Why are we here, no, there?

It’s 9am on 14 August and I still don’t know why my country invaded Iraq. The Prime Minister assured us we were in imminent danger — “Trust me.” Turns out it was not only a false alarm, but sounded speculative even to our intelligence services. Clearly a cover for some other reason — for which deception Blair has still to be brought to account — but what?

Still crazy after all these years There was always a case for Removing Saddam, if never one strong enough for actually doing it. Leaving aside that it wasn’t what the Prime Minister said he wanted to spend our blood and treasure on — for which he still has to be brought to account — it seems an unlikely motive. We’d been doing business with Hussein for decades. What could have made his removal urgent this year?
» John Sturrock’s article in the LRB.

Most reasonable explanation I’ve heard proposes there’s been a sea-change in America’s relationship with the rest of the world, as described in the Project for the New American Century, and that our Prime Minister, Thatcher’s heir, is convinced Britain must be inside the tent, pissing out, but dares not say so.

This one will run and run A more cynical view, more persuasive every day, is that this is the state of permanent war foreshadowed by George Orwell in 1984. Consider the extraordinary fearfulness of Americans described by Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine, a film deeply informed by Barry Glassner’s Culture of Fear. Consider how Americans have ‘wars’ where other nations have programmes: the War on Drugs, War on Poverty and so on. If Al-Qaeda’s spectacular attack on the World Trade Center was the beginning of a campaign, the second attack has been a long time coming. Arguably the invasion of Aghanistan was a measured and successful response, which stopped further attacks. (It also freed Afghans from the Taleban, America’s very own wind-up monster, created to dislodge the Russians. Well, America owed them that.) Game won and over, surely? But no, George II insists the War on Terror will run and run. Still a lot of wear in that flight suit.

It’s the oil, stupid Or is it even more brutally simple than that? Jane Pinckard wonders if it’s not simply the prospect of cheap oil for the American economy, whose persistently unfavourable balance of trade would look a lot more serious were the oil it relies on not priced in dollars. Eerily, Garry Trudeau foreshadowed this one a couple of decades back when Zonker registered for the draft. From memory:

— What’s this on the back: “Would you be willing to lay down your life for major US oil corporations?”
— It’s hypothetical, we’re just taking a poll.