The march of folly is to continue...

I never thought I'd quote the words of Pat Buchanan on these pages, but as Robert Fisk says in the Independent this morning (Robert Fisk: Bush's new strategy - the march of folly. So into the graveyard of Iraq, George Bush, commander-in-chief, is to send another 21,000 of his soldiers. The march of folly is to continue...) "the words of the conservative politician Pat Buchanan deserve to be written in marble":

"We will soon launch an imperial war on Iraq with all the 'On to Berlin' bravado with which French poilus and British tommies marched in August 1914. But this invasion will not be the cakewalk neoconservatives predict ... For a militant Islam that holds in thrall scores of millions of true believers will never accept George Bush dictating the destiny of the Islamic world ...

...

"The endeavour at which Islamic peoples excel is expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war. They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon... We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before.

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"The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."