Who needs 'The Guardian' when you've got a senior BBC editor?

I trust the intelligence of our readership not to need to spell out why the Viewpoint article on the BBC News website by the BBC's former Middle East editor, now U.S. bureau chief, Paul Danahar, is indeed a 'point of view' - a strongly-argued point of view which places most of the guilt, as left-wingers are prone to do, firmly on the shoulders of U.S. and U.K. colonialism for the present plight of Iraq. 

Yes, he glances at the partial culpability of the present [Shia-dominated] Iraqi government, but it is only a glance. For it is us, the wicked West, who are mainly to blame - in the opinion of this senior BBC editor.

Who isn't to blame, according to Paul Danahar? Well, Saddam Hussain's regime, al-Qaeda and Iran for starters. Iran doesn't even get a mention in this piece.

No sentence from this article sums up Paul's point of view better than this one:

The Arab nationalism of Saddam Hussein's Baathism was a reaction to the selfish audacity of colonial rule.

Purely left-wing cant.

And that it is cant is shown by this brilliant article/lecture on Baathism from the left-leaning New Republic:

Baathism: An Obituary

You're all busy people, no doubt, but if you have a few spare minutes please read that piece by Paul Berman. It's a world away from the knee-jerk, left-wing anti-imperialism of the BBC's Paul Danahar.

Paul Danahar was a biased BBC Middle East bureau chief. Now he's the Beeb's U.S. bureau chief. Lord 'elp America!

And we pay for this.