Comment is Free hits a new low

August 13, 2007 at 10:05 am (Human rights, iraq war, voltairespriest)

This has already been mentioned elsewhere, but I thought I’d add my voice to the cacophony currently swelling in denunciation of Neil Clark’s revolting article on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website.

I do appreciate that the standards to which a website (whose whole purpose is to allow the publication of varying views) can be held are not the same those of a print journal. However to witness this apologist for Serb nationalism now turning his attention to Iraqi staff such as translators working for the UK and US operations in Basra and Baghdad, and calling them “quislings”, is quite nauseating nevertheless. In the course of what appears to be an argument with the neocons of Harry’s Place, he appears to have decided that said legion of hapless workers are in fact “mercenaries” who deserve presumably whatever fate the heroic “resistance” mete out to them. Clark writes:

“There is a simple answer to that “practical military issue”: let’s do all we can to keep the British army out of war zones. And in the meantime, let’s do all we can to keep self-centred mercenaries who betrayed their fellow countrymen and women for financial gain out of Britain.”

He also seems to think that it’s hypocritical of the neocons with who he is hypothetically arguing, to support offering asylum to these people. This perceived hypocrisy is apparently based upon the face that the neocons in question obviously supported the war in Iraq. The reason Clark seems to see for the Iraqi workers’ lives being in danger is that because there was an invasion, there were troops on the ground. Because of the troops being on the ground, the “resistance” sprang up. The same troops also employed local staff, who were obviously traitors to their own country, and who were then targeted by the righteous and heroic “resistance”. But it all basically started with the war, so if you think about it I suppose it’s really all the neocons fault that people (to whom Clark doesn’t want to offer asylum, lest we forget) are currently in danger of being killed. Which of course relies not only upon bizarrely twisted logic, not to mention that it rather discounts the possibility that Harry’s Place et al might be right on this issue, in spite of having been wrong to support the war in the first place.

All of which I suppose leads me to not much more of a conclusion than that Neil Clark is a tosser, and that the Guardian’s online media team have weird taste in columnists. I just felt like giving my two penneth.

Anyway, if you want to send them your own thoughts on the issue then the relevant email addresses are georgina.henry@guardian.co.uk and
alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk.