According to the BBC, “Middle Eastern countries have voiced concern” that the U.S. may start bombing Iraq soon as the next move in the War Against Evil.

I think that the middle-east should just shut the hell up. In the end, bombing, the removal of Saddam Hussein from power, and the subsequent lifting of U.N. sanctions are the best things that could happen to Iraq. For the U.S. and U.N. to capitulate and lift the sanctions while Iraq remains defiant would seriously damage their credibility, and for the Iraqi government to back down now after ten years of refusing to submit to the will of the U.N. would probably be fatal. Whether the sanctions were the right course or not is another matter — but in any case it’s clear that they’re not working, and to leave them in place is probably ultimately more damaging than bombs.

The U.N and “peace” have been given, as John Lennon suggested, their chance. Unfortunately, this approach has not worked. Working through the U.N. rather than through puppet governments have not stopped middle-eastern regimes from calling for “Death to the United States.” Decades of negotiations, sanctions, summits, and study have not made the middle-east or Iraq any more stable or less xenophobic. A few years of war in the 1940s, on the other hand, set Germany and Japan on the paths that led to them becoming two of the world’s wealthiest, most powerful nations. Ten years on from V-E day, Porsche was again building Le Mans-winning cars in Stuttgart. Ten years on from V-J day, Sony was producing the world’s first transistor radio in Tokyo. Ten years on from the end of the Gulf War, Iraq is still wallowing in its own crapulence.