Iraq has moved forward. It’s time we did too

Imagine for a moment that you’ve woken up to the election results from North Korea. Or Syria. Or even China. The turnout is above 62 per cent, and millions of votes have been cast throughout the country for an exhaustingly wide range of candidates from all sorts of political parties and groups. No group will have a majority, so soon negotiations about forming a government will begin. You’d think it was a bloody miracle. And so it is, and it happened in Iraq at the weekend.....

The British seem to have an insatiable taste for I-told-you-so. It can take on an amusing form in witty letters to the editor or an annoying, self-righteous form in the case of the Chilcot inquiry in which the major players are brought in to be harangued. Chilcot is an unfunny pantomime in which the villains and heroes are cast in advance. Blair has been resolute and unapologetic and brave and for this he has been attacked mercilessly just as he has been since 2003. Clare Short is a backstabbing weasel who, as you might expect, is venerated in certain circles.

This piece is probably as close as anyone in Britain will probably ever get to admitting the war and its outcome were and are justified. The comments section is hilarious if only because the I-told-you-so crowd can't let go of its catchphrases. Illegal! Immoral! Bombing! Civilians! Occupation! Civil war! Ends justify the means!

But the anti-war types are always ready to have it both ways. According them, now that we're in Iraq we can't leave! It must be convenient to always be in the right!

Obviously there are plenty who demand Nuremberg-style proceedings in the States with Bush and Cheney in the dock but such a thing will never come to pass. Still, for those Americans who demand accountability why don't we start with anyone who wrote letters saying the war was doomed to failure from the start, who mocked (and misrepresented) the Mission Accomplished sign/visit, who said Iraq would be plunged into an interminable civil war, who said that free and fair elections were impossible and who said that democracy might not have been right for the Middle East.

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