I went to Hyde Park on Saturday, absolutely gorgeous day, I was meeting some friends for a picanic. I walked over from Green Park, and I quickly noticed that all the roads around the park were closed off, police were everywhere. I had a marvellous time, walking down the centre lane of the five-lane blacktop running alongside Hyde Park. Eventually I ran into the reason the roads were blocked off, which was a ?No More Blood? demonstration, in support of bringing the troops home. Now, this demonstration was absolutely dwarfed, by several factors, by the ones I attended in the lead-up to the war, and those demonstrations, some of the largest in history, were duly ignored by the powers that be.
Uhm, guys? It?s over. We failed. We can?t go back in time and undo this war. Our troops went in, against the will of the people, against all the evidence that Iraq was complying with the UN?s demands. And we annhilated the infrastructure of this country, along with a fair portion of its citizens. And now that we?ve done this awful thing, it?s our responsibility to do what we can to help Iraq get back on its feet. If there?s one MORE fuckup that can be added to the colossal pile of fuckups we?ve inflicted on Iraq, it?d be bringing the troops home early. The one good thing they can do, after all this destruction, is to help the reconstruction. That doesn?t make the war right, but the shitstorm that would be unleashed if we withdrew now would be colossal- if you need evidence of this, just ref. the shitstorm that whirled up when America withdrew from the Gulf at the end of the last war against Iraq.
I didn?t agree with the war, but the mistake has already been made- let?s not compound it. This doesn?t mean there isn?t a lot of work to be done, and a lot of positive things activists can do to help Iraq- but bringing the troops home early is not one of those things, unless you are the sort of person who values British blood over the blood of Iraqi citizens and, oddly, those were not the sort of people attending this demonstration.
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Although I don't entirely agree with you on the went in against the will of the people, I totally agree with you that bring back the troops will leave Iraq up that creek without a paddle.
We have no choice but to stay and make sure we leave Iraq in a decent state. We have a responsibility to do that, and if we weren't prepared to handle that responsibility we shouldn't have gone in regardless of the case for war.
Well, yeah, we shouldn't have gone in regardlessly, in much the same way I shouldn't have trashed the kitchen. But now that I have trashed the kitchen, it'd be a WORSE thing for me to just leave a big mess, which is what a lot of 'anti-war' people are promoting, oddly.
All polling across the board in Britain was consistently against the war, to a large margin. While I agree that polling is not this democracy works and the government should have the power to over-ride the will of the people in certain situations, I think it was pretty clear that most Britons did not support the war. In fact, I can't believe that anyone who followed the evidence of the case against Iraq could have, in any good conscience, come to the conclusion that they were a threat to the United Kingdom. There simply was no evidence.
Averaging polling was in favour of the war at times and against the war at times. It never was clearly or constantly against the war.
People against the war claimed everyone was against the war. People for the war claimed most people were for the war. There was no conclusive or consistent response by the people, although their was a vocal response.
I can't support that. While polling is by its nature inconsistent, I never once saw a poll that indicated popular support for the war in Britain, and I followed such things fairly closely. Sure, my observations are 'anecdotal', but are really all I can go on. Certainly, no-one could have watched Colin Powell's demonstration of the evidence against Iraq and found it a convincing case.
By "no one" you mean "you".
Other people may have. You did not. You can't dismiss something someone else may agree with on the basis of you don't.
I saw plenty polls that was Britian was over 50% in favour of the war. We like to recall the anecdotal that we agree with.
There's definitely a line over which, once crossed, something becomes fact, not opinion. The fact was: there was no evidence presented to the UN. That's not my opinion. That's actual reality. If there WAS any evidence presented, I'd acknowledge that. And if there was any evidence: we would have allowed the UN to use that evidence to aid in their search for the WMDs; found WMDs after the invvasion; made moves to secure the WMDs during the invasion; equipped troops with gear to deal with WMDs during combat.
(obviously it was not a compelling case, since the invasion was voted down, based on that evidence, by the UN security council to whom it was presented)
That's neat that you saw plenty of polls. I didn't, and I followed the issue daily. I have to go with my own observations, rather than hearsay, and my observations were of a consistent lack of support for the invasion. And, frankly, if there's a 'swing' element to the population that was somehow wildly careening back and forth in their opinion, as though some kind of compelling evidence was being produced to change their minds, then I have to question the intelligence of that portion of the populace.
There are many politically reasons the case was voted down as well as lack of out right eveindace. The siutation was far more complex than that. Everyone had their own agenda, on both sides of the fence and enough money was being made in "oil for food" programs that everyone had their own little vested interest to toy with.
So are you saying I'm lying or making it up that I saw pro war polls? Not withstanding the fact that polls depend on who you ask and when you ask and how you phrase the question, and are pretty meaningless, I also followed the issue daily, and saw that the polls depending on who wanted to prove what to whom. And I saw plenty of pro war polls come out.
Unless of course I'm lying. In which case of course you are right, the whole country was against the war, but naughty Tony went ahead anyway. Cause it was that simple right.
At no point did I say you didn't see the polls. I'm saying I didn't see them. Are you saying that I am somehow filtering polls that do not favour 'my' argument out of my recollection?
Of course everyone had their own agenda, and it was an incredibly complex issue. I'm not attempting to address all the issues, however- simply the one at hand. I don't have an agenda. I have powers of observation and analysis and I used them to come to the conclusion that there was no threat from Iraq, which is why I opposed the war. Events since that time have vindicated my analysis.
It's been my observation that the majority (not the whole) of Britain did not support the war, and that the government assisted in the invasion in spite of this. And, as I stated, that's within their right- decisions of war are not, and should not be, matters of popular vote. That doesn't change what I observed. If you'd like to point me towards these polls, I'd be grateful. I'm merely stating that I haven't seen any to date.
No I'm saying you're dismissing the my claims that there were polls pro war beause you didn't see them.
I can't point you torwards them, because a good chunk of them were on TV (I worked for a cable TV client at the time, had the news on a lot) and it was a few years back now.
My point is not so much that there were polls one way or the other, but that I disagree that the entire country was against the war. From what I observed the entire country was confused and split at best.
I think the war was handled badly, I'm still not entirley sure if it was or wasn' the right thing to do in intself. I think it probably was the right thing to do BUT the way they went about doing it was very badly done, and the way they have gone about handeling the post war situation even more so.
Except I didn't say the whole country was against the war, just a popular majority, to my observation. I'm not dismissing your claims, I just can't substantiate them.
I admit that so much has happened since then that's it's now kind of difficult to imagine Iraq with Saddam in power. The world has changed that much. I think the world is now a more dangerous place, and I think the Middle East is a lot more aggressive towards the west, and I think a lot of people died who didn't need to, for a reason that was manufactured to give the US a foothold in the Middle East.
Whilst I agree that the East is more of a mess now (or at least Iraq is), I think this is from a compeltey shagging up of the post war effort rather than the going to war itself.
I still wouldn't want Saddam in power. If things are worse its not because Saddam was disposed but because the follow through was shafted up the kahoona.
We remember things that support our conclusions, right? So that's what you're BOTH doing. Luckily I think I'm developing dementia and can't recall what proportion of the nation was opposed to the war, but up to a million people prepared to march in London is a pretty clear sign that a lot MORE people weren't happy. And it's a pretty nifty mob.
Actually I heard a news report the other day claiming there were '2' million protestors that day. Seems people on both sides of the war argument are prone to flippant exaggeration.
Whilst a million people marching does indicate a strong protest to the war, it also indicates a passionate opposition to the war. It doesn't necessarily indicate that any one side is more in support than any other, as people don't go on marches if they are in agreement with the government. So there is no way to indicate if there are two million people in favour of the war, if they are sitting at home in agreement with the governments actions.
That's rather convoluted. All I am saying is that a big march alone doesn't necessarily indicate the country being against the war. The only undeniably conclusive fact that one can draw from that is that a million people were passionately opposed to the war. (Or had nothing better to do that day (-: ). Then that's just the engineer in me speaking.
Once you go down the 'perhaps your memory is occluding facts which you don't agree with' path, where do you put a stop to it? Why doesn't my memory block out the fact that we went to war at all, since that doesn't agree with my argument (which is less an argument than an observation)? Does it only block out things I can't find evidence for? Well, that's very clever of it, but until I'm confronted with some kind of, y'know, contrary evidence, I'm forced to rely on my own observations. If, at any point, the majority of the people in this country supported going to war, I'd have to ask them all: Well, why?
Because some people felt that ousting Saddam was a good thing.
Yeees.....and some people think ousting Tony Blair would be a good thing. That doesn't actually give them the right to bomb the United Kingdom to smithereens and then establish a hulking great military base in the middle of London.
Although Tony Blair hasn't been known to actually torture his own citizens.
Oh, I don't know, his guest spot on Radio One was pretty torturous [rimshot]
Tony Blair doesn't have citizens of his own to torture. We're all the Queen's.
Anyway, why does it matter if a majority supported or opposed going to war? The decision to go to war is not decided like a Pop Idol popularity contest, but ought to be the subject of a detailed and informed debate about the many complex and often contradictory issues. And it's not like anyone actually consulted us. Hell, even parliament didn't get to debate the issue properly. The issue of popular support for / opposition to the war is to my mind a smelly herring of the most vivid scarlet hue.
Yeah/nah, I've said that repeatedly. I didn't mention the lack of popular support for the war in order to make a case, I mentioned it as an ancillary point to my post's topic, which was: If one million people marching didn't stop the war, a few thousand people marching aren't going to bring the troops home.