A Rather Special Day

On the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the pretexts for which were so ferally swallowed by the great media beast, it takes a special kind of journalistic courage to claim, as Britain's leading liberal newspaper claims today, that Daveybloke's little rah-rah in favour of bombing Libyans represents "the first major foreign policy triumph of his premiership". On the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a disastrously drawn-out, avoidably inhumane and messy calamity in which the British government has been shown in the most clear and humiliating light as the abject vassal of a super-power gone to seed, it takes a special kind of memory to draw lessons from "Tony Blair's success, in the face of deep scepticism in Washington, in persuading Bill Clinton to authorise the use of ground troops in Kosovo". On the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, for which one of the more laughable pretexts was the protection of civilians from a foaming dictator, it takes a very special kind of Liberal Democrat to agree with the mercenary contractor Malcolm Rifkind that everything's going to be rosy just because the UN and the Arab League's more convenient dictators have fallen into line this time.