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An Unusually Conscientious War Supporter
Britain is a democracy. And so, contrary to protestations, the war was done in all our names, and we cannot waive our responsibility with a placard. But some of us - the invasion enthusiasts - are more responsible than others. We stoked the will to war. Today I am haunted by a picture I saw last year, not quite inadvertently, on one of those ghoulish atrocity websites, of the body of a girl with her head staved in.What have we done? This week, Colin Powell's former chief of staff accused Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld et al of "daydreaming", and perhaps he is right. It is easy to say, looking back, that the principle was good but the practice was bungled. But it is not enough to have a vision of liberty without an understanding of the mission to get there. For two years we have struggled to make the practice conform to the principle, and the time might be approaching when we must accept that the principle was always impractical, and the project should never have been attempted. ~Danny Kruger, The Daily Telegraph
This is one of the few columns of the limited remorseful war supporter genre to emerge in the last two years, and it is certainly one of the most honest and thoughtful. It is definitely the only one I know of that acknowledges the special moral responsibility of war supporters who publicly urged the start of hostilities. Of course, Mr. Kruger reverts to the usual optimistic cant at the end, but there is at least the sense that his optimism stems from a sincere desire not to have defended completely futile and immoral war rather than the usual indifference to the consequences. What is lamentable is that there is simply so little evidence of such pangs of conscience among most war supporters here. Among these there is an obsessive certitude about the rightness of a war that, by all our traditional standards, would normally be denounced if someone else were doing it. Mr. Kruger's unease with the war is as refreshing as its virtual uniqueness is disheartening.
Daniel Larison | December 01, 2005
Comments
This is a very interesting perspective on the war. It is a good demonstration on the practical destabilizing effect of war and "freedom" - which can be more harrowing for average people than the sort of tyranny exercised by Saddam. Surely Saddam's reigh was awful - and unfortunately the United States was far too implicated in his rule - but now we are directly responsible for the lives of Iraqis after having made them our protectorate in the region- this article demonstrates also the stunning lack of thought among war supporters early on. Order is necessary for freedom - freedom does not spontaneously generate order.
Michael Brendan Dougherty | 12/01/05 17:14
Mr. Kruger certainly shows us all the limitations of the "invasion enthusiast" (I did appreciate that he honestly described himself in this way, as so many war supporters shrink from the label, moaning about how "war is always a last resort," etc.). Of course, anyone who has ever read a decent history book knows that war is destabilising and dangerous to human freedom. "Invasion enthusiasts" really have no excuse for waking up so late, assuming they ever do wake up as Mr. Kruger has (sort of) done.
Daniel Larison | 12/02/05 14:36
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