Yale Daily News

Good lord, why is a war criminal about to teach at Yale?

Why is a Greek goddess commenting on YDN articles?

Best two comments on any YDN story ever.

Bush and Blair are not war criminals, they both did what they believed, and still believe, based on an overwhelming amount of substantive evidence and intelligence, was best for their respective countries, and for the world.

The war in Iraq is about quashing Islamic extremism. Not Islam, not the Muslim religion, only the extremist sects thereof, i.e., the terrorists who have unwaveringly declared for well over two decades that it is their established objective to destroy Britain and the U.S. and what is commonly regarded as 'the free world.' The allies would be right to take the same offensive stance if it were Christian extremists, Jewish extremists, or extremists of any religion or cause.

Blair said in his speech at Yale on Friday, "the U.S. and its allies are fighting the same forces in Iraq that they are fighting in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and failure in Iraq would hurt those other efforts as well," which was met with applause from the assembled audience of students and faculty, the overwhelming majority of whom are widely known to be liberal leftists.

If those comments can appease that crowd, there must be at least some truth to them.

Terrorists are terrorists, the are not insurgents or freedom fighters or rebel forces or displaced nationals as they are so kindly referred to by the U.S. media, and it matters not what faith they choose to hide behind in creating their chaos and destruction.

War is not pleasant or desirable. But when it is necessary, as it is here, it must be carried out with determination, force and perseverance to victory for good over evil.

"Bush and Blair are not war criminals, they both did what they believed"

Actually, both are possible. Goebbles also believed that what he did was right. And no, I will not take that comparison back. Bush believes that he has done the will of God, and Blair simply was too credulous and went along with zero skepticism. It matters not their intentions, but their actions, and the results. They not only failed, but failed brutally. Blair is a war criminal, or at least would be if he decided to travel to any country other than the US.

Tony Blair is here to teach a course on RELIGION and globalization. It's delightful to think that by gutsy perseverance one can win the "war" yet how can a physical battle be necessary or even relevant when one is fighting an idea? There is an elephant in the room and he is trying to tell us that war cannot fully resolve globalization and religion. Ideas and resentments grow.

Athena, what are you doing condemning war?

The Iraq War was certainly never sold in the UK as being about fighting Islamic extremism - for one thing under Saddam Hussein Iraq was not an Islamic extremist country. (Indeed there were many who supported keeping him in power for precisely that reason.) When the war began it was sold to the British people as being about destroying Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction", despite dubious evidence that Iraq had them. When it became clearer that Iraq did not the justification shifted to "removing a tyrannical regime", something both the UK and the US have always been inconsistent on. Now the justification for staying seems to be based on the fact that Iraq has been so destabilised that pulling out would be a disaster.

It's only since the conquest of Iraq that the country has become notable for fundamentalist terrorists. Nobody at the time was convinced that Iraq was part of the "War on Terror".