Supersub?

So Nick is lying down in a darkened room for a while finishing his book. On comes supersub Andrew Anthony with a column of stunning simplemindedness organized around a fake quiz (this puerile device seems to be the fashion among the decents lately: see this similar effort by David Hirsh of Engage). The world is divided between universalists who believe that democracy and human rights belong to everyone, and relativists who believe clitoridectomy is a charming local custom. Got that?

He also seems to believe that

... interventions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and, most controversially, Iraq were predicated, give or take a few WMD, on the notion that the inhabitants of those countries should be extended the democratic rights that most people in the West take for granted.

I think "predicated on" here means that those who actually organized these interventions (as opposed to those who merely cheered from their blogs) acted for that reason. This is the kind of assertion that would have Jeremy Paxman raising a eyebrow or two.

Generally, Anthony seems to be suffering from an advanced case of imaginary-Stopper-in-your-head syndrome (see Harry's Place passim for the the full aetiology.) He can't conceive that someone might have thought the Iraq war was a bad idea because (a) it wasn't actually going to end in liberal democracy and (b) a lot of people were going to get maimed or killed (both being reasons of impeccably univeralist pedigree), so he assures himself of his own superiority by ascribing a whole bunch of daft beliefs to his opponents.

Update, by bruschettaboy. This is a warmed-over extended version of something that Andrew "Clothes For Chaps" Anthony (for yes, it is he, of the Style section of the magazine; I think Mark Steyn had a similar career trajectory) wrote for the Guardian blog last week and it was shit then too. In the Geoffrey Mortlake column at the back of the Sport section, the author is musing on the general concept of substitutes and understudies:

To watch [Jose Mourinho] introduce Crespo and Robben as early as the 20th minute is to see a Monty rather than a Wavell at work. His magnificent five - Cudicini, Huth, Gudjohnsen, Wright-Phillips and Crespo - simply by sitting put on the bench, have played as significant a role as those who run around in front of them.

There are two reasons for this. First, there is the galvanising effect they have on their own team-mates. One sloppy pass and you know, with replacements of that quality sitting in the wings, you will soon be off the stage.

This was a point first made plain to me by Larry Olivier when we were dinnerdancing at the White Elephant on the Thames. I asked him what, after so many years at the top, drove him to continue performing at the highest level. 'Understudies, dear boy,' he replied, 'Understudies.'

Somehow, I do not think that Nick is reading his replacement's column today and shitting bricks. Perhaps we have this all wrong and churning out a thousand words of boilerplate Decentism is much more difficult than Nick makes it look.