soldiers, especially the dead soldiers, made blunders carrying out the orders of their superiors.
It's good fun watching Donald Rumsfeld get tongue tied, or watching George W Bush try to form a sentence to the sound of trombones, but the families of the war dead on both 'sides' aren't laughing. The Iraqi people and the armies of all sides aren't the victims of a 'blunder', they're the victims of American warlords and their aggresive expansionist policies. Are you saying that if the border with Syria had been secured, or if there'd been more troops allocated then somehow things would be better? Better for who?
The fact that senior White House staff and their families have profited from their positions of board members and shareholders of companies that won contracts to rebuild Iraq are well documented.
Presumably the sons and daughters of these men and women stand to inherit.
Why do nations go to war, Andrew? To stop the bad men? I don't think so. That's what the soldiers are trained to blieve, and that's why they're just following orders. And making blunders.
Why is that the stupidest thing you've heard for a long time, John? They were both Warlords. They had a big battle. The Americans won it. Why was the British involvement in WWII more 'just'? 'Just' doesn't come in to it. Would it have been just if the American's had taken Churchill's advice and launched a nuclear attack on Russia while it was the only country with the atomic bomb? Listen, if it had suited 'us' at the time we'd have gone along with Hitler. Don't make the mistake of believing in goodies and baddies.
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Hitler/Churchill same difference ? It is idiotic S & W. One was a dictator who got to power by scapegoating and murdering Jews and other ethnic groups, and invaded other sovereign countries.
The other rallied a nation who feared they would be invaded at any time. It is true he was far from being without flaws. But he was a great leader and your glib dismissal of him does your argument no credit.
To make any comparison between this 'war' and WWII is utterly ludicrous. If you have a problem with the Iraq war then fine but make it without pissing all over the graves of the guys who gave their lives. In whatever war.
Some quotes from Churchill:
"I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between communism and nazism, I would choose communism"
"I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes"
"I do not admit...that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia...by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race...has come in and taken its place"
"The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate...I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed"
"This movement among the Jews is not new...this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire"
I've actually lost sight of your original point, Stockhausen. Are you suggesting that by using the word "blunder" I'm in some way letting the Americans off the hook? That's certainly not my intention. A "blunder" that costs thousands of lives is a serious charge, especially a "blunder" borne of imperialist arrogance. Who says a blunder is a decision that only harms the person who made it? If the border with Syria had been secured, less people might have died in the civil war that has resulted from American mismanagement of the country they invaded and occupied. (I don't know for sure, but that's certainly what I take away from what I've read about the situation.) I'm pretty sure we agree that the war is a bad thing, and I don't know why we're arguing over words.
I don't know whether you mean to patronise the hell out of me when you wrote, "Why do nations go to war, Andrew? To stop the bad men?" but that was the effect.
Perhaps its a meagre consolation, but the disaster in Iraq will at least hopefully have the effect of depriving the neo-cons of a mandate to "export democracy" (i.e. invade) other Middle East countries, as they clearly planned to do when the "War on Terror" was first mooted.
Unfortunately I think the other possibility is that they will simply bomb countries from now on instead of invading them.
Smart Arse with the Churchill quotes. Actions speak louder than words. He led this country in our darkest hour. A time we cannot imagine in our coseted world now when we expected to be invaded any time.
I'll take him. Flaws and all.
Off Topic: Does everybody else have to constantly type the word verification thing twice ? Or is that just me ?
There is a school of thought that says the chaos left behind in Iraq was deliberate - ongoing civil unrest requiring permanent US military presence (to protect the oil infrastructure, not help quell the insurgency)thus ensuring control over oil supply and a huge military infrastrcuture right in the heart of the Middle East.
As you say Andrew, these people aren't idiots (however misguided). But perhaps this is just a little too Machiavellian - can events really be controlled to that extent even by the world's only superpower?
I wonder how worried the Republicans are about their actions in Iraq costing them the next election? Are any of the democratic candidates really going to dismantle all of this and turn their back on cheap oil and significant leverage in the region? The Republicans probably think much of it will remain in place for them to pick up in 2012 - they do tend to play the long game.
No chaps, I totally see Stockhausen Waterman's (great name!) point. I mean, it might be totally wrong in our terms to seek to wipe out all Jews, gays, disabled, communists etc. but we shouldn't seek to impose our values on the Germans. They have a different way of doing things and we should respect their values. It would be arrogant to claim that our values are the only correct ones.....
.... sorry, just slipped into relativist mode there for a minute.... just kidding.
Actually, I agree that the Churchill/Hitler "same difference" point is absurd. We don't have to claim that Churchill was a saint to see that overall meeting Nazi Germany with force and destroying it was "a good thing". So perhaps Churchill, Roosevelt et al. had other motives as well as stopping a mass murdering regime. That really doesn't change the fact that the war was, overall, just.
SW, would you rather we'd appeased Hitler?
Iraq is a bloody mess. I do wonder sometimes if things would have been done any better had more people in the White House, possibly even the President, had a military background. Would they have been better equipped to know how their decisions would play out? Look at Colin Powell - as far as I can see the only one with a military background - who seemed much more cautious than the rest.
I do hope things sort themselves out in Iraq, but I don't agree that it can only be done by the Iraqis themselves. Most of the deaths in Iraq are from Iraqi on Iraqi attacks. A stabilising force needs to be there for the medium term. Is it possible that with a radical change in approach the UK and US could still play that role? A report on Newsnight this week seemed to indicate that the security situation in Baghdad seems to have been improving over the last few weeks.
Off topic: TMP - no, you're not the only one. I always need to type in the security code twice too.
Thanks, anonymous, I was just scrabbling around for a good quote, and you did me proud.
Pierre: using documentary evidence to back up an argument isn't being a smart arse, it's just being smart. Parroting soundbites and cliches like "our darkest hour" isn't being smart at all.
Andrew, I didn't mean to patronise the hell out of you, I just wondered why you think that the US invaded Iraq if you're cynical about the claim that they did it for gain, and that some people, the main players, will have benefited handsomely from it.
As far as the semantics go, to say that certain individuals are making blunders implies that there is a right way to go about things and that some other member of the imperialist army will be along soon to put things right. Lord Cardigan made a blunder with the Charge of the Light Brigade. If America's actions led to 100,000 US civilian deaths, then, indeed, it could be called a blunder.
But you're right, they didn't do it by mistake, they did it with every intention of keeping the wheels of the military industrial complex spinning round for a good while yet. So what if there's a bit of political fall out? The people with vested interests will ensure that the electorate will do as they're told on polling day, and if they don't seem to be toeing the line, well, you can always count the hanging chads.
The very idea that an elite can persuade the youth of their country to be involved in an undertaking that leads to the massacre of 100,000 civilians, in the 21st Century, and people like The Mighty Pierre can be 'curious' about the outcome tells me that something is fundamentally wrong.
And we wonder why people are tempted to blow themselves up.
And on the interesting subject of Churchill....
Being a wishy-washy liberal it will surprise no one to hear that I think the answer lies somewhere in the grey middle area between Churchill as imperial xenophobe and Churchill as saviour of the nation.
To claim that there was no moral element to (certainly British) involvement in WWII is clearly absurd. In what way was an isolated Britain declaring war on a far more powerful Germany in 1939 motivated by consolidating power or changing the world to benefit Britain or British ideology (whatever that is)?
To achieve the latter it would have made far more sense to adopt Halifax's approach of talking to Hitler with the ultimate aim of protecting as many of Britain's imperial interests as possible.
There's thus a very good case for saying it would indeed have 'suited us' to go along with Hitler at that time. But we didn't.
And if going along with Hitler would also have meant fighting alongside him - are you sure a largely conscript British army would really have fought alongside the Wehrmacht and SS in the same way they fought against them?
On the other hand....
It's important to bear in mind that the 'moral' element of taking a stand against Hitler in '39 had very little to do with disgust at Nazi policies, much more to do with 'old fashioned' considerations of standing up against totalitarianism and (particularly German) expansionist tendencies.
WWI (a good old imperial land-grabbing scrap) was still fresh in people's minds in a way that Nazi theories (many yet to be put into practice) on racial purification etc were not. The good versus evil aspect of the conflict only really kicks in later.
So you're right - it's not as simple as black and white and goodies versus baddies (however much it may seem like it in retrospect). But I still know which side I'm on...
Something is, as you say Mr Stockhausen, fundamentally wrong. We all agree on that, and now, it seems, we are prepared to agree that mismanagement of an invasion and occupation can be called a blunder. Thank God for that. I also think we agree that the Bush/neocon axis had very clear reasons for invading Iraq. You may be right that these people can weather some political fallout, but surely it would have been better for them if the occupation had gone as smoothly as they'd planned? In their perfect world, we would see minimal US deaths, a speedy resolution and a safe, workable free-market economy up and running. We have none of that so far. Certainly, Halliburton and affiliates, and all those private security firms, are doing nicely out of the occupation, but again, isn't a civil war something of an "inconvenience" for their money-making plans? Reading Emerald City, it's clear that post-invasion Baghdad is a farcical mess and a dangerous one. Lots of consulting firms and Republican loyalists trying to "reconstruct" that which has been decinmated, and finding it nigh-on impossible to make any progress.
The point I was trying to make in what was a three-way book review (!) was that it isn't going to plan.
Without wishing to extend the argument. What exactly was 'our darkest hour' then if not the months when we expected to be invaded at any time, and we knew damn well we would lose because we could not compete with the German army ?
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How quickly the self-righteous resort to name-calling.
Our darkest hour? Whose do you mean, Pierre? Do you mean England's darkest hour? All of the people in England, or just some of the people? The darkest hour is generally just before dawn, so they say. It's quite dark now. Stop saying things like "our darkest hour". It's really embarrassing.
Are you removing posts again, Andrew Collins? I really wish you wouldn't. I was involved in this debate, and I just popped in to see how it was progressing. Annoyingly there seem to be two large comment shaped holes. I can handle being called names.
They weren't calling you names, it was abuse directed at someone else. I will remove abuse, and make no apologies for it. You're sailing close to the wind, though. Is it not possible to channel your anger without calling a fellow visitor "embarrassing"?
It's amazing to me how much of the current debate is based on words and phrases ("blunder", "darkest hour") - can't we rise above this nitpicking?
I was the author of the deleted posts. I am puzzled at the accusation of abuse- who to? Churchill? That's the only person I abused (I apologise to any members of the Churchill family reading this blog). I was basically saying Mighty Pierre was looking at WWII in a simplistic, John Mills war film kind of way, with his talk of 'our darkest hour'.
Oh, and I'll repeat, it was the army/navy/air force who won the war, not the slim, tea total, non-racist Churchill and his soundbites.
I can understand Andrew taking off comments which make him look silly, but I find this kind of restrictive commenting rather 'self- righteous'.
Interestingly, if you're on Andrew's side, it's OK to call people 'smart arses'. Very cliquey here.
I didn't call anybody "embarrassing", Andrew. I said that I was embarrassed by stock phrases like, "our darkest hour". And as anonymous said, I didn't call anybody a "smart arse". I really don't see how I'm sailing close to the wind.
Sorry if this is going to sound patronising to you, but you're a writer and therefore I would expect you to be interested in how language is used, as well as how it's abused, and how carefully or carelessly chosen words affect the structure of a debate.
There's a bit of a prefecture vibe going on here, which is fine for a closed forum, but this is a public forum, and I think that as long as nobody is using outright abusive language aimed at other commentators, pretty much anything is fair comment.
It'll be interesting to see if this post stays up.
Blogs and especially comments on blogs should be approached with a bit of generosity, a comment might be someone simply thinking aloud, you can't tell. Anyway, cliches often have truth in them, things like, 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing' (the word 'dossier' to mind). I'm aware of the limits of my knowledge so I'm open-minded but for what it's worth it has always seemed to me that what's changed is the distinct possibility that some unpredictable individuals might try to take out a city and millions of lives with a nuclear bomb. I assumed that's what motivated Blair. I read that one respected American commentator rated the chances of a US city being taken out this century at about 50/50. In my simplistic way I just see that the stakes were raised by Bin Laden and the alpha males are responding in the way alpha males do. Those who worship alpha males, please stop it.
Blunder - vi to make a gross mistake; to flounder about ... to mismanage, bungle.
Sounds apt to me. Maybe running a war campaign is like playing piano and maybe George Bush is the Les Dawson of Commanders in Chief. Maybe, but I don't think so. And as far as I can see Bush isn't really a Republican and he doesn't give a shit about the Republican Party's chances in the forthcoming election. He wanted to be president, he wanted to get Saddam, mission accomplished.
It seems to me that WWII was a just war because it was fought more or less in self defence. Churchill isn't particularly a hero to me but to try to discredit him on the basis that he was an imperialist and a racist is simply to ignore the world into which he was born. If he was exceptional in any way, it wasn't in his views of Britain's place in the world or about the superiority of the white race. But in one contrast with Hitler, he didn't set up death factories in which to systematically kill people purely on the basis of their race. He didn't do that. "Jesus/Judas, Jesus/Judas, I always get those two muddled up."
S&W: this isn't really a public forum; it's Andrew Collins's blog. It's ridiculous to think Andrew is obliged to leave up all the comments that are posted here. If you didn't see the deleted posts then why jump straight on your high horse and assume that Andrew didn't have good reasons for deleting them? Andrew doesn't delete posts simply because he disagrees with the sentiment; in fact he's remarkably tolerant in that respect. Usually it's about how you express yourself: being abusive, being unduly (and unfathomably) aggressive, finding the idea that Barry Norman is Andrew's boss absolutely hilarious; those kind of things will usually get your comments removed. And why not? And you know, you can always set up your own blog and say anything you want to say there.
Practical advice: you should have questioned the policewoman on what colour holdall would have gained her approval and then asked for one for Christmas. Lilac, perhaps, or pale yellow? Terrorists don't care for pastels - FACT.
The fact of the matter is, I've had an awful lot of abuse and/or childish idiocy aimed at the comments section of my blog these past couple of months. It pains me to switch comment moderation on, as I like the immediacy of an unmoderated dialogue, but this free-speech approach has bitten me on the arse so many times, I'm trying to prune out comments I consider to be abusive or unecessarily aggressive (whether towards me or other posters). If it doesn't work, I'll just have to switch comment moderation back on, which I have every right to do. As pointed out, it's my blog. And if you don't like it, well ...
I always aim to engage in a dialogue, and do my best to stay this side of name-calling. I don't have to explain why I took down the above posts, but for the record it had nothing to do with "sides" (how the fuck are there "sides" in this discussion? We're talking degrees of anti-war fervour, I think. Hardly sides!) - it was a dig at another poster which I considered unecessary. The minute one person tells another to "grow up" we're in the playground, and a slanging match starts. I'm not interested in hosting such a thing. I think of this blog as me inviting people round my house to talk about stuff. If they put a mug down on my coffee table without using a coaster, I'll ask them to refrain from doing so. And if anybody tells anybody else to "grow up", in my house, I will ask them to leave. That's not such a bad analogy is it? (Also, imagine having people round your house some of whom wore masks over their heads, so as to remain anonymous. That's what it's like sometimes. Quite unnerving.) If a clique has developed over the past couple of years - and I don't deny that some people post here regularly, on all subjects - I'm glad. It's only natural. I do not remove posts because I disagree with them, unless I object to the tone. One thing I can't stand is patronisation.
Andrew - I take your point about people posting anonymously, but I'm no fan of Google and it irks me that I apparently have to create a Google account to post here other than anonymously (have I got that right?).
That's why I post anonymously, although I have started to write my name after my posts.
John
Andrew, for once that we seem to be on a vaguely similar "side" I'll take the opportunity to say I'm not sure that the other "side" is sailing particularly close to the wind. I mean, I don't agree with them, and some of their comments would, in another forum, perhaps lead me to conclude that they're a bit of a nob (no doubt they'll conclude the same about me), but unless S&W said they would be coming around your house to do you in, and that you're a f****** c*** etc.
I don't see the problem with a bit of vigourous debate on issues like this. After all, they are important issues. I honestly don't think that telling someone to "grow up" is particularly offensive. It might be aggresive, but there's a difference between that and "abusive".
People aren't always going to be nice to each other. That's just they way things are, and it's not neccesarily a bad thing.
Tris
PS - too pissed to check the spelling of "neccessarrilly" above. I suspect it's wrong. If so, theny sorry.
PPS - for some reason when I post from this machine I'm logged on as a "Google/Blogger" but not when I log on from work. Hmm, odd.
I am hesitant to continue but I will. What I was trying to say was the 'darkest hour' was not a soundbite it was true. And yes for the British.
I don't have a romanticised or simplistic view of the second World War. I realise that we did not always act in an altruistic fashion.
But to compare that war with the Iraq conflict and to compare Churchill with Hitler. Well that goes too far in my book and I will not let it go unchallenged.
The one similarity is as an anonymous poster above intimated it is ordinary men and women who do the dieing. Not the politicians.
I apologise for using the term 'Smart Arse'. Got carried away. I would have used your name. Had you one.
John/ anonymous, you don't have to have a Google account to mark your name on your post. Just write your name in the Nickname box.
Thanks for clearing that up, Binge. Because I am registered with Blogger, obviously, I don't have to fill anything in, so I had no idea what happened if you're not. Interestingly, since coming online this morning, I now notice that little symbols are coming up next to all our names: a sort of anonymous headshot for non-Blogger members, and a "B" for members. I didn't ask for this to happen.
I'm going to write some House Rules for this blog for the New Year. Ultimately, if I consider a post abusive in words or tone, I will take it down. I've been too soft for too long. Disagree with me at your leisure, and debate "vigorously", but resort to personal abuse and your contribution will be taken down. I've been lurking about on the Guardian blogs, specifically the posts about Morrissey and the fallout thereof, and I'd hate for this blog to go down that road. It's an aggressive free-for-all, and unless you libel someone, you're pretty much free to say what you like ("Comment is free"). That is a national newspaper forum. This is my blog. Spot the difference.
(And just in case you assume the previous post was from someone amusingly pretending to be me):
Thanks for clearing that up, Binge. Because I am registered with Blogger, obviously, I don't have to fill anything in, so I had no idea what happened if you're not. Interestingly, since coming online this morning, I now notice that little symbols are coming up next to all our names: a sort of anonymous headshot for non-Blogger members, and a "B" for members. I didn't ask for this to happen.
I'm going to write some House Rules for this blog for the New Year. Ultimately, if I consider a post abusive in words or tone, I will take it down. I've been too soft for too long. Disagree with me at your leisure, and debate "vigorously", but resort to personal abuse and your contribution will be taken down. I've been lurking about on the Guardian blogs, specifically the posts about Morrissey and the fallout thereof, and I'd hate for this blog to go down that road. It's an aggressive free-for-all, and unless you libel someone, you're pretty much free to say what you like ("Comment is free"). That is a national newspaper forum. This is my blog. Spot the difference.
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
I should have left the previous comment up, really. It proves my point.
Ah well, Comment Moderation is back on. Apologies.
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