Well, you know – fuck it. It’s obviously time to move on.

What’s half a million dead Iraqis between a party and its electorate, right? Dave – I’m sorry that I ever cast a cloud across your day by saying that I struggled with the notion of my tax bucks financing the violent deaths of thousands of everyday people like myself.

Please – let me get on all fours and lick your anus spanking clean by way of apology.

You and your party of course have my vote.

No.

One can understand if politicians make bad policy for the right reasons, but Blair did not do that. He lied to the People and a caved into the Murdoch Neo con agenda. Which, by the way he is now cashing in on in the most shabby way.

Blair’s recent attempt to play the 9/11 card just makes me want to vomit. Did it never occur to Darling Tony that by removing Saddam he was carrying out one of the Demands Bin Laden had wanted? If we were going to attack any country because of 9/11 we should have marched in to Saudi, seeing as 18 of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Blair’s claim that no one could of foreseen the slaughter after Saddams removal is just not credible. Why the hell did he think the West had propped Saddam up for so long? ER because Tony ,they wanted to stop Iraq from being overrun by Islamic fundamentalism. Congratulations Mr Blair Iraq has more fundies their now than ever before.

But Blair could have been stopped, but Labour MPs were too pathetic and weak to put an end to such idiocy. Even after the war had ended and it became clear to anyone with a brain that they had been sold a pack of lies the Labour MPs still kept on passing law that was pissing our rights away. The treaty with America to allow British people to be taken to America without trial was a joke and no Labour politician should have voted for it.

I don’t want a Cameron govt and all the brown shirts that will come with it but New Labour must be punished for their folly.

Why forgive Labour for the Iraq war when Blair still insists he was right all along and would make the same decisions all over again?

“Tony Blair has spent the day defending his decision to back the war in Iraq, saying he would make the same choices again.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8488572.stm

Britain only went into the Iraq war because of Conservative votes – 139 Labour MPs rebelled in the debate in Parliament just before the invasion on 20 March 2003. This is the BBC news report of the debate in Parliament on 18/19 March 2003 with the voting figures:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2862325.stm

And this reports the names of MPs who voted for the rebel amendment to the government’s motion for the war:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2862397.stm

The LibDems consistently opposed the war throughout and sensibly so. Without the Iraq war, our public finances would be in better shape and there would have been more finance to spare for equipping our troops in Afghanistan.

Don’t forget that an equally pointless war is still going on in Afghanistan. It continues with the full support of both Labour and the Tories. Both continue to lie about it by claiming that it is important and necessary. These lies are little different to Blair’s notorious claims about WMD, since they also cause death and suffering for political purposes.

Forgiveness comes only after repentance, and as long as these futile wars continue, there has been no repentance.

One of the worst points about this election is that Cameron and the tories could win, having supported Blair on the war. Hauge was going on the other day about pointing Nukes at China and Iran. Which shows that tory policy will be to just keep sucking up the American neo con clap trap.

Crikey, I’m in full agreement with sally. Miliband’s a dreadful creature, who even in the best possible interpretation is abysmally tribal (in a self-centred, oh shit,maybe I won’t be PM way…) and fail to appreciate the sheer bloody scale of the horrors of war, or worse sees it all as entirely worthwhile in a neo-liberal crossed with neo-con North Antlanticist, suck off Washington way, (probably nearer the truth).

@4: “Don’t forget that an equally pointless war is still going on in Afghanistan”

Following the 9/11 attacks on America in 2001, the Bush administration in the US invoked the mutual obligation clause in the NATO treaty whereby NATO members undertake to come to the aid of any member subject to an external attack.

It had been transparently clear for many years that al-Qaeda was becoming increasingly entrenched in Afghanistan and using that country as a safe haven for planning and for training jihadists.

The war in Afghanistan may have been badly managed todate but the issues were emphatically not the same issues as with the subsequent Iraq war.

Definitely bloody not!! Get sick and tired of people in power who think we should all move on from this. Why should we? They dragged this country into a useless, unjust and illegal war where hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died, displaced, destitute and so on. The infrastructure has been bombed back into the stone age, Iraqis suffering from the affects of depleted uranium. Plus ongoing occupation.

And Miliband thinks they have been punished enough. I don’t think so! Not near enough, true accountability and in the bloody dock for war crimes. Blair et al have never ever regretted what they did. Instead NL alienated thousands of traditional Labour party supporters/voters who left in droves, this act by Blair et al severely damaged the Labour Party. Miliband should take some responsibility for that.

So if Miliband thinks they have been punished enough he really has no fecking clue!

All jolly good. Apropos of post-Labour getting nuked but Cameron not getting in and being knifed by his own right wing scenarios, who are the big Labour figures who are a) willing to accept that Iraq was a disaster and b) willing to accept PR? I suspect the party will need one or two of them.

Re: Afghanistan… http://bit.ly/b2eD39

Britain only went into the Iraq war because of Conservative votes – 139 Labour MPs rebelled in the debate in Parliament just before the invasion on 20 March 2003. This is the BBC news report of the debate in Parliament on 18/19 March 2003 with the voting figures:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2862325.stm

Er… 254 Labour MPs voted to go to war. It seems a bit inaccurate to say “Britain only went into the Iraq war because of Conservative votes”.

@11: “Er… 254 Labour MPs voted to go to war. It seems a bit inaccurate to say “Britain only went into the Iraq war because of Conservative votes”.”

OK, I stand corrected – but in which case there is even less reason to forgive Labour for the Iraq war because of the deceit to take us into the war and because it was predictable that religious and inter-ethnic strife would very likely develop if Saddam’s repressive regime was abruptly removed without any form of government to replace it.

Let’s be clear, as I’ve posted before, Dr Brian Jones, head of the branch in the Defence Intelligence Service tasked to assess incoming intelligence on WMD, disowned the claims made in the government’s dossier on Iraq’s WMD as published for a special session of Parliament on 24 September 2002.

Elizabeth Wilmhurst, the deputy to the chief legal adviser in the Foreign Office at the time of the invasion, resigned over the government’s claim that the war was legal, a claim that was also disputed by an array of eminent scholars of international law in their letter to the Guardian on 7 March 2003:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/mar/07/highereducation.iraq

Three Labour cabinet ministers at the time of the Iraq invasion gave very different reasons at the Chilcot inquiry for believing that the war was the correct course of action:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/08/david-miliband-iraq-war-inquiry

Tom “who are the big Labour figures who are a) willing to accept that Iraq was a disaster and b) willing to accept PR? I suspect the party will need one or two of them.”

If Labour can’t face up to these two things then fuck um. They can go the way of the dodo.

Good luck to New Labour idiots trying to sell Tory lite to The country.

Blair’s only mistake on Iraq was the WMD thing.

The soft left and liberals seem intent on allowing any kind of heinous regimes to oppress, commit genocide and rape to stay in power by hiding behind discredited international laws which appear to be derived from ‘the divine right of kings’ and designed to allow the population of a country to be oppressed as long as the head of state is left unmolested.

What crap they have come out with since 2003. I’m proud to be a lefty. I’m the person Paul Dacre warns you about. War in Iraq – where we were just one of several junior partners to America – will one day be seen for what it was. A victory of universal rights over the power of the nation state.

Tremble in your boots Burmese generals. You’re next.

No. Forgiveness can only happen when Labour admits that their actions were wrong and were based upon suspect information which they then ‘adapted’ to strengthen the case for war.

When they have admitted fault and made the appropriate apology, perhaps forgiveness will be forthcoming. But while Blair is swanning round the world, trading on his time as PM, carrying out the laughable position of Middle East Peace Envoy and earning millions, there should be and will be no forgiveness.

Milliband has a track record of being a zionist. Ourselves and the americans invaded Iraq because it was in Israel’s interest to do so, the same reason as we’ll invade Iran.

Oil isn’t a good reason to invade anyone, Saddam would have sold us the oil for less than we’ve paid in treasure and blood to take it from him.

The idea that we went there for some moral conviction or the commony touted “weapons of mass destuction” is risible.

I think these are obvious points. Thoughts please.

I am not aware of any senior politicians being punished in any way for the invasion of Iraq. Milliband seems to be suggesting that continuing to be asked questions, continuing to be criticised and losing votes is a form of punishment. Aren’t these normal parts of the democratic process?

@John Tallon

The soft left and liberals seem intent on allowing any kind of heinous regimes to oppress, commit genocide and rape to stay in power …

Indeed, the soft left and liberals are to blame. This is why Bush Snr and John Major removed Saddam after Gulf War I citing the Iran-Iraq War and Halabja. Case closed; another nasty tyrant down. If you cared even a smidgen about facts, there’s a bio of Dick Cheney called ‘Vice’ which contains the entire text of a lecture he gave at West Point in the mid-90s (1994 from memory) on why as Secretary of Defense during Gulf War I, they didn’t. It had nothing to do with the ‘divine right of kings’ and a lot to do with rather impressive prescience of the US being bogged down and attacked by all factions. It’s called pragmatism.

@Brit. Oh, piss off. How was it in Israel’s interest to invade Iraq when Iraq wasn’t a credible military power given weapons inspections and sanctions?

In my opinion Iraq isn’t something Labour should feel like they need to apologise. Arguments about the legality of the invasion have always seemed somewhat facetious – it’s a war, issues of legality don’t really come into it – and while no WMD’s where discovered Saddam had previously had such weapons, and was doing everything in his power to make us think he had such a deterrent in the run up to the war. It should be remembered that he claimed to have access to chemical weapons in the run up to the invasion, and threatened to use them in invading troops. Beyond that, no one can deny that Iraq is a better country today than it was in 2003 – they have recently had free, open elections. They have basic human rights, schools, access to the international community and the ability to go home at night without having to fear that they will be seized by the police, tortured, raped and killed. Yes, there is still violence, but no more than under Saddam. And isn’t it better that the violence is committed by an angry minority, rather than in the form of state sponsored genocide?
@ Brit

I stopped reading when you called Milliband a Zionist. I assume what you said afterwards was mind numbingly stupid, but I that’s just my reaction to anti-Semitism.

In September 1939, Nazi Germany claimed it was invading Poland to protect the German-speaking population of Danzig. By the time WW2 had ended, between 40 and 50 millions had been killed.

In Blair’s keynote speech to the Chicago Economic Club in April 1999, he said:

“If we want a world ruled by law and by international co-operation then we have to support the UN as its central pillar.”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june99/blair_doctrine4-23.html

Evidently, Blair believed sanction from the UN Security Council for the Iraq invasion was important or he wouldn’t have pressed Bush so hard to strive to get one but when such a resolution wasn’t forthcoming, he went on as though that didn’t matter.

There were and are plenty of other countries with repressive regimes for which regime change could be liberating – Burma, China, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Zimbabwe . . to mention but a few.

The soft left and liberals seem intent on allowing any kind of heinous regimes to oppress, commit genocide and rape to stay in power by hiding behind discredited international laws which appear to be derived from ‘the divine right of kings’ and designed to allow the population of a country to be oppressed as long as the head of state is left unmolested.

I love this. Because Iraq is now a fluffy place of pink pillows and fluffy puppies. Honestly, over the years I’ve come to grant some vague respect for some realist (with a capital R) right wing thinkers. They, at least, actually take the time to wonder whether any insane schemes for freedomalisationalism will kill significantly more people than leaving that shit alone.

The actual left-wing liberal interventionalist really couldn’t give a fuck about the consequences of his deluded and deranged politics. Rewind the clock five years, and the John Tallons of this world are telling us that there is no civil war, and that with only a bit more violence, Iraq will be fine. I can’t be arsed to seek out the weblinks, but take it from me – that was their stance.

That’s assuming that John isn’t a hilarious fake persona. After the total, 100% failure of our Let’s invade Iraq in self-defence operation, I struggle with the idea that anyone would buy his bullshit wholesale.

Louise aka Harpymarx, as a Labour member it might be convenient for you to distinguish between “New Labour” (the evil, warmongering, privatising monster you hate – a Mr Hyde) and “Labour” proper (the lovely, fluffy, socialist true version you love – a Dr Jekyll) – but they are one and the same. You cannot punish a party from within.

Instead NL alienated thousands of traditional Labour party supporters/voters who left in droves, this act by Blair et al severely damaged the Labour Party.

Because that is, of course, the real issue here. Words fail me.

The Labour party IS New Labour. New Labour is about to die, and with it the Labour party. The Lib Dems will replace you as the real centre-left party in politics, with all of the progressive values you have paid your membership fees to see betrayed, but none of the authoritarian/warmongering bullshit like ID cards, Trident, anti-civil liberties laws, the database state, and even more stupid, bloody wars.

Can we just get a few things straight about pre-invasion Iraq? A tiny minority lorded it over every other community. There wasn’t the kind of insurgency that developed against our occupation, because if there had been, Saddam would have sent his tanks in to wipe out a large chunk of the community the insurgents came from, and would then have forcibly relocated all the survivors to some desert. The reason there was no revolution by the Kurds and the various Shi’a groups wasn’t that they didn’t want one, it was that they knew that the balance of forces was so weighted against them militarily, against an enemy with no qualms about mass murder, that it was a lost cause.

It’s obvious that the occupation was disastrously mismanaged, as Cockburn’s book shows. It’s also obvious that Blair took us to war because he’s committed to the post-Suez FCO consensus on the paramount need to lick American bottom. (although even in the State Dept and the FCO, most of the arabists shared the French view that it was nuts to go attack OUR sonavabitch, our bulwark against Iranian influence and pressure on Arab oil producers).

Nonetheless, let’s not forget that the invasion released Iraq from a repulsive tyranny and gave the Kurdish people their first real chance at the nationhood they are entitled to. If the Iraqi majority had risen up in revolt against Saddam , we would have thought they were right to do so, even if the costs were bound to be high.

If the Government will come clean about their connivance at special rendition, the tolerance of US ‘misuse’ of Diego Garcia, their participation in torture and stop their continuing misuse of terrorist threats to justify restricting liberties as a starting point then they might have a case for putting the Iraq behind them. Funny though, I’ve not heard anything of this from the former Mr Moneybags Chancellor brown who financed the adventurism.

James Rathbone –

They have basic human rights, schools, access to the international community and the ability to go home at night without having to fear that they will be seized by the police, tortured, raped and killed

I wish you weren’t wrong…

Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country’s Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say.

But, tragically, you are…

Violence continued Saturday, as bombs hidden in three plastic bags exploded simultaneously in a billiard hall in a religiously mixed neighborhood in western Baghdad, killing 13 people and wounding 25, according to police and hospital officials.

John Tallon –

Tremble in your boots Burmese generals. You’re next.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RzCB3VRruE

Before he resigned as PM, Blair was allowed to make a number of speeches in which he developed his ideas about liberal interventionism. These are dangerous and naive ideas. They involve breaking international law. They make a lot of over-optimistic assumptions about avoiding the unintended consequences of war and about being able to rebuild a state after an intervention. The case of Iraq illustrates very clearly the absurdity of the assumption that removing a bad leader automatically leads to a better outcome. Military intervention is not the magic bullet solution to rogue states or to failed states. The intervention in Iraq created, between 2005 and 2008, a failed state which served as a training ground for terrorists (supposedly the very thing that we were supposed to be trying to prevent). We only have sketchy ideas about how to rebuild weak states and in any case this is necessarily a long-term project: Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Bosnia are a peace but the long-term structural issues are hardly being dealt with. The ideas of liberal interventionism are naive because they ignore how much work is involved in building the accountable institutions that are the buildng blocks of a functioning state.

I won’t be voting Labour (which is what Milliband presumably means by punishment) because it seems to be strongly influenced by these naive and dangerous ideas that are against international law. Milliband himself, at the Chilcot Inquiry, was hinting at needing to ignore the UN Charter because of “overgoverned states” and “ungoverned spaces”. Gordon Brown was saying something similar at Chilcot about failed states. Denis MacShane is a member of the Henry Jackson Society (which campaigns for this kind of dangerous policy) yet is seen in the Labour Party as someone who knows about foreign issues and regularly contributes about them to CiF. Gisela Stuart is a member of the Henry Jackson Society but is also a Labour MP and represents Labour on the Foreign Affairs Committee (voting against its recent report recommending a more heard-headed attitude to the relationship with the USA). Blair himself was brought in to campaign for Labour, despite his views. The Labour Party still seems to tolerate its members insulting people who opposed the invasion of Iraq.

The Labour Party seems to want to have its cake and eat it. It appears to want to claim that it has learnt lessons about the invasion of Iraq without actually saying what lessons it has learnt. I don’t see any signs that the Labour Party has really learnt any lessons about the risks of liberal interventionism so why should I vote for it?

Tremble in your boots Burmese generals. You’re next.

They’re really not, you know. And neither are the dictators and despots who rule Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

By the way, I wish Clegg would realise that it’s only meaningful to refer to an “illegal war” if he’s going to press for prosecutions.

But this is exactly it.

There are hundreds of thousands of voters who will never vote Labour again as long as they hear such crap about Iraq from MIliband & al.

This is what reminds the electorate of the worst years of Blairite arrogance. This is what shows that, despite all the posturing, Labour hasn’t “been listening”.

The Iraq blodbath and the lies behind it aren’t a dodgy donation, a crooked peerage or a policy gone wrong. It was the biggest mistake in foreign policy since Suez and its repercussions will be felt for god knows how long at all levels.

I know it’s hardly scientific evidence, but most former Labour voters I’ve been speaking to these days have said that, if they heard Gordon Brown or some other top Labour people making amends on Iraq, they would at least consider voting Labour again.

The danger is that not voting Labour because of the Iraq war will just let the even more Hawkish Conservatives in. Cameron, Hague & Iain Duncan Smith all voted for the Iraq war & still think it was the right thing to have done.

The BBC can’t have been helping. All I’ve heard for two weeks is how the Lib Dems are going to have a tougher time getting the vote because the war on Iraq is over now. It just makes me angry every time I hear this, as if 2005 was the only opportunity for people to register their disdain at the government’s choice and now people are either not allowed, or too stupid to remember, to vote against the government on this clusterfuck.

@ Ben Six

Iraq may not be perfect, but you can’t deny that there has been real a improvement. The 2010 election was fundamentally democratic, and the next government will be representative and legitimate. You also can’t get away from the fact that the government, whatever it’s faults, does not commit genocide, does not invade it’s neighbors and has not gassed the Kurds.

No they shouldn’t, and they aren’t going to be.

Labour aren’t heading for a disasterous result solely, or even mainly, on the basis of their Iraq policy. I accept it’s important, more so to some people than others, but it’s only part of the equation.

To answer the question at the end of the OP, we aren’t JUST pissed off about the war…..hell no. We have a list. It’s a long list. You can only look back to 1997 wistfully and wonder what might have been.

As for risking a Tory election victory in a fit of pique… I think you’ll find the electorate might have found a way round that: it’s called a hung parliament. Isn’t it a shame it took 13 years for the Labour party had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards a progressive agenda by an electorate outraged (amongst aother things) by their lack of principles, their illiberality, and an increasing realisation that the current system is rotten to the core.

I hope Milliband and his ilk have the grace to feel ashamed of their record…. but I’m not holding out much hope.

For a great many people, yes – I agree. However, it remains violent, poor, repressive and ridden with murderous bigotry. Infrastructure is incredibly fragile and they have a vast, swelling army that, while maintaining a semblance of calm, isn’t above the most heinous abuses. And this situation only came to be at the cost of thousand upon thousand of lives. I hope, with all the feeling I can muster, that things improve for the poor, woebegone souls, but the pain that they’ve been forced through is clearly something that its engineers bear responsibility for. They haven’t been “punished” at all.

– it’s a war, issues of legality don’t really come into it

ha ha!

So, Bensix if “the pain that they’ve been forced through is clearly something that its engineers bear responsibility for” and it had been the result of an autochtonous revolution against Saddam’s murderous regime, would that responsibility warrant complete condemnation? If not, then why does the US intervention?

Our war in Iraq was a foreign policy disaster for our national interest. I very much doubt that you will find many Kurds who will say that it was a disaster for them.

So, Bensix if “the pain that they’ve been forced through is clearly something that its engineers bear responsibility for” and it had been the result of an autochtonous revolution against Saddam’s murderous regime, would that responsibility warrant complete condemnation?

If that pain had been forseeable, they’d bear responsibility, yes. This may be relevant. The US/UK intervention, though, was a cynical one, and based, in large part, on deceits. If we cleave to virtue ethics, then – just for a moment, I promise – they’re more contemptible.

I very much doubt that you will find many Kurds who will say that it was a disaster for them.

True, but they represent a small fraction of the people affected by the war, and, thus, shouldn’t be the sole consideration. Imagine if one were to judge the US Civil War, for example, by focussing on its consequences in the lives of white, Deep Southern farmers.

Funny, the comments page gets censored when someone’s opinion doesn’t conform to standard liberal dogma.

Such a typical liberal position, suppress dissent with censorship. You aren’t doing much to change people’s stereotypes of yourselves.

Brit, don’t be ludicrous. You sound like a hysteric channeling Richard Littlejohn.

Oh look Brit the troll has come with the standard right wing bullshit. And the same tired mantra, Ie Talk crap, and then whine when he gets called on it.

Right wing trolls are so boring, they just repeat themselves.

Flying Rodent: “Here’s David Miliband, on the invasion, occupation and substantial destruction of Iraq: “I said to him, ‘Look, you’ve punished us enough about Iraq, all right?””

Some religious believers proclaim absolute forgiveness. The sinner does not need to repent before forgiveness is granted.

Other believers expect that the sinner acknowledges the sin before s/he can become accepted. This code is also one of the requirements of the English/Welsh legal system. Murderers cannot be released on licence until they admit their offence, and will serve their sentence term and more until they admit. We are all familiar with injustice cases.

Milband does not have an injustice case to present for New Labour. He doesn’t even understand how to ask for absolution.

To be clear here, the post title “Should Labour be forgiven for the Iraq War” is the work of the editors. I’m just noting the irony in the party hurling itself on the public’s mercy, weeping with remorse, over some dodgy expenses claims while simultaneously getting all arsey about their insane military clusterfuck.

Weird priorities there.

@ sally

Called on what?

I suggested that David Milliband might have pro-israel political positions (a position which can be illustrated with reams of data) and I am called an anti-semite and my opinions deemed beneath discussion.

Surely if I’m an anti-semite then you would also be an anti-semite for opposing Israel’s genocide of palestinians. I smell hypocrisy.

Instead of deleting comments why don’t you answer them. all you have is deletion and playground taunts of “anti-semite”.

I suppose next you’ll call me a racist or delete this. Marxist fascists.

Bensix

Everybody in Iraq is affected by the war, and the Kurds are about one fifth of the population.

Do you really think the many Shia tribal groups systematically persecuted under Saddam would be any more willing to see the clock turned back if it would avoid the bloodshed of the insurgency?

Sure, you can find plenty of Shia and Sunni Baghdadis who will say they are worse off now and that their suffering was not worth the little they have gained, but it is they, not the Kurdish and Shia majority in the rest of the country who are your “white farmer” minority.

Nobody is denying that there is a responsibility incurred by revolutionaries.. the question you have to ask yourself is whether that means that revolution is never worth it.

On intentionality, I’m with Sen and consequentialism. As for the Kosovo intervention, Wesley Clark is still a hero to most Kosovars.

Nobody is denying that there is a responsibility incurred by revolutionaries.. the question you have to ask yourself is whether that means that revolution is never worth it.

Well, no. Is a revolution not “worth it“, however, if it kills more than it saves; harms more than it heals and traps more than it frees? Yes. See comment 34.

(And, by the way, I wasn’t using the Civil War as a clearly just example. It may be, but I know little about it.)

Jesus, just what the internet needs – another flame-heavy thread filled with people banging on about Israel and the Palestinians and calling each other genocidal fascists. You never see any of them these days, they’re like gold dust.

I don’t have administrative permissions here, but if I did I’d delete and ban anyone spouting off about Israel/Palestine in unconnected threads. Not because their opinions are threatening or racist or devastatingly insightful, but because they’re brutally tedious.

And just because I’d also have I/P trolls lined up and shot execution-style if I siezed dictatorial control of the country in an ultraviolent and murderous bloodbath, that doesn’t somehow make me a “Marxist fascist”. It hurts my feelings when people say things like that.

@flyingrodent

Ah yes, once again true to form, sneering instead of answering.

Yes because you never see any liberals who shout “racist” or “anti-semite” at anyone they disagree with. They’re like gold dust.

The Iraq war took place, at least in large part, because the Israeli lobby in the United States wanted it. David Milliband has a track record of being pro-israel. What is inflammatory or anti-semitic about these statements? If I say that Michael Schumacher is pro-german does that make me “anti-german”. Would you actually debate me if I provided data, or would you just delete it even quicker?

It is you who holds the proposterous positions, masquerading behind intellectual snobbery whilst blanking out, orwell-style, anything which doesn’t fit your skewed world view.

Brit 39 “Such a typical liberal position, suppress dissent with censorship. You aren’t doing much to change people’s stereotypes of yourselves.”

Brit 48 “Ah yes, once again true to form, sneering instead of answering.”

Priceless!

Rant, yawn. Bored. Why are young people uninterested in politics? The reason is defined in this thread.

What is inflammatory or anti-semitic about these statements?

Never said they were, don’t care if they are. It’s the horrifying inevitability that any given comments thread will eventually gravitate towards the world’s most intractable and insane conflict, and the boredom that ensues that’s the problem.

The thing I find strangest about all this is that Iraq seems to have become an issue only in this election. Why didn’t those on the liberal left hammer Labour for it in 2005? I found it amazing that Labour managed to win that election! Where was all the outrage then?
Why didn’t the Lib Dems and Greens benefit from loads of unhappy ex-Labour voters five years ago?

When the people of Iraq forgive, I think ill find it in my heart to follow suit.

@52

From what I can remember in the 2005 election lefties were very reluctant to vote Labour, just the threat of a Tory gov (led by Michael Howard lest we forget) was stronger in the end.
I think (no stats to hand) that the maj of the public back then actually supported the war in Iraq anyway.
And the LDs were mostly invisible (no TV debates heh 😉 )

Maybe when our government starts realising we’re not gullible idiots, and starts apologising for contributing to the deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians.

“Why didn’t the Lib Dems and Greens benefit from loads of unhappy ex-Labour voters five years ago?”

1 In 2005 it hadn’t become clear what a disaster the invasion had created

2 Some voters thought that they were voting Blair but getting Brown, who would bring the troops home and make clear that the UK supported international law. There were some tactical voting websites, which helped to reduce the Labour majority as a warning.

In the end Brown seems to have taken Labour in more or less the same direction as Blair. The chickens have come home to roost 7 years later.