My (Dutch) Kingdom for Iraq

We may be moving towards Afghanistan as the new crisis in US-European relations, but that doesn't mean the old one of Iraq has gone away entirely. Our colleague Giles Scott-Smith, on our partner website Libertas, discusses the emerging political scandal in the Netherlands over alleged covert support by the Dutch Government for the US invasion of 2003:

For five years Premier Jan-Peter Balkenende has refused to allow any kind of investigation into the decisions and deals surrounding the Dutch ‘political, not military’ support for the 2003 invasion. Simmering discontent over this stubbornness, coupled with persistent suspicions that there was plenty to hide, kept the issue bubbling away within the worlds of investigative journalism and the political Left, who smelled a large, US-style rat. 

Comments

[Scott Lucas]

Reader Thom Janssen has sent us this analysis in response to Giles Scott-Smith:

I'd like to begin by pointing out a key fact left out of the article:
the Dutch obsession over our complete failure in Srebrenica. Ever
since that, the general public has not merely become allergic to
military intervention (our imperialistic acts of genocide in Indonesia
in the late 1940s did that), but also to peace missions as a whole.
Where Vietnam is the omnipresent analogy to Iraq in the US, Srebrenica
is here (as far as our own involvement is concerned). This is why the
invasion of Iraq was hard to sell here even as "liberation of the
Iraqi people".

The article expresses astonishment that Balkenende is somehow still
party leader of the CDA after all this. I'd like to share with you a
theory of mine:

Balkenende remains the only leader figure the CDA has. He has been
prime minister for so long that the electorate has developed a form of
stockholm syndrome, seeing him as the one and only face of the gentle
CDA giant.

However, the CDA's christian base is being sapped by the growing
Christenunie, headed by the charismatic (and dangerous) André Rouvoet.
Currently the CDA enjoys a strong secular voting block as well, due to
it's center-left policies. The Labour Party would absorb pretty much
all of these people if the CDA is left without an effective counter to
Wouter Bos. Without Balkenende, the party would lose the gains it has
made since the informal ceasefire with Pim Fortuyn, which left the CDA
unscathed after Fortuyn verbally massacred all other respectable
politicians in the eyes of the public.

Back to the actual matter at hand.

Delegating this inquiry to a commission basically spells the end of
the issue. In nine months the public will not remember this, and as
such parliament may be cautious in responding to whatever is
unearthed. They do not want to be seen as dwelling on something this
old.

The way the media is going to report on the commission's findings will
also decrease the public's interest in the issue. The gist of it will
be reported, but the actual evidence on which these conclusions are
based are rarely going be mentioned in detail.

This is precisely why a parliamentary inquiry is the only way to deal
with this scandal. The Dutch are, despite their short attention span,
very interested in politics, and would tune in to watch the inquiry
live on tv.

If this were to happen, the CDA would surely be decimated. The
Christenunie would swell in size, but would ultimately be cut off by
Labour and the Socialist Party (providing the latter gets over its
identity crisis), who could form a majority coalition without
including the new christian juggernaut. The position of the Liberals
is uncertain. They are still recovering from the continuing exodus of
muslim-hating crazies from their party, and their party leader remains
uninspiring milquetoast Mark Rutte. Wilders is an irrelevant one-issue

For now the focus of the media will remain on Obama, as the general
public catches on to the fact that he is at heart still an American
politician, often appealing to the strange and scary nationalism that
lives in the US, and devoutly praying at the altar of unfettered
capitalism. This stunning realization is going to occupy us for a
while, as will the way he interacts with our representatives.

I'm really just writing out my thoughts and predictions. I'm not
professionally engaged in politics; I just happen to read a lot.