The Iraq war continues to claim lives and we continue to be there. Some people claim that those two facts are related.

But the Gaza Strip is, according to media reports, beginning to suffer attacks from Islamofacists not least an attack recently against a UN school. Since Alan Johnston was kidnapped, it is said, foreigners have been travelling into Gaza less and the area generally feels less safe. I don’t want to comment on the subjective nature of this assessment, but it makes a point anyway.

Since Israel pulled out of Gaza and let the Palestinians manage their own security, security for Palestianians has worsened. This is not an argument for occupation — far from it — but should we (the US and Britain) take the blame for the violence in Iraq when it is Islamofacists who are carrying out the attacks (and the vast majority against other Iraqis, not the Allied troops)?

Though the war was started in Iraq on false pretenses, and though what we did was clearly wrong, would it not now be doubly wrong to pull out of Iraq and hope it gets better? Though the war was started (at least according to the US) as part of the war on terror, isn’t it now only too true that we are fighting Al Qaeda (as well as an arrogant Iran) here? Isn’t there a case for suggesting that pulling out of Iraq would turn Iraq into the Afghanistan that was? A country full of terrorist training grounds and supported (by inaction and impotence) by the Iraqi government?


Posted In: Political, News and Politics, Islam, War