Gratuitous Insults

[liadnan]

When half the retired senior members of the diplomatic corps, including Crispin Tickell for fuck's sake, tell you your foreign policy is a bit of a cockup in an open letter to The Times it is just possibly a more worthwhile course of action to consider whether your foreign policy is a bit of a cockup than it is to call them "the camel-corps".

Yes, I know the Foreign Office is full of arabists. That's how they come to know a bit about the middle east. But diplomats just don't do this kind of thing, even when retired. Only very, very rarely. So when they do, it's worth paying attention.

Yes, I know that I peddled a rather different line about a year ago. I was wrong. I thought that Britain at least wouldn't cock it up.

(Declaration of bias: one of the signatories is a friend of my parents and another is the father of a very good friend. Actually, I thought the latter was still serving.)

Incidentally, I notice that Raed, of Dear Raed fame now has his own blog at RaedintheMiddle. To my mind, he's the best of the Iraqi bloggers, undoubtedly good though RiverBend and Salaam Pax are.

Comments

[rparvaaz.livejournal.com]

If it helps any, I didn't think it was possible to mess up quite this badly and I never supported this invasion.

That letter was a piece of genius though. I am on full hero-worship mode....

[liadnan]

Haakon gave a link to the Independent's version of the story yesterday which listed the signatories' careers... they're almost all real heavy-weights.