I supported this war. I did it in a queasy, compromising way ? like all the pro-war lefties I know. I have a phrase: “…conditional support”. I don’t feel any more comfortable now than I did before the invasion began but my support holds, although I’m keeping open the possibility that I’ve made an enormous mistake. It’ll probably be a brilliant article like this one, by Edward Said, a man I admire hugely, that convinces me I have:
“This is the most reckless war in modern times. It is all about imperial arrogance unschooled in worldliness, unfettered either by competence or experience, undeterred by history or human complexity, unrepentant in its violence and the cruelty of its technology. What winning, or for that matter losing, such a war will ultimately entail is unthinkable. But pity the Iraqi civilians who must still suffer a great deal more before they are finally ‘liberated’.”