March 28, 2002

How Embarrassing

This piece, a silly defense of Saddam Hussein and "Ba'athist governments," is the "stupidest article" Iain Murray has read in a long time. Me, too. The author, Neil Clark, laments that Iraq "struggles to get a fair hearing." He proposes that Britain change course, break with the US, and form closer ties with Baghdad. He cites a number of half-baked historical, moral, and practical reasons for such a policy, including this:

Unless Britain changes course quickly, the enormous commercial opportunities in helping to exploit the second largest oil reserves in the world will be gone for ever.

Well, that's not the only thing that could end up "gone forever." But Clark doesn't believe that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are much of a problem. (He blithely dismisses former UN weapons inspector Richard Butler's statements to the contrary: after all, Butler hasn't stepped foot in Iraq for over three years-- maybe all the chemical and nerve agents disappeared during that time. Well, they might have... You can't prove they didn't... there's no evidence either way, is there?)

"Let us hear no more of the 'weapons of mass destruction' nonsense," he writes. "The best way to ensure peace throughout the whole region, for Arab, Christian and Jew alike, is to welcome Iraq back, unconditionally, into the international community."

Unconditionally?

Murray says, justly, that this piece of drivel should have appeared in the New Statesman rather than the Spectator. I'm assuming the author is the same Neil Clark who wrote the New Stateman's weird celebratory defense of Slobodan Milosevic that I've mentioned before (Milosevic: Prisoner of Conscience.) The two articles are in fact quite similar. As with his Milosevic hagiography, it's difficult to believe Clark is serious. Perhaps it's a parody, and I'm just not sophisticated enough to realize. If so, how embarrassing. If not, how embarrassing.

Posted by Dr. Frank at March 28, 2002 10:33 AM | TrackBack