Picking up on Harry’s latest post:
I appreciated this quote (via Christopher Hitchens’s review in The Atlantic) from Ian McEwan’s new novel “Saturday,” in which the central character observes the February 2003 antiwar demonstration in London.
All this happiness on display is suspect. Everyone is thrilled to be together out on the streets—people are hugging themselves, it seems, as well as each other. If they think—and they could be right—that continued torture and summary executions, ethnic cleansing and occasional genocide are preferable to an invasion, they should be somber in their view.
I’m reminded, by contrast, of the Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman, who opposed the Iraq war but at least had the decency to be anguished about his opposition.
I suppose it’s also possible that a victory for the Baathist/extreme-Islamist “resistance” would be preferable to the current messiness and, yes, tragedies caused by the invasion and liberation of Iraq. But I hope those who believe that have the decency to be somber about it.
