Hiding Behind The War

The Camden New Journal and its stablemate the Islington Tribune are two of the best local papers in London.

A shame then to see the 24th April issue of the New Journal lapse into the sort of auto-leftism that does 'the left' no good at all. Check out columnist John Gulliver discussing Kurdish Iraq:

"There are at least two "honour killings" each day in the region; a hospital reported that over the past few years it has seen several thousand women burned to death in 'suicides'; in British controlled Basra scores of women have been killed this year for not veiling - all sure signs of a society brutalised by the war".

Gulliver based his comments on the views of a New Zealand medic, Dr Sandra Phelps. The conclusion appears to be that violence against women in Iraq is out of control under 'our occupation'.

I am sure Iraqi has been utterly brutalised by the UK/US invasion. But much of the violence Gulliver and Phelps discuss is not in reaction to the occupation, or even in reaction to the new 'Iraqi' government. It is instead the result of long repressed Islamist forces being given free reign.

I fail to see how it is Britain's faults if women are murdered in Basra for not wearing the veil - the people to blame for such dastardly crimes are the people who commit them - Iraqis (or foreign Jihadi's) acting in the name of a particularly vile strand of Islam.

We are in danger of sleepwalking into a sort of reverse Basil Fawlty here - where instead of "don't mention the war", we constantly talk about the Iraq war, and assign faults to it that are simply not accurate.

John Gulliver should know better.