Hi. Today, John Wojdylo replies to his critics, but before that, it feels like time to navel-gaze about Webdiary.

I’ve had a number of emails bemoaning the fact that there’s less of me in Webdiary at the moment. Robert Henderson, for example, writes: “I guess it is just me, but I much preferred your Webdiary when it mainly contained YOUR comments.”

I sought advice from Noel Hadjimichael, a long time reader and contributor. His response:

(1) Your comments have been lacking in recent weeks … you could best beef up your contribution to about 30-35% of the content on most days.

(2) Links to other sites or speeches are excellent – but not the full script (too cumbersome)

(3) Maybe some modest limit on contributions (say 150-200 words)

(4) Need to have interchange (comment on the contributor’s copy) every day – even if posted item is say only 250 words and mostly your copy

Your contributors and I would suggest many regular readers would “log in” every day. If we want this to work, you might need to have a daily comment – even if times of contribution are varied … the Webdiary has yet to reach the efficiency of the daily situation reports of the CIA ….

***

When the contributions get hot, I like sitting back, enjoying the conversation between readers, and butting out. I like the academic stuff and the feelings stuff. It’s part of the philosophy of Webdiary, which developed as the page got going and was inspired by my experience chasing Hanson around, when I realised lots of us couldn’t or wouldn’t communicate with each other.

I’m also conscious that Webdiary is archived by the government’s ‘Pandora’ project as an electronic publication of national significance. Re-reading the incredible outpouring of emotion post-the Tampa in Webdiary I see how close historians of that milestone will be able to get to the “moment”. So when an issue like that is at boiling point, I like to let readers take over.

And to be honest, the longer I do Webdiary the more I realise how ignorant I am about lots of stuff, and the more reluctant to just sound off!

I wrote the Webdiary’s charter after this email from Paul S. McLaren in April last year: “Please excuse my ignorance, but I am perplexed by the object of your section of the Sydney Morning Herald. Could you please tell me why I should contribute? It seems very interesting but a little pointless unless, like I suspect, I am missing something.”

WEBDIARY CHARTER

April 26 2001

I believe:

* that widely read broadsheet newspapers are essential to the health and vibrancy of our democracy

* that they are yet to adapt to a multi-media future pressing on the present

* that there is a vacuum of original, genuine, passionate and accessible debate on the great political, economic and social issues of our time in the mainstream media, despite the desire of thinking Australians in all age groups to read and participate in such debates

* that newspapers have lost their connection with the readers they serve

* that the future lies in a collaboration between journalists and readers

The mission of the Webdiary is:

* to experiment in the form and content of the Herald online

* to assist in the integration of the newspaper and smh.com.au

* to help meet the unmet demand of some Australians for conversations on our present and our future, and to spark original thought and genuine engagement with important issues which effect us all

* to link thinking Australians whoever they are and wherever they live

* to insist that thinking Australians outside the political and economic establishment have the capacity to contribute to the national debate

* to provide an outlet for talented writers and thinkers not heard in mainstream media

***

The last time we debated what Webdiary is and how it should develop was in April 2001, before big budget cuts at F2 stymied innovation. To review reader’s ideas back then, see

Cut and paste, smh, Not too wanky, smh and Costello toasts Woodside, smh.

Money’s still very tight, but there’s a mood for doing a few things online at the moment. So over to you. What do you like and dislike? What technical innovation would improve your experience, and do you want changes to the mix?

***

We’ll start with Hamish Tweedy’s response to David Makinson’s surgical strike on John’s case to take out Saddam in It’s about judgement, not belief, then John replies with a piece called ‘Loving Hitler’.

***

Hamish Tweedy

I thought David Makinson did a reasonable job of countering John Wojdylo’s Saddam’s heart of darkness from the point of view of support for a unilateral US led strike on Iraq prior to any attempt by the UN to assess his WMD program (if that is what Tony Blair, George Bush and John Wojdylo are advocating).

However I would to hear from David on the very real possibility that:

1. The weapons inspectors re-enter Iraq;

2. The weapons inspectors withdraw from Iraq as they are unable to complete their task in a free and unfettered manner; and

3a. The UN authorises the use of force to ensure compliance; or

3b. The UN doesn’t authorise the use of force to ensure compliance.

The significant difference in these circumstances is that Saddam has specifically curtailed the UN’s ability to determine the extent of threat posed by his WMD program. The point I am attempting to determine is whether;

1. David and those who share his view believe that Saddam’s ownership of WMD and the fact that he won’t destroy them and desist from their construction is not grounds to attack Iraq under any circumstances; or

2. The inability of the Security Council to back up its own resolutions with force would provide sufficient grounds for a unilateral attack led by the US on Iraq, and what the reasons are for not supporting an attack in those circumstances.

I believe Saddam does have a WMD program and I expect he will do everything within his power to prevent it from being destroyed, up to and possibly including going to war (based on the failure of the last weapons inspection program).

I therefore support a conflict in the circumstances outlined in 3a but am less certain about my support for the circumstances outlined in 3b and this is why I found John Wojdylo’s assessment interesting.

***

Loving Hitler

By John Wojdylo

 

Just some short replies to what appeared in It’s about judgement, not belief.

I wasn’t playing the man at all in my initial reply to Zainab Al-Badry. So, relax, Zainab! “If” contemplations (What if…?) are logical alternatives: We use them to explore the consequences of choosing another view. Sometimes, suddenly, the alternative might seem more real to us than where we began. But what you believe is for you to decide. If I have a direct question to a person, I’ll try to make it obvious.

1. Zainab writes that “the US and… every other country” is acting out of self-interest. For Zainab’s sake, I hope he does not rule out completely the possibility that one can act out of more than self-interest (self-interest plus something else, at least). Because if he does, then he must believe that democracy in Iraq is impossible for the foreseeable future (see next paragraph), meaning he would be unable to judge that his deepest wish can be fulfilled. Worse, he wouldn’t even be able to believe in it even if he had the hope.

That’s because – supposing a Coalition force is successful in deposing Saddam Hussein – with so many self-interested countries around, all jostling for the oil riches in the Middle East and Caspian Sea area, it would be much more in American interests to install a strongman faithful to Washington right from the start, without any prospect to transition to democracy.

This would be the law of the jungle. Acting unilaterally to create a democracy is not.

Present signs suggest the opposite: the Americans seem to be willing at least to give democracy a chance after removing Saddam Hussein. The extent to which the Americans actually go through with this is the extent to which they are not acting entirely in self-interest. The Kurdish autonomous zone in the north shows that a reasonably free democratic system might be possible in Iraq.

If, for you, it truly is axiomatic that all parties always act exclusively in self-interest, then you shouldn’t even be thinking the question, “How can I trust the Americans this time?” There is no risk, because there is no alternative for you: Democracy is impossible under the Americans. You should just blame the Americans for being belligerent. As many people do.

I’m saying this, Zainab, because you seem to be halfway between the view that “parties always act exclusively in self-interest” and “maybe sometimes they don’t”. The risk – if you perceive one – is always yours to take. I know what it means to you; so I’d advise you to look for signs that the Americans are acting more than in self-interest.

And I’d also advise you (if you don’t do it already) to treat with scepticism journalists and commentators who take self-interest as axiomatic, and who therefore impregnate their opinions and observations with a quasi-religion that denies in advance any hope you could legitimately have.

Why might anyone have confidence that the Americans are committed to democracy this time? For one, the US military appears to be planning an invasion of Iraq by one hundred thousand or more American soldiers – this time, the US is staking the lives of many of its sons and daughters on regime change.

The immense stake the Americans are laying down this time seems to me to signal a far greater commitment than in 1991; a commitment, for one, to seeing a stable government in Iraq following Saddam’s removal. Other signs suggest the Americans are encouraging democratic elements in the Iraqi opposition in exile (the recent meeting in London is one).

Should you believe what the signs seem to be telling you? It’s always your call.

I should mention that many commentators and journalists (Chomsky, Fisk, the Herald’s Paul McGeough) do take American self-interest as axiomatic, to the point that they are incapable of distinguishing between self-interest and a wider good, even if it did exist. They rule it out in advance and are therefore not objective. Their view is quasi-religious. Another example of such thinking is market fundamentalism.

2. “… he said that I think “Saddam is harmless” because I don’t support the US campaign.” I did not say this, nor imply it.

3. “…if Saddam found himself with his back to the wall. He would use whatever was in his hands, regardless of the consequences.”

This indeed seems to be his strategy [Kenneth Pollack, New York Times. Quoted in Saddam Hussein’s Will to Power]:

“In August 1990, after he realized that America might challenge the invasion of Kuwait, he ordered a crash program to build one nuclear weapon, which came close to succeeding. (It failed only because the Iraqis could not enrich enough uranium in time.) His former chief bomb-maker has said that Saddam intended to launch the bomb as a revenge weapon at Tel Aviv if his regime were collapsing.

Iraqi defectors and other sources report that Saddam told aides after the war that his greatest mistake was to invade Kuwait before he had a nuclear weapon, because then America would never have dared to oppose him…”

Other defectors have said similar things. The recollections and judgements of hundreds of defectors – scientists, diplomats, military officers – are disturbingly consistent.

4. “In an attempt to justify the “mistake” of George Bush Snr in 1991, John said, “Why might Bush Snr’s betrayal in 1991 not be equivalent to Stalin’s betrayal in 1944?”. The answer is that two mistakes do not make one right…”

I did not justify any “mistake”, and I did not imply anything about “two mistakes”. I said there might have been a legitimate reason not to invade Baghdad – to avoid the annihilation of that city by biological and nuclear weapons.

The world is soaked to the bone with injustice. But sometimes nothing can be done because of wider consequences – no nation is an island. Sometimes injustice happens because of evil intentions; but sometimes it is permitted to continue because of tragic bad luck. Was the latter the case in Iraq at the end of the Gulf War? Must the decision by Bush Snr be compared with that of Stalin in 1944?

In Saddam’s Will to Power I suggested that at that time, a policy of containment may have appeared a better option than getting rid of Saddam at the expense of the annihilation of Baghdad. The key issue may have been the political situation in Russia and the former Warsaw Pact countries. Recall that this was just after the fall of communism in the Soviet bloc, at a time when Russia was teetering on the edge of falling back into communism, and communists (particularly in the military) were looking at any way to grab back the power they had lost. Remember the attempted coup d’etat in August 1991?

The Soviet Union/Russia had (and still has) close ties with Iraq: it, too, was playing geopolitical power games. The point is, if Baghdad had been annihilated, conservatives in the Russian military would have thought their worst fears of American imperialism confirmed and may well have “insisted” on having much more to say about the make-up of any future Russian government than they did, just as they tried to do in August 1991. The communist dictatorship in Russia would have been kick started again.

Stalin had no such excuse in 1944 – his motivation was to conquer Poland and annihilate all opposition, particularly officers and intellectuals. In numbers, he executed the equivalent of the entire university academic population in Australia. Bush Snr clearly did not have this intention when he chose not to enter Baghdad. And he may well have had mitigating circumstances in making his decision.

Why risk the annihilation of Baghdad now? Because Saddam Hussein has become much more dangerous. He is on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon, if he hasn’t one already. Zainab Al-Badry agrees that by not acting now, it “would give him the power to threaten us with unleashing the Holocaust unless we submit to his will”.

If we act now, the war may not be nuclear. But if we wait, it undoubtedly will be.

And Zainab: A democratic Iraq might be on the horizon if we act now, though the risk of failure exists; but if Saddam Hussein is allowed to win, a democratic Iraq will be impossible.

* * * *

Regarding Con Vaitsas’s argument, if only one defector was saying these things, then depending on the level of proof they were offering, we might have grounds to hesitate. But here we have literally hundreds of Iraqi defectors, former scientists, diplomats, military officers, as well as independent foreign experts on Iraq, giving consistent judgements.

Mark Sergeant makes a good point that I anticipated but didn’t include because I was knackered. He writes, “I do not read this as evidence of “Saddam’s explicitly stated ambition and his manifest intention to fulfil it”. I read it as a threat of retaliation if Qatar allows itself to be used in an attack on Iraq. It isn’t evidence of WMD, either, as it seems likely to me that Saddam would issue the threat in the same terms whether he had WMD or not.”

The operative words in Saddam Hussein’s outburst are: “completely destroy”. Saddam wants to “totally annihilate” Qatar, to wipe it off the face of the map, if it allows the Americans to use bases there.

The outburst betrays an absence of limits. When, say, Pakistan and India rattle their sabres, they always talk about “limited engagement”. Their intentions, at least, are small-scale, despite the obvious danger. Israel, too, does not begin with the intention of “totally annihilating” its enemy, and has never even got within a light year of it.

Saddam is willing to act without limits outside his country’s borders, just as he does inside them. He is prepared to universalise his terror.

Saddam’s words, taken alone, may have been a figure of speech. Or just the normal way they do things over there. President Assad of Syria once had the residents of an entire village killed and the houses razed to the ground when somebody from there said something about challenging his power. Saddam appears to be applying this principle to a sovereign country.

We try to see the “manifest intention”: knowing that he has WMD, including possibly a nuke, we cannot risk the lesser interpretation, given what is at stake.

(Incidentally, one might wonder to what extent repeated expressions of concern on the part of neighbouring Arab/Muslim states (“hell’s gates will open”) are influenced by similar explicit threats from Saddam.)

* * *

David Makinson mentions naive belief. Despite the word being mostly used these days as a term of abuse, there’s nothing wrong with being naive – not having knowledge of some situation or milieu – if there’s no reason for you to have that knowledge. But naivety – especially willed naivety – is certainly blameworthy if one ought to know better.

If the stakes with Saddam Hussein really are as high as knowledgeable people say they are, then we have a duty to inform ourselves as best we can of the facts that these people say underpin their reasoning, because if they are right, not only our future, but that of the free world, is at stake.

So, a man of David Makinson’s reputation should certainly have known better than to accuse me of “complacently elevating his own opinions to the status of authoritative truth”.

The excerpts and links in “Heart of Darkness” and “Will to Power” contain the considered judgements of hundreds, probably thousands (if you follow the many links to the documents and essays therein), of people, many of them Iraqi defectors, former scientists, diplomats, military officers, as well as foreign experts on Iraq.

It should have been clear that the bulk of what I have been writing is not uniquely my opinion, and is shared by many.

Their accounts are disturbingly consistent. I have absorbed their arguments, their conclusions, and their mortal dread. These people are far more familiar with the ground-level details than either I or David Makinson are.

Now I ask David Makinson, by what criterion do you dismiss these witnesses’ and scientists’ claim to the “authoritative truth” with regards to Saddam Hussein? By what authority do you elevate your own relatively paltry knowledge of Saddam Hussein over theirs?

David Makinson writes: “I would very strongly suggest that people go beyond the limited extracts he provides and do some proper homework.” I couldn’t agree more! It is impossible to include all the material on the matter published by the 30 organisations (like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) whose contributions are to be found at just the Iraq Watch link alone, which I provided in my pieces.

David Makinson is reacting to the style of my interlocution, not its content. If he really does have the knowledge of the reality in Iraq to justify the certitude with which he states, “Iraq is not a “clear and present danger” to the US or its allies”, then he should have immediately been able to recognize that the substance of my opinion is shared by many who have intimate experience with Iraq; and he should have addressed the substantive points I made, rather than elide the substance as he did. I welcome a serious effort at engagement on his part.

David has not even begun to account for the consistent and dense matrix of signs over the last three decades that outline Saddam’s intention to fulfil a dreadful ambition, many of which I cited from a number of sources. Instead, he’d rather see “a far more balanced account of Saddam”, one that no doubt does not hurt his delicate sensibilities too much, and allows him to marvel at the dictator’s great achievements.

Indeed, there’s much to marvel at with Saddam Hussein. In the years 1968 to 1979 “there were also ambitious drives to build schools, roads, public housing, and hospitals. Iraq created one of the best public-health systems in the Middle East” [Mark Bowden]. Saddam’s literacy drive was so successful, UNESCO gave him an award. And the Yanks were fooled into thinking he was the dictator of choice, and gave him some germs to play with, including West Nile virus, which happens to be doing the rounds in Florida and surrounds of Mohamed Atta’s house at the moment. (Not that there’s any proven link.)

Anybody who did not attend Saddam’s literacy drive was sentenced to three years’ jail or worse.

I suppose Saddam might win a few architecture awards for his splendid mosques, but like the railways in Siberia, I wonder how many lives they cost.

But it’s all rather pointless: David Makinson has a gun pointing at his head (we all do) and is marvelling at the gunmen’s French suit while pangs of conscience are paralysing him because he recalls how he nurtured the gunman when he was young. It’s all his own fault, you see, and he dare not hurt the gunman because he must burn in hell for his old transgressions.

I wonder how many passengers in the hijacked jets on 9/11 thought this way, when 5 men were allowed to assert their will over hundreds. Or how many did what they were told because they were unable to take the risk, and kill.

I’ve noticed that people who’ve done the analysis of Iraq, who have gone close to Saddam Hussein and returned to report what they saw, generally share a mortal fear. And having rationally comprehended the catastrophe currently facing the free world, they are often appalled by the reckless carelessness being shown towards Saddam Hussein by the civilized world (e.g. the UN not being true to its charter and stopping this dictator earlier – or even now).

Since indications are that David Makinson does not rely much on background knowledge, my guess (I apologize in advance if I am wrong) is that the process by which David arrived at his conclusion that Iraq is not a “clear and present danger” is akin to a game of logic, a game in the sense that he does not really have much of a personal stake in either the input nor the outcome, a soi disant little intellectual fiddle whose atomic propositions and threadbare logic vaporize the instant they are tested against reality.

Something like: “Saddam is not an idiot (or suicidal), therefore he will not use his weapons of mass destruction.”

Robert Manne made the same argument in Monday’s Herald, for a different reason (smh). The argument allows him to back away from the dreadful moral choice facing us, as well as to judge the American actions as catastrophically unjustified. “Kill first, ask questions later.” (But the choice is: kill now, or face the Holocaust later.)

Robert Manne certainly should have known his history better; I don’t know about David.

Let the historical record be a guide. Hitler wasn’t suicidal in 1938 (or 1933, depending on your view) when he embarked on building the thousand year Reich; but he ended up destroying his country, killing 8 million of its inhabitants (and all the Jews), and committing suicide.

That was point one. Now consider this. It is a matter of record that Saddam Hussein gave orders for his special units to use WMD should Coalition forces enter Baghdad during the Gulf War (see, for example, Pollack’s article at the end of Saddam’s Will to Power). He has most likely done likewise this time. As Saddam is no idiot, he will see to it that he is not in Iraq when the Coalition invasion begins. There are already rumours (only) that he is in Egypt. [Der Spiegel, 30/9.]

So this is how Saddam Hussein can achieve his ambition (see Saddam Hussein and the Heart of Darkness) and save his own skin. Puff goes David Makinson’s little logical bubble.

So let’s get real, and let me help David with his homework.

David Makinson: The essence of the question at hand is whether or not we (the US and its allies) should launch a pre-emptive strike against Iraq.

No. The essence is, “What are the consequences if we do not act now?” We act when not acting becomes untenable. We are facing a Holocaust, therefore we act now. The emphasis of our deliberations and motives is completely different to what it would be in David’s formulation. Read Camus.

Having checked out the links I’ve already given, consider the findings of the Iraq Watch round table discussion of former weapons inspectors and scientists, June 11, 2002 ( iraqwatch ).

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the question: “In light of eleven years of non-compliance by Saddam Hussein and the failure of previous inspections to fully expose and eradicate Iraq’s weapon programs, how likely is it that new inspections can succeed without a change of heart in Baghdad?”

Here is an excerpt from the article. A long justification is given for each judgement. I urge the reader to read the justifications at the link above. I should stress that the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control has nothing to do with the US government. In fact, it has been a thorn in the US government’s side for decades.

“The panelists took up the following questions:

Can inspections disarm Iraq under the present rules?

Is the new UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) more likely than UNSCOM to defeat Iraqi concealment efforts?

The panelists found, in sum, that UN inspectors have virtually no chance of disarming Iraq under the present rules unless Iraq suddenly decides to cooperate, which it has not done for the past eleven years. The reasons for this conclusion are as follows:

* UNMOVIC, the new inspection agency, is not set up to use intelligence information effectively, and may therefore have difficulty receiving such information;

* UNMOVIC is not likely to be able to conduct surprise inspections, even if intelligence information were provided;

* Iraq has made much of its secret weapon work mobile, allowing it to be removed before inspectors can arrive at a suspect site;

* UNMOVIC may not have the personnel needed to defeat Iraqi concealment efforts;

* Iraq’s right to designate large geographical areas as “presidential sites” – making them virtually impossible to inspect – creates sanctuaries for illicit activities;

* UNMOVIC will be reluctant to accuse Iraq of not complying with inspection obligations.” [Iraq Watch Round Table, June 11, 2002; see link above]

Again, I urge the reader to read and consider the justifications for each of these conclusions; otherwise they become empty slogans.

I mention in passing that the International Atomic Energy Commission was ignorant of the Saddam’s nuclear weapons program until Coalition forces discovered a nearly completed atomic bomb. This was despite two decades of regular inspections. In the decade before the Gulf War, the IAEC was headed by Hans Blix, currently the head of the UN weapons inspection team. [“Inside Saddam’s Secret Nuclear Program”, Khidhir Hamza, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1998. iraqwatch . I recommend this essay, which details the extraordinary lengths the Iraqis went to deceive IAEC inspectors. This is precisely what UNMOVIC is up against.]

The only purpose UN weapons inspections will serve is to give Saddam’s efforts to acquire nuclear devices the rubberstamp of official approval. (Officially, his WMD program will be pronounced non-existent.) Saddam Hussein wins again. Little wonder Iraq is so eager to allow UN weapons inspectors back.

(And the media – BBC, SMH et. – are willing accomplices: Over and over again, we read that the inspections will be “unconditional”. Why is the West so gullible? Where are the editors? Where are their ethics?)

So we may begin our deliberation of what the consequences of present inaction might be with the assumption that, 12 months or so from now, Saddam Hussein will possess two, three or more nuclear weapons.

Suddenly Saddam’s manifest intention of establishing a pan-Arab nuclear dominion in the Middle East, and exacting “revenge” against the US and Israel, makes ample sense. And his name will be remembered among Arabs “for 500 years”, as one of the great men of history. Just as he wants it.

David Makinson: If I understand him correctly (and I may not, so I’ll apologise in advance) the assessment of the rights and wrongs of the current Iraq dilemma is driven to large degree by “what you believe and why”. The implication is, of course, that those believe differently to Mr Wojdylo are just fooling themselves.

Just as those who don’t believe their computer screen are fooling themselves. Absurd. Why do you shoot the messenger?

DM: I’m sorry, but this focus on “belief” is patent nonsense. It’s about judgements and probabilities – about guesses of people’s intentions and future events and outcomes. It’s about applying reason, intuition, compassion and common sense – and yes, ethics – to a complex set of contributing factors.”

Compassion is of no use in solving the horrific dilemma we face: If we don’t act soon, when we are relatively powerful, we may be condemning free civilization to oblivion. But if we act now, many, many people may die.

In fact, it’s about making a judgement of the “manifest intention”, using science, logic and historical record. “Manifest intention” might be described as the dense matrix of indicators that outline intention; for these signs can point to the potential for catastrophic acts in the future. Twentieth century history has taught us this: knowing what is at stake, since we cannot know the true mind and can only suspect it from flimsy signs, we have to act to avoid the potential catastrophe – the apparent aggressor must prove they do not intend to perpetrate the catastrophe. If they refuse to provide credible proof, we must force the issue, or be prepared to accept moral responsibility for our inaction.

Apology accepted.

In an interesting contrast – not that it necessarily proves anything – David Makinson does not agree with Zainab Al-Badry, who has first-hand knowledge of what Saddam Hussein is capable of, and believes that Saddam Hussein is a great threat, that not acting now would give Saddam Hussein the power to threaten us with unleashing the Holocaust unless we submit to his will.

Finally, David Makinson writes that my writings “show a degree of careful bias which is quite breathtaking in its scope – a wilful and cynical bias which sadly is becoming more and more common in these times”.

Unfortunately, my kind of willed bias is all too rare. I will myself to understand dictators and their methods, to learn about the terror they have instigated, and to remember their victims. And on the contrary, there is nothing more cynical than the United Nations proclaiming the noble ideals of its charter while obligingly paving the way for the rise of a dictator who wills the destruction of all that it stands for, together with the free world, and thinks nothing of ending tens of millions of lives to achieve his ambition.

We’ve seen all this before, in 20th century history. The historical record is also littered with academic apologists for Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Milosevic, and Saddam Hussein – the logicians, the analytical philosophers, these cobweb-spinners and their friends, the disciples of the Nazi, Martin Heidegger – who could not bear to hear too much ill of those upstanding citizens that they secretly admired.

They demanded “balanced accounts” – not true accounts – so that they never had to be confronted with their hypocrisy and cowardice, or with the suffering of their hero’s victims.

For the sake of balance, evidence of the tool of moral degradation so beloved by Saddam and his ilk (see the passage by Christopher Hitchens in Saddam’s will to power) is replaced in the apologist’s mind by some fine mosque or deed or illusion of some hidden virtue or guilt-cum-self-aggrandiseme=nt that he had something to do in the dictator’s rise. His whole understanding of the dictator is therefore skewed in such a way that degradation – such as the state the UN now finds itself in – appears normal, and indeed, desirable. He becomes the tyrant’s willing collaborator.

So the willed ignorance of “balance” – the black hole in the historical record, where not a trace of the victims exists – leaves its imprint on the apologist’s every judgement of the tyrant. How can the apologist possibly condone a pre-emptive strike against Saddam Hussein when so terribly little solid information exists – and when he so loves the man?