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Ten Years On: Political Fatalism
Mar. 20th, 2013 11:46 pmThere are two things I remember about the lead up to the Iraq War. The first was how the justification seemed to change every week. It was about terrorism. It was about weapons of mass destruction. It was about democracy. It was about this, it was about that. A new rationale would come out, would be rejected, and it would be replaced by another just as flimsy. “Yellowcake Uranium from Africa” and the “forty-five minutes” claims were punch lines almost immediately, yet none of this seemed to stop the drumbeat to war. There was no sincerity about the process; nobody believed Bush or anyone on his team really believed any of this, all that mattered was that they could find some excuse, any excuse, that could withstand scrutiny long enough for the war to start.
The second thing was the protests. They were everywhere, but everyone knew they were futile. It just seemed like part of the ritual of the war, part of the performance that had to be held before the war could start, the illusion of dissent and debate. I think to a lot of people, the start of the war itself was almost a relief; at least now discussion of the war could be based in something real, something that was really happening, rather than the bizarre performance that preceded it.
Forget September 11. This was the formative political event for a lot of people today; the realisation that the powerful would do what they liked regardless of the consequences, regardless of the protests. That the idea of liberal democracy has become something else, some strange mockery of its values, that we’ve reached the point where it’s no longer necessary to quash dissent – tolerate it long enough, maintain the pretence of discussion, and then proceed with whatever you wanted in the first place.
I don’t know how we can break out of that process again, or if it’s even possible any more to halt tragedies like Iraq when the powerful have set their minds to it...
The second thing was the protests. They were everywhere, but everyone knew they were futile. It just seemed like part of the ritual of the war, part of the performance that had to be held before the war could start, the illusion of dissent and debate. I think to a lot of people, the start of the war itself was almost a relief; at least now discussion of the war could be based in something real, something that was really happening, rather than the bizarre performance that preceded it.
Forget September 11. This was the formative political event for a lot of people today; the realisation that the powerful would do what they liked regardless of the consequences, regardless of the protests. That the idea of liberal democracy has become something else, some strange mockery of its values, that we’ve reached the point where it’s no longer necessary to quash dissent – tolerate it long enough, maintain the pretence of discussion, and then proceed with whatever you wanted in the first place.
I don’t know how we can break out of that process again, or if it’s even possible any more to halt tragedies like Iraq when the powerful have set their minds to it...