Oh, the future used to be so bright, we had to wear shades (Updated)

I came across a note I had made about this article, from my pre-blogging days. It appeared just after the invasion of Iraq. And it's from Richard "the Prince of Darkness" Perle, then chairman of Rummy's Defense Policy Board, United They Fall Spectator (UK) Online 03/22/2003. Perle is one of the leading neoconservatives and one of the chief instigators of the war with Iraq.

The topic is Perle's sneering at the United Nations. They guy thought he was one of the Masters of the Universe back then. (Probably still does, come to think of it.) He wrote in those heady days:

Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about to end. He will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony he will take the United Nations down with him.

Well, not the whole United Nations. The 'good works' part will survive, the low-risk peace-keeping bureaucracies will remain, the looming chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat. What will die in Iraq is the fantasy of the United Nations as the foundation of a new world order.

Yeah, those pathetic wimmen and sissies over at the UN will still be doing their silly social work. But us real men are gonna show them how we run the world.

As free Iraqis document the quarter-century nightmare of Saddam's rule, as we hear from the survivors able to speak from their own soil for the first time, let us not forget who was for this war and who was not, who held that the moral authority of the international community was enshrined in a plea for more time for inspectors, and who marched against 'regime change'. In the spirit of postwar reconciliation that diplomats are always eager to engender, we must not reconcile the timid, blighted notion that world order requires us to recoil before rogue states that terrorise their own citizens and menace ours. (my emphasis)

Absolutely, sweet prince. I hope it will be a long, long time before the world forgets "who was for this war and who was not". And I also hope we don't fall prey to some diplomat's disease and push some kind of superficial "postwar reconciliation" that leaves responsibility unassigned and crimes unprosecuted. I certainly hope not.

He sneered at some commentator he had seen on television - Lord, these Republicans love to sneer - describing her position and then his manly-man's response:

A willing coalition of liberal democracies isn't good enough. If any institution or coalition other than the UN Security Council uses force, even as a last resort, 'anarchy', rather than international law, would prevail, destroying any hope for world order.

This is a dangerously wrong idea, an idea that leads inexorably to handing great moral - and even existential politico-military decisions - to the likes of Syria, Cameroon, Angola, Russia, China and France.

Now, Perle was talking about those countries' votes in the UN. But I would also note that "Syria, Cameroon, Angola, Russia, China and France" - France was considered a rogue state, too by the manly Mr. Perle - all have political systems from the one Perle's War has created in Iraq. Is there anyone in the world who would choose Iraq's current system over the ones in those countries now?

Oh, and what a grand design the neocons had in those triumphal moments! Glorious wars of liberation, one right after the other:

This new century now challenges the hopes for a new world order in new ways. We will not defeat or even contain fanatical terror unless we can carry the war to the territories from which it is launched. This will sometimes require that we use force against states that harbour terrorists, as we did in destroying the Taleban regime in Afghanistan.

And lets not forget, not only "who was for this war and who was not", but how honest and reliable what the Richard Perles of the world told us was:

The most dangerous of these states are those that also possess weapons of mass destruction, the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons that can kill not hundreds or thousands but hundreds of thousands. Iraq is one such state, but there are others. (my emphasis)

And how those glorious wars would strike fear into the hearts of evildoers everywhere:

Whatever hope there is that they can be persuaded to withdraw support or sanctuary from terrorists rests on the certainty and effectiveness with which they are confronted.

Perle and other fools and knaves like him are the people who gave us the disaster we now call the Iraq War.

But on that one thing, he was absolutely right: "let us not forget who was for this war and who was not".

Tags: iraq war, neoconservatives, richard perle