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It believes that the national approach is a better guarantee of peace and stability than the transnational alternative, and cases like the Iraq war provide some evidence for this conclusion. According to the national view, the business of politics is to maintain law, order, peace, freedom, and security within the borders of a sovereign state.
I was not persuaded that going to war in Iraq was right, because the official arguments were fuzzy, shifty, and changed from day to day. Once democratic governments cannot trust their people to respond to honest persuasion but resort instead to half-truths and propaganda, democracy suffers.
These arguments were pressed into service once again against the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and yet again against the war in Iraq in 2003. Nevertheless, these arguments had few supporters in 1999. These supporters were primarily recruited from the extreme right and “sovereignists,” who refused to accept a violation of Serbian sovereignty, a traditional ally of France.
My wife, Carol Hartigan, and my daughters, Sophie and Eliza, deserve special field commendations for enduring the many times when I brought the Iraq war into the blissful space of our family life. They understand that the realities of the world do not stop at the doorstep of hearth and home, even though sometimes it is better that they should.
This chapter shows the conflicting views on the Iraq war through the argument between two friends who share different opinions. The one who believes that the war was justified thinks the leftists have been unable to see the antifascist nature of the war because they are blinded by their revulsion towards George W. Bush.
IAN BURUMA lived and worked in Japan and Hong Kong for many years. He is the author of Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing (Vintage, 2003); The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West (Vintage, 2003); Anglomania: A European Love Affair (Orion, 2001); A Japanese Mirror (New American Library, 1985); God’s Dust: A Modern Asian Journey (Noonday, 1990 ...
Iraq had become a leading sponsor and advocate of Islamist violence, abandoning its former “secular” rhetoric for tirades in favor of jihad; openly financing the suicide bombers in Israel and the occupied territories; holding conferences that called for holy war; promulgating the crudest forms of anti-Semitism; building mosques named for Saddam Hussein; and maintaining at least arm’s ...
