The leaders of both the mainstream parties in Britain continue to support involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. And apart from the valiant but small group of antiwar campaigners, the country seems to have forgotten that a million Iraqis have died since the occupation of their country, three million have become refugees and millions in the country face the most horrendous conditions in their everyday lives. If a country considered hostile to the west had behaved in this fashion, the outcry would have been deafening.
Leave aside his made up numbers (even the wildly anti-war Iraq Body Count claims less than a tenth of his million claim), and leave aside the fact that the "outcry" has been decidedly deafening. Tariq Ali is ignoring the little detail that Iraqis and Afghanis were being regularly murdered, tortured, and oppressed by their rulers before the invasions. Of course, those rulers were Muslims, and to the Tariq Alis, it is okay to have Muslims murdered and tortured, to have Muslim women forcibly kept illiterate, as long as another Muslim does it. Dead Muslims matter only as means for his ilk to attack the West.
I note in passing that a lot of commenters have made fun of old Tariq because the mayor of London does not exactly have a big role in decisions about going to war. This one struck me as particularly funny:
So with Ken Livingstone as Mayor the Greater London Army won't get itself embroiled in any messy conflicts.
Good to see the Guardian focussing of the real issues for once.
