They'll print anything
And that's a good thing, on the whole.
Welch and Sullivan both subject this piece of drivel (intended to discredit the eastern European democracies) to the appropriate scorn. "New thinking." Hah! The author, Jonathon Steele, can sometimes be found in the pages of the Guardian desperately trying to be funny or clever or something. I think he's trying to be serious this time. Whatever, chappie.
On the other hand, the parade of Leftists on the road to Damascus continues apace, with this excellent essay in today's Independent. Adducing an extremely unlikely scenario in which the anti-war movement somehow manages to achieve its aims, Johann Hari asks: "Has the left really forgotten the fundamental principle that it is worth fighting to free 23 million people from tyranny and to help them to build democracy? What has become of us?"
The piece concludes by correctly identifying the major failing of the contemporary British Left, which is the determination to indulge their own all-consuming antipathy towards the United States at any and all costs, including that of effectively allying themselves with fascists. The author concedes a tepid sympathy with regard to this impulse, but adds:
Some people argue that the US is too morally compromised by its own often tyrannical foreign policy to have any right to act in Iraq. A Chilean, Palestinian or Vietnamese person will understandably respond with a cynical snort to the idea of the US as a liberator of oppressed peoples. The people of northern Iraq do not feel that way. Nor do the peoples of Eastern Europe – it is no coincidence that Vaclav Havel, the former President of the Czech Republic, joined with Blair in supporting America. He remembers what it is like to live under an oppressive dictator and to look to America as the only hope for liberation. So the US can act in both good and bad ways. That many figures on the left deny this is a sign that they are blinded by hatred.Of course, the US is morally compromised. I wish there were a pristine, perfect state with no oil interests and the military power to help the people of Iraq, but there isn't one. Remember: many people on the British left argued in the 1930s that Britain was too compromised by its disgraceful colonial occupation of India, and that our motives for joining the war were far from pure. They had some important points, but if they had prevailed, we would have squabbled among ourselves about our own immorality while Jews burned. We must not repeat that mistake by turning our gaze from those living in the open prison of Saddam's Iraq.