A princely announcement..

It could be considered that Prince Charles has started the new year with an untimely and controversial remark. The Corriere della Sera reports him as saying that he was against the Iraqi engagement. If this is true, it's surprising and disappointing- not because of his sharing an old and overexposed, common opinion, but because of publicly expressing it. 

There are other opinions, of course. Is it not, for example, insulting and condescending to suggest that the Iraqis as a people need to be 'stabilised' by a tyrannic regime?

Because the initial engagement -whether 'legally' right or wrong- was so crucial, one followed it from day to day very closely. The war itself was over in a few weeks. The first Iraqi elections underlined this.

It stands to reason that if around twenty million people had no wish to be freed from their regime, it would still exist, and the Americans would never have arrived in Baghdad in two weeks. It also stands to reason that if the people rejected the idea of democracy, they would never have established one.
Not only is it established, but despite the rabid, systematic pressure of die-hards and fanatics conditioned by al-Qaida, the Iraqis are determined to defend their democracy, and rightly so. It's value, after all, is constantly increasing.

Any destabilisation has been cruelly provoked by those who consider democracy to be a threat to their cause and objective. This is why the war in Iraq is exactly the same- in principle- as the war in Afghanistan, where one of Prince Charles' sons also briefly served.

It also seems curious that a man of his stature and supposed intelligence, doesn't seem to appreciate what is becoming increasingly obvious, that the wars, which are basically the defence of democracies that religious fanatics wish to destroy, are not simply national- Iraqi, Afghani, Somali, Pakistani, Yemeni, Nigerian, etc., they are all part of a combined, international effort.

Had Prince Charles sincerely believed that the Iraqi engagement was totally wrong, he has enough clout to have expressed his opinion loudly and clearly enough at the appropriate time, and not seven years too late.

Such a statement now seems more provocative than anything else, but it would be hard to imagine that Prince Charles thinks he needs more public attention.

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Text by Mirino (PW) Modified image (with thanks to Google archives) © January, 2010