June 12, 2005, I'd Rather Fight Than Switch
Bruce the Veep forwards us this follow-up from (dog run member) The Times of London, giving us this report of British officials who concluded as of July 2002 (a month before I conlcuded it) that the Bush Administration had decided to have a war with Iraq, with facts and legal justification to follow...
There were two reasons that the officials concluded that the Blair government was committed to being the Bush Administration's Bitch on this: (1) Blair had evidently made a personal promise to commit British support to any American action to remove the Saddam Hussein government some months earlier at a private meeting with the President at Crawford, Texas, and (2) an "in for a penny, in for a pound" rationale, that as the British were in no position to deny American use of U.K. leased bases at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Cyprus in the Med, and hence, goes the theory, Britain would be "involved" anyway, so, hey, why not include ten thousand troops in the same category as "overflight rights" (it worked for the rest of "our vast coalition".
Bruce questions what it will take for a backlash against either the American or British governments, both of whom, it is becoming undeniable, clearly intended to mislead their respective electorates as to the threat purportedly posed by Iraq, and to use the UN as a post hoc justification for a decision to attack Iraq reached long before...
Well, we're in kind of deep in Iraq, at this point, and look to be for some time to come. The policy (whatever it is) may ultimately prove to be "successful" as time goes on. We might chose to blame the voters in the US and UK for deliberately restoring governments who appear to have misled them; on the other hand, both John Kerry and Michael Howard (the latter sincerely) campaigned based on their support of entering the Iraq War...
Does this mean that, in the future, if an American or British politician wants to enter a problematic military action opposed by a probable majority of their electorate, but not an sufficient majority to sway a pliant media who itself will post hoc justify the event, that said politician's government can "get away with it"? Yes, that's what it means. Worse, while of some dubiousness legally and/or morally, politically, this would seem to be a good move...
When all is said and done, it would appear that we really do end up with the government we deserve (though, once again, I don't recall knife-raping a nun...)
Comments
To me, the most interesting thing about the memo is the hint that, yes, grounds for war would have to be manufactured.
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
It gives those who propagated the 'Bush lied' meme a certain legitimacy, no?
Posted by Dean at June 14, 2005 3:42 PM