Both McCain and Obama delivered major speeches on foreign policy yesterday which have been discussed at length on other blogs and I won’t waste time repeating things that have already been said. McCain of course is campaigning on a policy of endless war:
“I know how to win wars. I know how to win wars,” McCain told the audience at a town hall in Albuquerque. “And if I’m elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory, I know how to do that.”
Yeah good on yer dipshit.
One thing struck me about Obama’s speech. He restated his belief that the invasion of Iraq was wrong and went on to list all the things that could have been done instead. He went on:
Instead, we have lost thousands of American lives, spent nearly a trillion dollars, alienated allies and neglected emerging threats - all in the cause of fighting a war for well over five years in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.
The staggering omission, of course, is any mention of the human disaster inflicted on the Iraqi people; the hundreds of thousands of deaths, the millions of injured and homeless and the destruction of the nation’s social and physical infrastructure. Even US critics of the invasion seem incapable of understanding, or at least of acknowledging, the catastrophe that their country unleashed upon the people of Iraq. It’s as if the people most affected by the exercise have been carefully air-brushed out of the whole analysis, just as their voices are seldom if ever heard in earnest Western discussions about what should be done now. The Iraqis might just as well be orphaned children, hushed and hidden in a secret room, while the grown-ups solemnly argue about what should be done with them.
This is typical of the attitudes of critics of the invasion and occupation in the USA. The reasons given why the war was a mistake invariably centre on American self-interest, never on the interests of those we attacked and whose lives we screwed.
If people treated me that way I’d be quite keen to see a few of them blown up. It’s beyond me why so few people are capable of understanding the effect of US behaviour in the Middle East from the viewpoint of ordinary everyday Arabs and Iranians.
