It’s time to put on the perspective-correction spectacles again.

Christopher Hitchens argues that recent unpleasant events are a warning of what will happen if the liberation of Iraq fails. Oliver Kamm is re-examining his reasons for supporting military action, saying no outcome would cause him to question his original justification. Glenn Reynolds monitors people who are offering a whole range of explanations. Oddly, the best The Independent‘s Robert “Quagmire” Fisk can do is to claim that Iraq is only “on the brink of anarchy“. (I think he’s suffering from wolf-crying fatigue.) Two of my calm, sane pro-war friends Claire and Judith are deeply worried.

I’m not. I’m certainly not happy about what is happening, though. I grew up intermittently hearing my dad tell stories of real and attempted coups d’état—apparently a popular recreational activity for young army officers in West Africa throughout the 60s and 70s. This isn’t even a failed coup; it certainly isn’t civil war. All that’s going on in Iraq is that a bunch of fanatics and looters have got their knickers in a twist because they’re unemployed, non-specifically resentful (of a specific and convenient foreign target) and have access to AK47s and rocket-propelled grenades. A large proportion of the rabble are more interested in picking up a slightly used PC than overthrowing the Yankee oppressor.

Bush is committed to finishing the job in exactly the way his father was not. Tony Blair is standing by him, his eyes retaining their scarily convinced stare. And we have precedents. Sierra Leone is one. It was recently described by the UN as the poorest country in the World and by the not-famously-hyperbolic Economist as “the worst place to live on the planet”. It’s better now, thanks to humanitarian military intervention. All the hellish ingredients were there too: mischievous neighbours, “organised” terror against the civilian population, economic disaster, and lots of weapons.

Stability came despite the kidnapping of 11 British soldiers in 2000, after the collapse of a peace deal and the capture of hundreds of UN peacekeepers’ weapons, despite interference from the delightful Charles Taylor and despite the presence of tens of thousands of drug-crazed, gun- and machete-wielding psychos wandering around in country that makes Iraq look like Regent’s Park on a mild Spring morning.

So why the hysteria about Iraq now? The World’s media hardly gave a shit about Sierra Leone, except insofar their trying to save its people embarrassed the Blair government. And, even when the journos did care, no one paid any attention to their reports. By comparison, the situation in Iraq is a storm in a teacup, but one being observed through powerful magnifying lenses by people who have been forecasting a hurricane for two years and are yet to feel a splash of rain.

Yesterday CNN reported that the UN is continuing to wind down its massive peace-keeping operation in Sierra Leone. Wake me up if Sadr’s thugs are still fighting in the streets four years from now.

UPDATE: An Economist leader writer obviously read PooterGeek last night before filing this.

UPDATE: I swear I didn’t read Mark Steyn either before I put digit to keyboard.

Even some of my most hawkish friends have been expressing deep worries about the recent attacks in Falluja, which they consider part of the wider problem of poor post-war planning and are concerned might undermine US commitment to Iraq. I really want to write a long post about this, but things are hectic at the moment.

Briefly, even the BBC acknowledges that the town is a basket case and I personally believe that, while the US administration’s “strategy” has been shoddy, they aren’t going to give up on this one. All I can say is that, if I had the time I would make a proper case. For the moment I am limited to a Guardian-opinion-piece-style unsupported assertion.

I keep hearing/reading the UK Overseas Development Minister, Hilary Benn, on the good progress in Iraq, for example half-an-hour ago on Radio 4’s Westminster Hour. So I googled, as you do, and he really, positively is the son of the man who took tea with that monster.

On the way to the Henley Regatta[, darling], Sonya showed me the front cover of Friday’s Evening Standard. It wasn’t until she stepped out the headline to me—“Gilligan: This Was A Just War“—that I parsed it correctly. My belief that Andrew Gilligan would oppose military action in Iraq was so strong that I couldn’t even mentally process his support for it.

As you’d expect from the man, it’s not a very good piece, but he does put into perspective one aspect of the debate:

“One year on (since the war began), however, the most important fact is that nobody’s worst fears on that wakeful night have come true. The vast majority of us, Iraqis, journalists, and Tony Blair alike, survived. Fedayeen guerrillas struck the coalition with small numbers, but there was virtually no real fighting with Saddam’s regular forces. The bombing of Baghdad looked scary on TV, but it didn’t even begin to approach the daily tonnage dropped on ,say, Hanoi during Vietnam, London or any German city during the Second World War.

“‘Shock and Awe’ lasted an hour and a half, rather than the promised three days. And with only a few ghastly exceptions, the targeting, in the capital at least, was very precise. Colleagues who arrived after the war was over kept asking us where all the destroyed buildings were.”

Describing what happened in Iraq as a “war” is just silly. “War” is what has been happening in the Democratic Republic of The Congo for the past ten years at the cost of millions of lives. “War” is what’s been happening in the Sudan. Even the most inflated casualty numbers the “Stoppers” can come up with would represent a “quiet patch” in many countries during the 20th century. Over ten thousand people died in one day invading one country the size of Iraq during WWII.

Before the “war”, I lost count of the number of times deeply ignorant people used the phrase “carpet bombing” with a sage gravity. At the same time as characterizing Bush’s use of words like “evil” as simplistic they would bracket the precision targeting of non-explosive concrete blocks to Ba’ath Party buildings with the scorching of Dresden.

One of the profoundest handicaps of the anti-war crowd was and is their complete inability to discriminate between degrees of awfulness—an ability that is all too important on this sorry planet.