Breaking with the D²Digest format for this one. It probably ought to have been a Crooked Timber post, but I thought it was slightly unfair to the rest of the CT gang to put it up there as it's basically part of a debate that I'm having in which they might not want to be on my side. I've removed most of the personal attacks ...

Help! I'm Being Repressed!

A response to the debate over Scott Lucas's book, "The Betrayal of Dissent", and much blogospheric venting over the same issue. I've avoided references to specific people below (other than three journalists) because I've argued publicly with a lot of them, and I don't want to excessively personalise this piece (yes yes well you should have seen the first draft)

The whole debate about whether anyone is "shutting down the debate" over the Iraq War seems to me to be conducted on both sides in somewhat less than good faith. Although that doesn�t mean that I think the blame is equally distributed.

On the factual point, people like Christopher Hitchens are right; it�s pretty easy to get anti-war opinions published in the left-wing press, and probably a bit more difficult to get pro-war ones printed (though one has to say, for all that people bang on about the horrible horribleness of the Guardian, the fact is that the Guardian Media Group publishes David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen once a week, and Hitchens pretty regularly). But this factual point is pretty trivial, and I�m surprised that anyone thinks it worth hiding behind.

As always, analogise it to your everyday life and all the complexities fall away like scales. If you and I and a bunch of our mates were to be having a discussion in the pub, say about the merits of League versus Union, or some such, and half way through the argument you noticed that every time you opened your mouth, I stuck my fingers in my ears and started shouting "LALALALALA CAN�T HEAR YOU", then you might scribble on a beermat something along the lines of:

"For Christ�s sake, what have you got against me? Why won�t you let me take part in this discussion?"

And if I were to reply:

"It�s ludicrous to suggest that I�m trying to silence you! You have ample opportunity to express yourself! LALALALA CAN�T HEAR YOU EYES CLOSED NOW!"

Then I think everyone would agree that this was a punch-in-the-mouth situation, and that while you may or may not technically have been "silenced", it was obvious that the person who was genuinely trying to avoid a debate was me.

It�s this behaviour that I, and I believe the rest of the anti-(This)war(Now) left are complaining about. Except that instead of "LALALALA I CAN�T HEAR YOU", the phrase used is "OF COURSE YOU WOULD RATHER STILL HAVE SADDAM HUSSEIN IN POWER".

The wording here is important, because OCYWRSHSHIP is similar to in its literal meaning, but very different from in its rhetorical impact, an entirely valid argument, which is of equally general purpose in that, like OCYWRSHSHIP, it is more or less relevant to any anti-war point about the dangers of creeping imperialism, the corruption of domestic political culture by the untruths told in support of the war, the facts on the ground in Iraq etc. That argument would be:

"But nevertheless, the people of Iraq have been freed from Saddam Hussein, and that is a very great benefit which needs to be set against all the disbenefits you are talking about".

Which is a fair enough point; it�s the starting point for a sensible discussion about the specific vilenesses of the Hussein regime, how well the post-war has been handled, and the longer-term political issues.

OCYWRSHSHIP, however, is not a starting point for a discussion. It�s an insult aimed at your interlocutor, basically trying to accuse him of being a closet Saddamist, and an implicit demand that he admit that he was a horrible person for supporting Saddam Hussein against the forces of good, before any debate will carry on.

Analysed as an argument, to be honest, I don�t think it�s any good; the fact remains that Human Rights Watch did not consider this to be a humanitarian intervention, so I�ve no damn idea why I should. But analysed as a debating tactic, which is what it is, it�s just ghastly; OCYWRSHSHIP is simply a version of LLLLLICHY.

In my personal assessment, David Aaronovich has almost always been scrupulous in using the second, fair version of the two arguments. Nick Cohen has tried to play the ball and not the man but has often allowed his combative nature to get the better of him. Christopher Hitchens, as far as I can tell, stuck his fingers in his ears around the beginning of 2003 and has been warbling ever since.

So to return to my original subject, the "pro-war left" (interestingly, the pro-war right, and Americans, have been in my experience much more willing to justify the invasion on their own assessment of the facts; OCYWRSHSHIP is for the most part a feature of the Left and of the British Left in particular) are not "trying to stifle debate". They�re trying to avoid getting themselves involved in a debate which, to be blunt, they fear they would lose. To coin a phrase, they�re "frit". They got themselves involved in what they thought would be a well-run internationalist humanitarian operation, and they found out that it wasn�t well-run, it wasn�t internationalist and it wasn�t a humanitarian intervention (sorry for repeating the HRW link, but I do think it�s vital to drive this point home. There are squatters on the moral high ground, and the owners of the real estate do not recognise their claim).

It�s never nice to have your Johnny Rotten moment ("Ever get the feeling you�ve been conned?"). It's never nice to have to admit that you've been made a monkey of, which is why large sections of the pro-war left have taken to defending more or less any action of the Bush/Blair governments, the CPA and the US military, without considering whether they make sense or not. And since they've got used to the feeling of using it, OCYWRSHSHIP comes out as the weapon of choice in all those debates too. Having been adopted in the beginning as a last resort, a tactic only to be used against genuinely dreadful foes like George Galloway and ANSWER, it's now the first resort against anyone who steps out of line � funny the way that the self-styled heirs of George Orwell often tend to be pig-blind to their own behaviour, innit?

So anyway, next time I get the OCYWRSHSHIP chucked at me (for what it's worth, yes I would, as part of the "Anti This War Now" position, as I doubt that a credible and well-thought-out war proposal would have been made available by now), it's not going to be "shutting down debate" I'm talking about. It's gonna be three words. Frit. Frit. And Frit.

Update See this is exaclty the sort of thing I'm talking about

Stop the War meant no war. No war meant Saddam in power. Saddam in power meant, well you know the rest.

Well no. They don't "know the rest". If the cruise-missile liberals "knew the rest", then they would have to get to grips with the fact that Iraq was not a humanitarian intervention. I have yet to see a single bomber make the honest humanitarian case - that it was worth fighting a war in order to prevent the 2,000 murders per year¹ that were happening. I've seen fucking loads of war-liberals making arguments about Iraq which include the words "mass graves", implying that massacres in 1991 are a reason to fight a war in 2003. This is exactly what I mean by "squatters on the moral high ground". The words "you know the rest" are weasel; it's an attempt to suggest that very terrible things would have happened in Iraq if we hadn't had a war right now in 1Q03, without wanting to get into a discussion about exactly what those things might have been. The squatters don't want to get into that discussion, of course, because they're frit.

¹Plus torture and suppression of free speech; these have to be recognised as part of the moral equation, though I've not seen anyone argue that a war could be justified on these grounds either.