MANY MORNINGS begin with the Today snort: an almost indefinable simultaneous use of sinus and larynx, it is the audio equivalent of one of Jeremy Paxman’s eyebrows leaping off his head and making a bid for freedom among the studio lights. The snort says: “What you are arguing is ridiculous and everyone knows it.” So it is a snort on behalf of everyone. And, for a long time now, the snort has been deployed against those who argue that the invasion and occupation of Iraq are anything other than a disaster.

A far more elegant version of the snort was used in these pages recently by my colleague, Matthew Parris. “Nobody,” he argued, “seriously now thinks the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a good idea or is going anywhere useful.” The troops should be withdrawn straightaway. Back in the summer Matthew appeared to think that such a withdrawal was imminent in any case — and that those of us who advocated war in 2003 should now apologise for the act of betrayal about to take place. “Why don’t they sing out,” he sang out, “the armchair warriors of Fleet Street?”

No one’s scuttled yet, but it would be such a lie to write that what has happened in Iraq was what I expected, let alone hoped for. I had no idea that there could be such an insurgency as the one we have seen in Iraq. To target American and British troops as symbols of the occupation is perhaps understandable, but to target the mosques, festivals, funerals and marketplaces of the Shia majority is surely madness. If the insurgents’ desire is to safeguard the position of the Sunni minority then such apocalyptic provocation is insanity.

What, in heaven’s name, was the strategic objective of the man who jumped on a bus this week and blew himself and all the passengers to kingdom come? How long could it be before the majority turned, using their prisons and militias, on the minority? I didn’t see it coming, this insurgency that has prevented investment, stymied development and disrupted the attempt to rebuild the country. I had hoped that, by now, tourists would be arriving at Baghdad airport bound for Ur and Nineveh; instead elderly Christians are held hostage in whitewashed cellars. So it must be a “disaster” mustn’t it? Snort away.

Iraqis themselves, in a large poll released yesterday, believe that things are bad in their country: 53 per cent took a negative view of the situation, compared with 44 per cent who were optimists. Half now thought the invasion had been a bad idea. The same number now wanted rule by a single, strong leader and only 28 per cent thought democracy more important. One quarter had confidence in Iraq’s politicians, while two thirds trusted its religious leaders and army. Snort! All that effort, all those deaths and half of the Iraqis want a strong leader!

Today, of course, they could try to elect one. The day after tomorrow a large number of Iraq’s 15 million-strong electorate will go the polls and choose from 7,700 candidates to select 275 MPs. There have been instances of campaign violence, though nothing like as many as might have been expected. And this week Sir Jeremy Greenstock, our former envoy to Iraq and ambassador to the UN, admitted that he didn’t know whether it had all been worth it. “I don’t think we can tell yet,” he said. A disaster!

Compared with what, though? A disaster compared with what, precisely? Not compared with nothing, since there was no nothing in Iraq. Not a disaster compared with a hypothetical idealised successful Shia insurrection sometime in the unspecified future.

Let that one hang a moment, though, and go through the second part of the poll: 71 per cent of Iraqis said things were currently good in their personal lives, while 29 per cent said they were bad. 69 per cent expected the situation in Iraq to improve, while 11 per cent said it would worsen. And asked about what Iraq would need in five years’ time, support for the strong leader fell to 31 per cent and for democracy rose to 45 per cent.

At the same time there were reports out of Iraqi Kurdistan about how hard the Kurdish parties were having to work to get out the vote. Some of the younger electors were complaining about corruption and a generation gulf, and the parties had become worried about abstention. This, of course, is a problem of democracy. In the past it was resolved by having life presidents, shooting the complainants and gassing their villages. Now they have to organise rock-the-vote concerts.

Disastrous compared with what? Matthew’s challenge was to imagine waking up tomorrow and being told that the invasion of Iraq had all been a dream. Would anyone in their right minds feel awful and want to organise an invasion right away? Snort!

No, we could have continued to do what we did before. First, when Geoffrey Howe was Foreign Secretary and Matthew was a Tory MP, we trained Saddam’s officers at Sandhurst. Then, after Matthew had left the House, and after the gas attack on the Kurds at Halabja and the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Sir Geoffrey drew up a paper pointing out the “major opportunities for British industry” in Iraq. He was, however, worried that the secret decision to increase British arms exports to Iraq might cause a fuss. That’s Howe we got here. What were Tory armchair pacifists arguing then? If we don’t sell ’em, the Russians will.

There is, on parts of the Left, a long and ignoble tradition of trashing democracy. This week one ultra-Left group was arguing for the slogan, “Troops out now! The main enemy is imperialism!” It is a slogan that seems, psychologically at least, to unite many diverse objectors to the war. But the groupuscule’s argument then went something like this. It understood that the insurgency wanted to oppress Kurds, suppress the Shia and “physically exterminate” trade unions and feminist groups. However, communists, it said, “recognise that an imperialist defeat would objectively open up possibilities for the working class, and we would therefore welcome it even if it came at the hands of reactionary anti-imperialists”. And sod the Iraqis.

And something similar can happen on the far more reasonable Right. In February 2003 Matthew wrote that he would be against a war in Iraq even if there was WMD, even if it was authorised by the UN, even if a liberated Iraq was then stable, and concluded: “I’m against war because it will antagonise moderate Arab opinion.” And the Iraqi people? To be massacred, shredded, gassed, beheaded, suppressed, starved, immiserated, terrorised and tortured because all of that would be less bad than antagonising moderate Arab opinion. An Iraqi democrat stands in front of an armchair anti- interventionist, and is invisible.

I do apologise. For Abu Ghraib and Donald Rumsfeld. For not understanding the insurgents. For the looting. For the dire planning. I apologise to the election workers assassinated, the police trainees blown up, the parents of children caught in crossfire and everyone else that the planners and executors of the invasion that I supported, and still support, may have let down by neglect or stupidity. I recognise their bravery and their determination to succeed despite everything.

But a disaster compared with what? Compared with Saddam and sanctions or Saddam and cyanide. And that — the thing that Matthew presumably preferred — was not a disaster? Snort.

david.aaronovitch@thetimes.co.uk

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