Lefties of the world, go f**k yourselves

By Piers Bolt

Applied Hermeneutics’ token right-wing commentator, Piers Bolt, reviews the history of Australia’s glorious involvement in the Iraq liberation, um, debacle-thingy.

The Sydney Morning Herald columnist Miranda Devine wrote in her 6 June 2004 column:

After so many decades of totalitarian rule, the procession to democracy in Iraq appears remarkably orderly, despite the bungles and odd atrocity, which are probably an inevitable part of any war. But those without a moral compass, who find their life’s daily motivation in hatred and envy, can see only the mistakes, never the triumphs. Their America is Super Size Me and Michael Moore. Their Iraq is perpetual misery. They despise Howard and Bush because neither has the gravitas or eloquence of a wartime leader from central casting. Both men are too ordinary, which endears them to a good part of their electorates but enrages those who fancy themselves extraordinary and entitled to designer leaders.

What an extraordinary grasp this woman has of the psychology of the execrable Left. Rather than falling for a simplistic explanation of anti-war opposition – for instance, that Howard and Bush are patently untrustworthy – Devine charts a hyperbolic trajectory to a depth-psychological explanation, viz., every single one of these people bar none are simply eating their hearts out with resentiment, schadenfreude and bitterness. Thus she has sundered the Gordian Knot of the Left’s fixation with sordid facts to give us this jewel of an insight into these sick, perverted minds.

What else, after all, could explain the failure of these misfits to appreciate the defeat of Saddam as incontrovertible proof of the burgeoning bounty and promise of the Free World at the dawn of the Third Millenium. This triumph is undiminished by the moral debasement, deceit, slaughter, maimings, trauma, mayhem, civil strife, atrocities, war crimes, abuses, misappropriations, profiteering, etc., that unfortunately have accompanied it. The Left quite obviously can’t hope to understand that, although the vicissitudes of our imperfect world will always tend to tarnish the noblest endeavour, at least the heroic Bush, Blair and Howard took decisive action to rid the world of an evil tyrant when no-one else would.

This was indisputably done with the purest of motives, as due to the impeccable histories of these leaders there can be no question of improper designs. Iraq’s possession of vast oil reserves tied with the preponderance of oil industry identities in key positions within the US administration was purely coincidental. Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, being pre-positioned to win virtually every significant Iraq contract plainly was the most fortuitous happenstance, and good luck to that icon of free enterprise.

It’s true that in 2001 the Bush administration firmly believed that Saddam possessed no WMD capability and had no capacity to project even conventional military power in the region. They were wrong on that occasion, of course – everyone makes mistakes!

But they were right in 2002-2003 when they found that Saddam indeed did have vast WMD capability and was an imminent threat to the Free World. At least, they sincerely believed they were right, although it now turns out that they may possibly have been wrong, or partially wrong, or perhaps partially right, in a rigorously defined and qualified sense.

For Australia’s part, Mr Howard was preternaturally right in early-2003 to ignore the Bush administration’s previous assessment that Saddam was no threat, and to accept their new assessment that Saddam was the dickens of a threat. At least, Mr Howard sincerely believed he was right to believe that Bush believed himself to be right then and wrong before. That it now turns out that Bush probably was wrong then and right before merely illustrates the spurious luxury of hindsight.

Mr Howard, to his great credit, has more recently entertained the possibility that he may have been wrong to believe Bush was right about Saddam’s threat to the Free World. Howard now maintains, however, that he was right anyway because a particularly nasty regime has been removed. Our Prime Minister’s humanity now rings out loud and true with this acknowledgement that he was at least partially wrong before, when he said that regime change was not sufficient cause to invade.

At any rate, even though it now turns out that Mr Howard was probably wrong to believe that Bush was right, and yet may have been wrong to believe that regime change was wrong, it doesn’t matter because it turns out that Howard was right after all, in the rigorously defined and qualified sense that his decision to take Australia to war was based in considerable part on “the importance of the American alliance” – as he had said all along, it turns out, between the lines.

So, despite having been variously wrong and right – whether absolutely, or in a number of rigorously defined and qualified senses – Bush, Blair and Howard are rightly confident in their independently held convictions that they were all right all along. They simply have the most uncanny abilities, as one would only expect of such extraordinary men, these Ubermenschen of our time.

Those of us who support these great men proudly cling to their struggle and success, confident in being led by visionary leaders who can so deftly chart our course through the shifting sands of right and wrong.

And anyway, they just keep winning those elections, don’t they! End of discussion. QED.

So all those Lefties can just go fuck themselves!!