Shoukran Shawcross

The Shawcross mystery continues. It was William Shawcross’ Sideshow in 1979 that revealed the lies behind the Vietnam War and the decimation of Cambodia, triggered by Nixon’s secret bombings. But Shawcross has been among the Bush administration’s strongest supporters of war in Iraq, now as much as ever. He has a point, too. Not just “a point,” but a damn good argument against peace for America’s sake: “Thanks to the coalition Iraqis have more confidence in their future than we do. Iraqi refugees are not fleeing abroad in vast numbers, as happened during previous crises. The Iraqi dinar has strengthened, not weakened, against the currencies of other oil-producing nations. The mistakes that have been made in Iraq since its liberation do not alter the fact that the overthrow of Hussein has given Iraqis a chance they never had before and has shaken the ramshackle, corrupt and dictatorial foundations of the Middle East.” One refutation, and I’m not sure it’s morally defensible, considering the alternative, is that the Iraqi regime in place now is itself a ramshackle gathering of gangs waiting their turn at overturning Iraq their way — that the spectacle of democracy is thinner than the paper ballots it’s written on. But between that shoddy excuse for a government and the assassins—the, and let’s be clear about it, Islamo-fascists of the “opposition,” which has no legitimacy as an opposition—isn’t the shoddy excuse preferable?