But when we say the Left got this war wrong, we must be clear that this was no innocent error of judgment. Too many wilfully let a self-indulgent loathing of capitalism, or the US or John Howard blind them to the real truths and the real evil.
NOR can we let the myth grow that the Left always knew the war would be won easily, and was worried more by the peace.
Not true. Below, I will recall just some of “peace” activists’ predictions to show how they dreamed of a war in which millions died, and Iraqis greeted our soldiers not with kisses but bullets. Overseas, too, anti-war propagandists luridly dreamed of American honour drowning in Iraqi blood.
These are now many of the same people sneering that Iraq has plunged into anarchy, and will forever be a sleazy “puppet state” of the US. How lovingly they linger on news of looting.
Iraq may indeed go sour, although with effort, help and much time, it probably won’t. But however Iraq turns out, we at least know it is no longer a threat. And whatever troubles it faces, they will not be greater than the horrors it has endured.
Iraq’s future we cannot tell, but one thing we do know is that most of those now preaching doom were spectacularly wrong about the war itself. Why would they be so right now?
It is time we held them accountable. No more must they lightly skip from one disreputable cause to another — preaching woe in the first Gulf War, disaster in Afghanistan, apocalypse in Iraq — and always warning of the catastrophic consequences of resisting evil.
Read the whole thing. (Via Tim Blair).