The Spectator

Why America went to war

Come off it, James. American did not go to war to ‘set about a phenomenally ambitious project to build democracies in parts of the world where they had never succeeded before’. America went to war to extract the blood price for 9/11. Saddam was identified with the terrorists. He was said to have weapons of mass destruction and therefore to be a threat to world peace. In attacking Iraq the United States and Great Britain maintained they were acting in self-defence. It was all nonsense, and has ended in disaster.

But none of this matters in relation to what Douglas Alexander said yesterday. What matters is that the Gordon Brown is distancing himself from the George W. Bush. So are the American people. So is the Republican party. So is poor old Bush himself, to judge by that press conference yesterday. Those of us who were against the war on terror from the moment the first plane flew into the World Trade Center are beginning to feel a bit sorry for the Commander in Chief. All he did was follow the script, and now he is being deserted by the scriptwriters.

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