US in Iraq and Russia in Georgia: two examples of world-class hypocrisy

THE images from Georgia are depressingly familiar — a man grips his dead relative in grief, a woman’s face is streaked with blood.

It’s the Balkans all over again, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Chechnya.

Our world leaders — the people whose priority is supposed to be to look out for our welfare — once again think the best way to solve their problems and get what they want is by raining bombs and destroying lives. When I marched in protest against the invasion of Iraq a few years ago, I did so partly because I felt the so-called war on terror was sure to spread more terror. And so it has.