Aw, Go Ahead, Call 'Em "Wily" If You Want

The Guardian excerpts Authors Take Sides on Iraq and the Gulf War, a collection of literary figures' opinions on the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq (modelled on an earlier anthology produced by Auden and Spender during the Spanish Civil War). I particularly enjoy Jim Crace's analysis:

It was never likely that the violent overthrow of a regime with base standards by a couple of governments with double standards would add much to the gaiety of nations.

Even for a critic of the war like myself, though, the litany of "I was totally opposed," "I deplore," etc., gets somewhat monotonous, so it almost comes as a pleasant surprise when John Keegan announces, "I was and am strongly for the military action taken against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq in March and April 2003, as I was for the war to expel his forces from Kuwait in 1991." I can even get behind, albeit with strong reservations, his idea that

...the use of force, by states and armies that embody civilised values, can achieve good. I have no sympathy with those who shrink from the use of force as if it were in itself a bad thing.

On the other hand, it's harder for me to have much sympathy for his stance when he starts veering off into cultural generalizations, telling readers he is "pessimistic about the future of the historic Muslim lands...for reasons which have to do with the late medieval decision in Islam to renounce the pursuit of progress." Though that's not quite as offensive as what he wrote less than a month after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in the Daily Telegraph (reprinted by FreeRepublic.com):

Westerners fight face to face, in stand-up battle, and go on until one side or the other gives in. They choose the crudest weapons available, and use them with appalling violence, but observe what to non-Westerners may well seem curious rules of honour. Orientals, by contrast, shrink from pitched battle, which they often deride as a sort of game, preferring ambush, surprise, treachery and deceit as the best way to overcome an enemy.

After which, no doubt, they like to cackle maniacally and twirl their mustaches, if they have them.