This is in today's 'Times'. Parris is always worth reading, but today he excels himself. This is the best short article I have read on how the neocons got everything wrong on Iraq (but are still not admitting it).

In his wonderfully eloquent and trenchant style, he concludes by saying 'The reason for failure was not the post-invasion strategy. It was the strategy of invasion. Blame the vision, not the execution'. How right he is.

:thumbsup:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2414249,00.html

A good article. If only there were an equally good answer to the mess.

I do like the avatar by the way - perfectly acceptable garb for doing your shopping on a Saturday afternoon in my opinion.

Very refreshing article. Spot on.

There is a good answer to fix it, everybody who supported the war, get over there and or dig deep and pay for it. Tax breaks for anybody who said that before the war this would end up in civil war, and Blair and Bush to the hague. Take any money they have to help pay for the mess they got us in to.

In fact a better bet may be to turn Bush and Blair over to the families of our service men and women, let them decide the fate of the men who lied to send them to war, and then lets see if any leaders in the future try something similar.

MY favorite part;

The former hawks of press and politics now scramble for the status of visionaries let down by functionaries.

Excellent article (from an excellent writer) - one that I'm sure contains a very great deal of truth.

I do hope Matthew Parris is right, and the Neocons will be looked back on as a complete embarrassment by tomorrow's Americans - but I fear their pernicious influence on world affairs has only received a setback in Iraq. I hope I'm wrong, and the Iraq debacle will be their death-knell.

One can only hope.

StarSparkle

I do like the avatar by the way - perfectly acceptable garb for doing your shopping on a Saturday afternoon in my opinion.
Or a spot of childminding perhaps...

This is the best short article I have read on how the neocons got everything wrong on Iraq (but are still not admitting it).

Yes. I liked this bit:
It is no small thing to have embellished the philosophy, found the prose and made the case for the most almighty cock-up in politics that we are ever likely to witness. They meant for the best, these politicians, dreamers and writers. They didn’t think it would end like this. But it has: more killed than even Saddam could boast, and nothing to show for it but an exhausted British Army and the global energising of violent Islamism on a scale of which Osama bin Laden never dreamt.

For neocon-bashers William Dalrymple's review of Michael Gove's Celsius 7/7 was also one to savour:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23110-2366952_1,00.html

Yes. I liked this bit:

For neocon-bashers William Dalrymple's review of Michael Gove's Celsius 7/7 was also one to savour:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23110-2366952_1,00.html

I read Dalrymple's crushingly contemptuous review of Gove's book in the ST some weeks ago - brilliant! Gove is an obnoxious, ignorant little twerp with no capacity for logical thought or judgement. Why anyone takes anything he writes seriously is beyond me. He is now a Conservative MP and will probably be in a David Cameleon government (which says a lot about the current state of the Conservative party). God help us all if he is let loose anywhere near foreign or defence policy.

Not just neocons, but liberals as well. Aaronovitch gets a mention in Paris's article, but there were plenty more who tried to put a liberal spin on the war ('we're not occupying them, we're liberating them'). Now they're busy bashing Muslims under the banner of liberalism.

I hope Christopher Hitchens drowns in his next vodka and tonic.

Personally I think it was the worst of all worlds - a bad idea badly executed!

Wasn't the final excuse for this invasion the democratisation of Iraq ?

How it was ever expected that the majority Shias could ever be reconciled with their former Sunni overlords is quite baffling.

Democracies are created by popular uprisings, not force.

Not just neocons, but liberals as well. Aaronovitch gets a mention in Paris's article, but there were plenty more who tried to put a liberal spin on the war ('we're not occupying them, we're liberating them'). .

Unfortunately, the term 'neocon' has become a shorthand for anyone who supported the invasion of Iraq. This is actually dangerously misleading, because there was also an unprepossessing chorus of 'liberal imperialists' on the so-called left who also strongly supported it. The most prominent was Michael Ignatieff, but there were many others, including some mentioned in the Parris article. Moreover, these liberal imperialists, who favour reshaping the world by means of 'humanitarian interventions' have 'form' which precedes the invasion of Iraq. Thus to a man (and woman) they supported the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, which were also based on fraudulent claims and deception of one kind or another. I think that Blair acquired a 'taste' for interventions including 'humanitarian bombing') as a result of Bosnia and Kosovo and expected to be able to go to Iraq and be greeted by cheering crowds as he was in Sarajevo and Pristina (with flowers distributed by courtesy of the British government) - a liberal imperialist ego trip par excellence. Incidentally, one thing which the 'neocons' and the 'liberal imperialists' tend to have in common is that they tend to be strong supporters of Israel.

Unfortunately, the term 'neocon' has become a shorthand for anyone who supported the invasion of Iraq. This is actually dangerously misleading, because there was also an unprepossessing chorus of 'liberal imperialists' on the so-called left who also strongly supported it. The most prominent was Michael Ignatieff, but there were many others, including some mentioned in the Parris article. Moreover, these liberal imperialists, who favour reshaping the world by means of 'humanitarian interventions' have 'form' which precedes the invasion of Iraq. Thus to a man (and woman) they supported the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, which were also based on fraudulent claims and deception of one kind or another. I think that Blair acquired a 'taste' for interventions including 'humanitarian bombing') as a result of Bosnia and Kosovo and expected to be able to go to Iraq and be greeted by cheering crowds as he was in Sarajevo and Pristina (with flowers distributed by courtesy of the British government) - a liberal imperialist ego trip par excellence. Incidentally, one thing which the 'neocons' and the 'liberal imperialists' tend to have in common is that they tend to be strong supporters of Israel.

Absolutely. They've turned into liberal racists now, and are particularly keen to liberate Muslims from the enslavement of, er, being Muslim. If anything, the real neocons are an improvement on the liberal imperialists. At least you know where you are with people like Richard Perle. You're f***ed, but at least you know where you are.

As a traditional, Burkean paleo-conservative I find the neo-conservative crusade to impose ' liberal democracy ' and neo-liberal macroeconomics upon other peoples deeply alarming. Foreign policy should be calculated in terms of national interests. International idealism of the sort that fires the imaginations of the significant actors in both the Blair and Bush administrations is to be repudiated. As LC cogently suggests, such beliefs in interventionism and utopian panaceas too often go hand in hand with an unquestioning support for Israeli Zionism. Full marks to the wise Parris. The likes of Gove should be pelted with eggs.

Absolutely. They've turned into liberal racists now, and are particularly keen to liberate Muslims from the enslavement of, er, being Muslim. If anything, the real neocons are an improvement on the liberal imperialists. At least you know where you are with people like Richard Perle. You're f***ed, but at least you know where you are.

I think you misunderstand the true nature of 'liberal imperialism'. The 'liberal imperialists' are not anti-muslim per se. Indeed, they strongly supported in muslim side in the wars in the Balkans (to the extent of supplying the muslims with weapons for use against the Serbs and also supporting campaigns of 'humanitarian bombing'). I see them more as self-appointed moral crusaders, who hawk their consciences around the world looking for causes to fight. Blair is a classic example of the breed. I think he sees the British armed services as his moral playthings, to be employed not in defence of our national interest, but rather to be used to right perceived wrongs in any part of the world (which would be more tolerable were he to possess a modicum of judgement). If you want to understand why the British armed services have been engaged in more military conflicts than at any time since WW2, look no further than Blair's ego.

I see them more as self-appointed moral crusaders, who hawk their consciences around the world looking for causes to fight.
Yes, but I also see them as nascent forces of a one world type government. Liberal imperialists have a political and economic as well as a moral agenda. One defining feature of liberal imperialists - as you suggest with the Balkans example - is that they are strongly opposed to nationalists in any shape or form. Nationalists might have the merit, however, of being an insurance policy: nobody could guarantee that a single world order would remain free of tyranny (power corrupts and all that).

Yes, but I also see them as nascent forces of a one world type government. Liberal imperialists have a political and economic as well as a moral agenda. One defining feature of liberal imperialists - as you suggest with the Balkans example - is that they are strongly opposed to nationalists in any shape or form. Nationalists might have the merit, however, of being an insurance policy: nobody could guarantee that a single world order would remain free of tyranny (power corrupts and all that).

But there were competing nationalisms in the Balkans and the 'LIs' strongly supported the Bosniak and Croat forms against the Serb variety. They were were not opposed to nationalists in 'any shape or form' - indeed, they aided and abetted nationalist movements (and their paramilitary adjuncts) which were perceived at the time as 'wronged' or downtrodden minorities. In many cases, they swallowed the propaganda of these minorities hook line and sinker. largely because their knowledge of the region was often at best superficial and because they have a mind set in which protagonists to a conflict must be categorised as either the good guys or the bad asses.

They were were not opposed to nationalists in 'any shape or form' - indeed, they aided and abetted nationalist movements (and their paramilitary adjuncts) which were perceived at the time as 'wronged' or downtrodden minorities.
True, but I'd see these as merely tactical alliances which serve the prime purpose of toppling regionally strong nationalist governments/regimes.

To take another example, the intervention in Iraq has benefitted Kurdish nationalism. If, however, the Kurds were to get carried away and cause serious upset to Turkey (a western political and military ally which has a significant Kurdish minority) they would soon be in the West's bad books.

One of the 'sailors' on the good ship neocon which Parris so skillfully savaged in his article was Tim Hames. He has replied today with a typical piece of neocon bluster (basically saying that he is not a 'neocon', that the world is a better place as a result of the invasion of Iraq and that the only real mistake was to underestimate the depth of hatred between the various ethnic and religious groups). So that's all right then. Thank you and good night Tim. :gag:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2416849,00.html