Bartlett's Bizarre Bazaar

There are two options. The majority of the insurgents in Iraq are Iraqis. In which case their insurgency is granted a degree of legitimacy by virtue of it being a liberation movement. This does not mean that it is something to be supported, something to be praised. But would certainly call both the narrative promulgated by the occupying forces and the occupation itself into question.

The other option we have is that the majority of the insurgents are ‘foreign fighters’. In which case the invasion of Iraq is a tremendous moral mistake. Right-wing US commentators were cheerleading for the war, arguing that Iraq could be used as a ‘honeypot’. ‘Terrorists’ would be drawn to the carefully chosen battlefield where they could be killed with a minimum loss of US (non-military) life. Of course, this is at a terrible cost to the Iraqi people, who were not (even if we consider Saddam Hussein to have been representative of the Iraqi people) guilty of attacking the USA.

As President Bush says; “we were attacked, and we are responding to this attack”. Does being attacked legitimate retributions against people unconnected in that attack? Does it allow you to turn the home of 25 million people into a convenient battle ground to allow you to fight wars quite unconnected with them a safe distance from your own people? To say ‘yes’, is to legitmate whatever horrors have ever been or are to come. To argue against this general, amoral principle requires a belief in American exceptionalism. And that belief makes you an enemy of every single person who is not American.