Thursday 17 February 2011

Which army is the lesser evil?

Anxious times in Egypt. With the army in control, will the country really move towards freedom and democracy, or are we going to see a decline into chaos followed by more autocracy?

Perhaps one ought to be thankful that it's the Egyptian army that’s on the streets. In Iraq, it's the American army. With democracy no more secure in Baghdad than in Cairo, at last in Egypt you can count the civilian deaths in tens rather than in tens of thousands.


Egyptian tanks in the streets of Cairo: cause for concern...

...but probably preferable to the US equivalent in Iraq

Postscript

So it's confirmed that the justification for the Iraq war was based on one man's lies about weapons of mass destruction, taken as gospel by various Western governments and their so-called ‘intelligence’ services (demonstrating the old principle that ‘military intelligence’ is an oxymoron, like ‘airline food’). Amazingly, they gave this ‘agent’ the cover name ‘Curveball’ which rather suggests they realised he was misleading them – I don’t know a lot about baseball, but I think a curveball is specifically designed to fool the batter by its tricksy trajectory.

Anyway, it certainly vindicates all those who were saying back in 2003 that Hans Blix was probably right and there weren’t any WMD in Iraq. It also helps answer another major question: were our leaders knaves or fools?

The answer seems to be that Bush was a fool and Blair a knave.

2 comments:

Awoogamuffin said...

I find a lot of things about these uprisings confusing, but none so much as the role of the army. Are they genuinely concerned for the good of the people? power hungry? or just aware of which way the wind is blowing?

David Beeson said...

Well, I suppose history gives us a lot of evidence from experience about the commitment of armies to human rights.

I guess we can draw our own conclusions.

At least the Egyptian (civilian) population seems to be keeping up the pressure.