EDITORIAL: Bombing cannot mask our shame over Iraq carnage
What a bloody mess. And what a source of shame for the West that so much blame for the carnage now visiting Iraq lies with us. But let us remind ourselves first of the surreal chain of events that has brought us here.
It started with an official lie, deliberately promoted to persuade the British people to support a war of choice. The claim that Saddam Hussein was a danger to this country was then mingled with idealistic plans to bring democracy to a New Middle East.
We certainly got a New Middle East, but not the one we had been told to expect.
Without Saddam, Iraqs dangerous Sunni-Shia split widened into a chasm. With the Christian West blamed by many Iraqis for the invasion and the chaos that followed, local Christians suffered horribly, fleeing in their thousands to Syria, until that country, too, was sunk in murderous sectarian chaos by Western intervention.