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Johann Hari on Iraq: "I was terribly wrong"

X-77

Active Member
One of the so-called pro-war left, Johann Hari hangs his head in shame at supporting the invasion of Iraq. Only took him three years to realise then.. :rolleyes:

The lamest defence I could offer – one used by many supporters of the war as they slam into reverse gear – is that I still support the principle of invasion, it’s just the Bush administration screwed it up. But as one anti-war friend snapped at me when I mooted this argument, “Yeah, who would ever have thought that supporting George Bush in the illegal invasion of an Arab country would go wrong?” She’s right: the truth is that there was no pure Platonic ideal of The Perfect Invasion to support, no abstract idea we lent our names to. There was only Bush, with his cluster bombs, depleted uranium, IMF-ed up economic model, bogus rationale and unmistakable stench of petrol, offering his war, his way. (Expecting Tony Blair to use his influence was, it is now clear, a delusion, as he refuses to even frontally condemn the American torture camp at Guantanomo Bay).
http://www.johannhari.com/index.php
 
Gave me great pleasure to see the smug bastard having to eat his own words. All through the big demos he poured scorn on those opposing Blair and Bush and now he is having to eat very humble pie as all that the anti war people predicted has come true. It was the presence of Hari that made me avoid newspapers that he was in.
 
At least he has the cojones to admit that he was wrong, he's still a smug self-righteous little turd tho'
 
If my memory serves me well.....this cunts old man was a senior loyalist UDA man responsible for the killing of many catholics in Belfast....
Is this the guy who writes for the Independent?? and i think he`s gay..which i believe was one of the reasons why he had to leave the area his father nominally ruled and came to London.
 
Oh, they queue up now that it's completely fucking undeniable rather than just obvious to anyone with a fucking brain. "Oops, sorry for being an wet-left establishment cheerleader, can't think how that might have happened." And the next time it'll be exactly the same.
 
Whens that tosser Aaronovitch going to apologise?

At least Hitchens has the excuse of being a drunk mentalist.
 
it was good wasn't it! I actually forgive him ~ his rationale was based on meeting with Iraqis in Iraq who thought itwas a good idea - i believe he had the best interests of Iraqi's in his mind - muppet.
 
cemertyone said:
If my memory serves me well.....this cunts old man was a senior loyalist UDA man responsible for the killing of many catholics in Belfast....
Is this the guy who writes for the Independent?? and i think he`s gay..which i believe was one of the reasons why he had to leave the area his father nominally ruled and came to London.

Nah that must have been me or Fanta your thinking of.

Loyalist my arse.

or do you just imagine everyone who you disagree with to be a secret Paislyite? :rolleyes:
 
niksativa said:
it was good wasn't it! I actually forgive him ~ his rationale was based on meeting with Iraqis in Iraq who thought itwas a good idea - i believe he had the best interests of Iraqi's in his mind - muppet.
why'd it take him three whole years to figure out that it was a completely wrong decision to support though?

Don't think I can forgive any of these tossers who actually make their living drumming up support for wars no matter how 'sorry' they are when the shit well and truly hits the fan :mad:
 
I opposed the war the moment I saw it advertised on the news six months before the bombing began. I have not had one nano-second since where I thought it was anything other than illegal, immoral, and an awful waste of resources we need to fight global warming.

In the past couple of weeks I have read some accounts of people who believed the war was right based on what Saddam Hussein's regime did to its people. I have come to understand this viewpoint now. I do not believe it is right, however, and I do not believe it was the primary motivation for Bush's intervention. What happened under Saddam happens in many parts of the world. Craig Murray was sidelined for pointing out the same things were going on in Uzbekistan.

What was done by the Saddam regime was appalling. However, bombing someone into peace NEVER works. Many of the reasons for the brutality of the Saddam regime lay in the repeated ill-advised military interventions of the past, notably Britain's. Even if the invasion had been significantly more 'humanitarian', it would not have worked. Just as Rachel Carson pointed out that aerial bombardment of unwanted insects actually made the environment worse over time, so we need to analyse war in the same way - it ruins peoples, places, and the ecological balance. ALWAYS.

There is a current vogue for asserting the 'utility of force'. The lesson of every single page of the history books is the futility of force. It is called the law of karma. It is good to see that people like Hari, who took the wrong path for the right reasons, are seeing the light. What is distressing is the inability of someone like Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, who took the wrong path for the wrong reasons, to see the error of their ways. Perhaps only exile and the long period of meditation that comes with it would do the job.

This is not acceptable.
 
cemertyone said:
If my memory serves me well.....this cunts old man was a senior loyalist UDA man responsible for the killing of many catholics in Belfast....
Is this the guy who writes for the Independent?? and i think he`s gay..which i believe was one of the reasons why he had to leave the area his father nominally ruled and came to London.

it is a totally different guy you're talking about and he stopped working for the indy a long time ago. he wasn't doing any political stuff either. all I remember was a column on his life as a gay man.
 
Belushi said:
Whens that tosser Aaronovitch going to apologise?

At least Hitchens has the excuse of being a drunk mentalist.
How about Nick Cohen then?

I used to think he was alright. It turns out he's a warmongering cunt.
 
X-77 said:
Don't think I can forgive any of these tossers who actually make their living drumming up support for wars no matter how 'sorry' they are when the shit well and truly hits the fan :mad:

They are unforgiveable mate. They are just as culpable as the criminal leaders who take us into these 'wars'. In societies such as ours, our leaders can only do things that the media allow to happen. When we have journos banging on about how this or that war is a good idea, then all of humanity is fucked. It's one of the bigger cons in the human world that war is inevitable.

It is only inevitable with apologists for the deeply criminal and violent leaders writing in newspapers. Here, a recent article from pilger about this subject...


"For me, one of the more odious characteristics of Blair, and Bush, and Clinton, and their eager or gulled journalistic court, is the enthusiasm of sedentary, effete men (and women) for bloodshed they never see, bits of body they never have to retch over, stacked morgues they will never have to visit, searching for a loved one. Their role is to enforce parallel worlds of unspoken truth and public lies. That Milosevic was a minnow compared with industrial-scale killers such as Bush and Blair belongs to the former."

http://www.newstatesman.com/200603270016
 
MatthewCuffe said:
There is a current vogue for asserting the 'utility of force'. The lesson of every single page of the history books is the futility of force. It is called the law of karma.

Futility for who though matthew? Not for the likes of bush and blair. In fact, not only is using force not futile, it is necessary for them to continue their pillage of humanity and human resources. Their need to dominate can only be fueled when there are times of division, conflict, and war. The only reason we have all of this is so they can feed off the trough of our endeavours and hard work.

They, and i include the likes of this absurd journalist, are the enemies of compassion, the enemies of justice, and the enemies of peace. While we humans continue to use politics as our default way of organising our lives, we will continue to have force and war.

It is not about futility, it's about criminality. And these arch criminals such as bush and blair get away with their murders and their disgusting crimes because of people like this misguided tosser hari. Fucking send all these war apologist journos over to the battleground, and see if they change their pathetic minds in somewhat quicker time than three years.
 
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