We are often encouraged not to play the blame game, not look too far into the Abyss/history/whatever, etc, but the plight of the Yazidi minority in Iraq, besieged with genocidal intent by ISIS, is a situation where we should not agree to that. It is one of the many bitter and more and less direct fruits of the knocking off of Saddam Hussein’s regime on totally spurious grounds, instigated by people who were either terrible cynics or subscribers to bad and irresponsible Grand Theories of history or most likely both. The credibility of anyone who supported the Iraq war should be exactly in proportion to the quantity of pro-war predictions that have come true since then, divided by the suffering it has caused. That’s putting it mildly, by the way!

And there’s practically nothing that can be done that won’t make the whole situation worse. Just like the first time around.