Airstrip One

Run like a CND camp

Most antiwar protestors protested against the war against Iraq because they saw it as coldblooded. They were wrong. The war against Iraq was wrong because no coldblooded calculation of national interest (especially the British national interest) could justify this. We were being led by deluded fools, whether the ex-Trotskyite neo-conservatives in Washington or our happy-clappy Prime Minister.

To see the wild-eyed idealism of the pro-war party one should only look at the occupation, which to use a politically incorrect term looks like it's run by spastics[1]. They simply don't seem to know how to run the place. All you need is the Boys Own Guide to running the Fuzzy-Wuzzies and you could do a better job. Here's some multiple choice questions for some wannabe imperialists.

If there is a looting spree and your soldiers are in charge should they:
(1) impose martial law and then clamp down mercilessly
(2) fire at crowds who are looting places you'll need in a couple of months time like shops and hospitals or
(3) say not our job guv

You need to appoint an administrator to the new area, do you choose:
(1) A military man with no connection to the feuding parties with experience of running a millitary occupation, or
(2) A diplomatic expert with a knowledge of the area and language
(3) One of your defence minister's mates who is a fanatical Zionist and couldn't run a whelk stall

You have a number of functionaries of the old ruling class but a shortage of other decent administrators, do you:
(1) Work with them, they know how to operate the place
(2) Weed out the bad apples and bribe and threaten the rest to change their loyalty
(3) Make a play about getting rid of the lot of them and look weak as you choose Baathists to run various parts of the machine as they were the "only ones around"

If you answered mostly (1) then you are French. If you answered mostly (2) then congratulations, you have won the first prize in the lottery of life and you are British. Those who answered mostly (3) really shouldn't think that just because they've got a decent military that they can run an Empire. That's simply sufferering delusions of competence. It's time to reprint that Boy's Own guide.

[1] I do of course apologise to sufferers of cerebral palsy, and I realise that their crippling physical condition in no way represents a mental disability. And yes, you could run the occupation of Iraq better than the Yanks, and to compare you with them does make you seem far more inept and incompetent than anyone has any right to believe.