Our Civilising Influence

As the Chilcot report crawls towards publication, and the Ascended Incarnation of the Reverend Blair crawls to remind us that the judgements of man are as nought to the justice of his chums George and Jesus, it seems the democratic legacy is getting all freedomised up again. The Iraqi army is about to storm Fallujah, where about fifty thousand people are being held hostage, amid acute shortages of food and medicine, by the Fighting Islamic Sons of Tony. It is reported that execution squads are roaming the streets ready to evangelise with extreme prejudice anyone who leaves their house or shows a white flag.

During the crusade against Saddam Hussein, the city of Fallujah was the scene of at least one massacre by US troops before being taken over by insurgents and then liberated with extreme prejudice by the forces of righteousness. Fortunately, its history for the purposes of journalism begins ten years after those regrettable events; and it is arguable that Saddam Hussein would have done much worse to the city had his weapons of mass ethereality possessed the awesome destructive power which almost everybody except the global population at large believed they did at the time.