Well, well, well. It seems the chattering classes have finally stumbled upon the burning question that should have singed their eyebrows off a decade ago. In a moment of startling clarity, BBC's Jeremy Bowen has looked at the nascent US-Iran deal and asked, with the hushed reverence of a man discovering a turd in a punchbowl: what exactly was the point of all that war? This is the kind of profound inquiry that tends to arise just after you've spent a trillion dollars, incinerated a region, and destabilised the global order for a generation. It is, one might say, the diplomatic equivalent of closing the stable door after the horse has not only bolted but bought a one-way ticket to Argentina and is now sipping Malbec with the ghost of Perón.
Now, let's have a little historical refresher for those whose memories are as short as a politician's promise. The 'what was the war for?' question is, in fact, a rhetorical boomerang that has been circling the globe since the first shock and awe. The official narrative, as peddled by men in suits who would not know a weapon of mass destruction if it hit them in the privates, was that we were toppling a tyrannical madman with a penchant for palaces and a nuclear ambition. But it turned out that the madman's weapons of mass destruction were about as real as the WMDs in a Bond villain's lair: all smoke and mirrors. So, after a decade of blood, treasure, and the complete disintegration of Iraq, we got a Shia-led government cosying up to Iran. A grand strategic victory, indeed.
And now, with the deal being brokered, the uncomfortable truth is rising like a gas bubble from a swamp: the war was a colossal waste of life and wealth. It was an eructation of hubris that painted a target on the back of American credibility and left the Middle East in a state of chaos that would make Hogarth blush. The question Bowen asks is not new, but it is exquisitely timed. It is the kind of question that makes you wonder if the architects of the invasion were playing a very long con or just bumbling through history like a drunk tourist in a minefield.
The deal, if it goes through, will mean the US is now negotiating with the very regime it once swore to contain. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a drone strike. The deal will effectively legitimise Iran's influence in a region that the US has been trying to pacify for decades. It is a tacit admission that the Iraq War was a catastrophic error, an expensive detour into the abyss of imperial hubris. Bowen's question hangs in the air like a persistent fart in a boardroom: what was the war for? The answer, my friends, is as elusive as a clean politician in a whorehouse.
We must now witness the circus of diplomatic contortions as politicians try to justify the unjustifiable. They will talk about democracy, freedom, and the long game. They will avoid eye contact with the families of the fallen. They will spin like broken records. But the truth is unspinable. The war was a grotesque vacation of sanity, a holiday from reality, a tempest in a teacup of oil.
So let us raise a glass of gin to Jeremy Bowen for asking the question that should have been asked before the first bomb dropped. Let us toast to the empty coffers, the shattered lives, and the lingering stench of moral bankruptcy. And let us hope the next time someone suggests a war, we ask not what it is for, but what it is against: namely, common sense and human decency.
In the end, the deal is a deal, the war is a war, and the question remains, unanswered and unanswerable, like a riddle wrapped in a cluster bomb. Cheers.
