Iraq & John Milton

2 March

"We will leave Iraq a better place" Thus saith Lieutenant-General Cooper in his valedictory address on retiring from Iraq and the army. Oh what a favour we have done the people of Iraq. We have rid them of the tyrant Saddam Hussein who (tell it not in Gath) we used to sustain; we have bestowed the blessings of democracy; we have let them into the mystique of "internal security services" (no doubt fresh from our triumphant display in prising out information from Binyan Mohamed); we have given them a "well-defined" legal system and a "well-defined and understood" legislative system and not least "security structures that have grown". Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. John Milton had exactly les mots justes for our role in Iraq. So I sent this to the Guardian today, not that it will see the light of day:

Thanks to the invasion of Iraq, al-Qaida established a base there, sectarian savagery erupted, and in the maelstrom thousands of Iraqis were killed and maimed, thousands fled the country, its infrastructure was decimated and thousands of US and British troops were killed or wounded. Yet Lieutenant-General's valediction talks of al-Qaida's defeat and the rooting of democracy. John Milton's words in Paradise Lost come to mind:
"But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropped manna and could make the worse appear
The better reason."