Coincidental Heroes? posted by Richard Seymour

Harry has an answer for Johann Hari's recent doubts on the US occupation:

Who cares what the motives for the US invading Iraq were? As was rightly pointed out it was the coincidence of interests between Iraqi democrats and the US that counted and was the reason why people on the left supported armed liberation and still do.

The issue of motives only comes into play if one no longer believes that the US is interested in creating a democracy in Iraq, if there is no longer a coincidence of interests between Iraqi democrats and the US occupiers. For all the blundering mistakes of the military and political strategists and the criminal behaviour of prison guards, I have yet to see a single scrap of evidence to suggest that the US is not still interested in creating some sort of democracy in Iraq.

The obvious question is this: where have you ever seen a single scrap of evidence - not claim, but evidence - that the US intends democracy in Iraq? The qualifier "some sort of" has its significance, of course... The other question is this: Since when has it been the case that outcomes could be divorced from motive? Could the war between the US and Iraqis now have anything to do with the motives of the US in invading and the consequent way they have conducted the occupation?