david-sarkies
Around the time of the 2004 US Federal Election there were a number of documentaries produced regarding the failures of the Iraq War, namely in relation to the spin that was produced in the lead up to the war, and then the arguments placed in defence of the war by the belligerent parties after the war had started and that it became clear that this so called quick victory was quickly going to turn into a quagmire. In a way a number of these documentaries were simply produced by the left so say 'I told you so'.I have been an opponent of the war right from the beginning, and one of the reasons is that I believe that there are better ways of solving problems than simply bombing a country back into the stone age. While there are some instances when war is necessarily (such as with the overthrow of Gadaffi, who was on the verge of committing genocide, as well as World War II in which mass genocide was in the process of being committed) many of the modern wars simply seem to be an extension of the wars that came out of World War I where liberal democracies were fighting against totalitarian regimes to determine which was the stronger form of government.In many ways the liberal democracy is going to be the stronger state simply because the people who fight for the democracy have a personal stake in the outcome of the war, and that is their freedom while with the tyranny, the person fighting for the government is only doing so because they are being told to, and even if the fact that by fighting the remain alive, there is no guarantee that at the conclusion of the war things are going to be any better. This is something that has been evident right back to the times of the Ancient Greeks, where the city state of Athens successfully held of the might of the Persian Empire.However, there is always a catch, and the weakness with the democracy, as is also evident with the Ancient Greeks, is that the people tend to be swayed by fine sounding arguments. It was with regards to these arguments that the democracy of Ancient Athens was ultimately undermined by the totalitarian Spartans, simply because the rulers of Athens were making bad decisions, but since they were skillful orators, they were able to present a case for a foolish policy in a way that the average person who see that it was a necessity.The same is the case in relation to the Iraq War, however the difference is that the people do not necessarily need to be convinced because their voice is really only heard (in the United States at least) once every two years (with regards to the election of Congress). This is what 2002 was all about, namely getting enough people elected to congress to allow Bush to have the votes to pass through a resolution authorising war. Further, it helped no end to have the September 11 attacks occur because it created a sense of patriotism to create the belief that if you did not support the government, then you supported the terrorists (which is a very faulty argument, but one that works).As for this documentary, it is pretty ordinary. It doesn't say anything new and generally only beats the same drum that many of the others beat. The only difference is that it tells the story form an Australian perspective. However, most of us knew what was going on anyway, and the only reason that Howard went on to win his next election had nothing to do with the war, nor the economy, but everything to do with the fact that Labour's offering was a pretty poor choice.
