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“Our wars in Iraq, in Bosnia and in Kosovo contained a sinister pattern, a ‘normalisation’ of war. If our outrageous assaults on our enemies were too much for the audience, we either apologised – accidents happen in war, do they not? – or we blamed the victims. If we bombed a bunker packed with civilians in Baghdad, it was only because Saddam had used identical bunkers for command and control operations. So when we bombed Afghanistan in 2001 and destroyed entire villages, it was because al-Qaeda or the Taliban had been hiding there or – if they hadn’t – their tactic of hiding in other villages was to blame. And in 2003, we created a pageant of identical ruthlessness against the Iraqis.” — Robert Fisk
Our wars in Iraq, in Bosnia and in Kosovo contained a sinister pattern, a ‘normalisation’ of war. If our outrageous assaults on our enemies were too much for the audience, we either apologised – accidents happen in war, do they not? – or we blamed the victims. If we bombed a bunker packed with civilians in Baghdad, it was only because Saddam had used identical bunkers for command and control operations. So when we bombed Afghanistan in 2001 and destroyed entire villages, it was because al-Qaeda or the Taliban had been hiding there or – if they hadn’t – their tactic of hiding in other villages was to blame. And in 2003, we created a pageant of identical ruthlessness against the Iraqis.