The Anti-War Hook

David Aaronovitch, one of the leftist Britons who have been brave enough to support the liberation of Iraq (and if you think that's a tough stand in the media here, try it there), has every right to gloat. Instead, he opens his remarkable latest piece with a confession:

The worst and most stupid thing I have written in my time at the Guardian was a piece playing down the significance of the looting and lawlessness that followed the fall of Baghdad. You find yourself attempting to minimise every negative and emphasise every positive, until you are in danger of losing all sight of the truth.

And with a passed-up chance to chest-thump:

Asked yesterday on the BBC whether the election "vindicated" Blair, I said I didn't much care. How can so many people suffer and one feel vindicated? No, all that really counted was whether it could help bring about a decent outcome for the long, long, long-suffering people of Iraq.

And he discovers that an important result of the massive voter turn-out in Iraq on Sunday is not that it got Bush or Blair (or himself) off the hook, but it revealed that war opponents are caught on a hook of their own. The Ted Kennedys (Aaronovich introduces three models of the British version) who only talk about the war and the rebuilding in terms of wasted money and domestic politics, now have a picture they can't ignore:

A unilateral decision about troop withdrawal would be a fit continuation of the west's record of amorality and error in Iraq. But, after Sunday, we have no more excuses. The elections, so vilified in some quarters, were a revelation. Those anti-war people who could escape their hooks saw millions of ordinary people delighting in the process of voting, and many thousands risking everything (where we would risk nothing) to cast their ballot.

That, now, is all that matters. Not whether you were for or against the war, for or against Blair, for or against Bush. Are you for or against democracy in Iraq? The rest is air.