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reasoned discussion on current iraq situation—why are there not more like this?

“But if the British see the "micro" more pragmatically, it is the Americans who continue to furnish the "macro". What do you do with failed states, religiously motivated terrorism and organised instability across the Islamic world? Having seen what Yasser Arafat has done for 40 years, how can anyone believe that what Israel/Palestine needs is just one more heave of some peace process? When you see what happened with the oil-for-food programme, how can you argue that the future of trouble-spots such as these can rest with bodies such as the United Nations? What is the racial theory that insists that Arabs must always be unfit for democracy?

“The interventions of the European Union and of what one expert calls the "Dad's Army Intifada" of the 52 British ex-diplomats make some valid criticisms, but offer no solutions or even, forgive the phrase, road-maps for one. When a great power injects a new idea into the political world – that we must not appease dictators, that an Iron Curtain is descending across Europe, that we face a "war against terrorism" - it is bound at first to be imperfectly thought out, but it is the opponents of these new ideas, not their authors, who look shabby in the light of history.”

[Lead from Limbic]

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