Oh What A Lovely War!

There is yet another new push in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, this time advertised as a 'final' push against the Taliban.

Bob Ainsworth, our bungling Defence Minister, has warned us all to expect more casualties. On the same day, we hear that British hospitals are struggling to cope with the growing numbers of seriously injured servicemen arriving back from Afghanistan. It really makes you wonder if anyone, anywhere actually talks to one another. Then again, different to the troops in Afghanistan, being in the MoD or Government is just an ordinary 9 to 5 day job with nothing to fear except not having your bonus paid.

On Radio Five Live this morning, Sheila Fogarty interviewed Mrs. Jane Hurry (I believe that was her surname) whose son Ross is a Lance Corporal in the Royal Engineers. Yesterday, Ross returned to Brize Norton to go back to Afghanistan for a second tour of duty after two weeks R&R. He will take part in Ainsworth's new campaign and the family shed tears on their return home after saying their goodbyes.

Ross' mum is not a political lady - she does not concern herself with why or how we are in Afghanistan but she does has great admiration for what our troops do and how they do it. She is clearly very proud of her son but equally fearful for his safety.

During his R&R, Ross visited his Captain who suffered terrible wounds and is recuperating in Selly Oak. Ross was deeply disturbed by what he saw, not just the extent of his captain's wounds but of the amount of others suffering from equally horrific injuries. I cannot believe that such thoughts and memories will not dwell upon him when he returns to duty and in the quieter moments before the battles he is about to face. Ross is a professional and he does his job to the best his ability, but there is only so much people can take in such conditions of fear and danger.

So it must not help when he reads of defence cuts, merging of armed forces and the stress on hospitals to deal with wounded. It cannot help when he looks at the Chilcot Inquiry and finds Ministers trying to justify their decisions with flawed intelligence and Government suspending democracy in order to make the biggest of decisions to follow different agendas. It cannot help him when he sees that Osama bin Ladin continues to taunt us with videos and messages. It cannot help him when he sees his comrades getting blown to pieces for the lack of armoured transport and the right kit or helicopters when we spend £1.3 trillion to save banks whose staff continue to award themselves massive bonuses which we foot the bill for.

If we are going to fight a war in such hostile territory, history shows us that you have at least to be fully committed even to stand a chance. Lady Elizabeth Butler's famous painting depicts the return of Dr. William Brydon as the sole survivor of a 4,500 troop of British soldiers after a battle - he was arriving in Jalabad after the retreat from Kabul (called 'Remnants of an Army'). The history of this region shows that no modern army has held it and yet we are fighting with effectively one arm behind our backs. An excellent blog on this is by Dr. Richard North.

Incompetence, hubris, lack of priorities, lack of plans, lack of strategy and lack of objectives have achieved only two things in Afghanistan - terrible casualties and a corrupt new Government.

We ought to hold our heads in shame - our brave soldiers on the front deserve more than the donkeys leading them from the staterooms and offices of Whitehall and Westminster.

Bingo or Afghanistan or Education or The NHS? Bingo, Please.

In a fairly odd Pre-Budget Report (PBR), it did not get more bizarre than the cut in tax on Bingo.

What was really odd about it was that it was so specific and announced with such gravity that it seemed every citizen in Britain would derive some benefit - hence its headline billing in the PBR. There were no free prescriptions for everyone, no free hospital parking, no extra help for working mums, no lowering of the dental fees on the NHS or boosting the availability of dentists to people. No new kit for the army, no new armoured vehicles, no new bullets for the TAs, no new police on the beat - but there was a boost for Bingo.

It is hard to believe that we are actually in financial dire straits, with a record post war budget deficit which is legally pledged in the Fiscal Responsibility Bill, farcically passed in the Queen's Speech, to halve by 2014. Here we are handing out money for people to play Bingo.

If a Martian landed on earth today and looked at the priorities of this Government they might think it odd, but if you are an earthling you would think it bizarre to the point of absurdity.

It's as if as the Titanic sank, people debated whether the Foie Gras was game enough.

Maybe I'm the daft one here - perhaps my wife and I, our immediate family and entire entourage of friends are the odd ones out in that not one single one of us has ever stepped into a bingo hall let alone played it. Maybe we are the out of date ones that don't see that the crucial mood and well being of bingo players is vital to the financial recovery, health and education of this nation. Maybe the Government knows something that I do not - maybe all bingo players are in fact mathematical maestros who underpin the design of our health system or are intelligence officers who are secretly guarding us against the growth of terrorism from within. Perhaps bingo players are capable of launching Weapons of Mass Destruction within 45 minutes and therefore this is a move to appease them.

There has to be some reason. Or is it just that John Prescott's wife plays bingo twice a week and he still has Brown by the short and curlies? Or was it a misprint in the report that Darling read out and should have said, 'Drop income tax for everyone and BINGO we win the election.'?

I haven't run the figures yet but of the £31 bn boost to spending this PBR represented I am not sure what decreasing the tax on bingo actually contributed to the bill but I am sure there must have been a corresponding multiple in benefit for the nation carefully calculated. For instance, it must outweigh the cost of one new heavily armoured vehicle sent to Afghanistan or another helicopter, or a better bullet proof vest, or some more food or even just a poster for the barracks wall that says, 'You may not think it but you boys dying in Helmand are worth more to us than people who play bingo.'

You could not make this crap up, frankly, and I apologise for my crudeness but it is the only word that describes it adequately. In the deep mire of financial mess and the blood of Helmand province, the best thought leadership of this nation came up with a 2% decrease in tax on Bingo and announced it to the country as if it was crucial to our global recovery plans.

Even Brown's cartoon character hero, Superman would have a laugh. This is a pointless Government doing pointless things at a time of crisis - Jim Callaghan and his 'Crisis? What crisis?' Government would be so proud of New Labour.

Public Service Is The Place To Be

One of the most recession proof areas of the last 2 years of crisis has been the Public Sector. Makes you think we are a bunch of mugs in the private sector.

As unemployment hurtles upwards, very few jobs have been lost in the public sector as private firms have borne the brunt of the downturn in terms of laying people off and cutting costs. There are few firms in the private sector which have grown to any great degree while many have contracted or even disappeared. Meanwhile, despite a colossal budget deficit and borrowing now at 59% of GDP and rising, the public sector shows no sign of having to rein itself in - except of course if you are in the Armed Forces where there have been many crazy cuts as we attempt to fight two wars and have suffered as many casualties in Afghanistan as we did in the Falklands War.

The Sunday Times Appointments Section, barometer of how the job market is in terms of investment, has for some time been packed full of senior public sector appointments with salary packages that would make most business people look at least twice. The recruiters in this sector, like Rockpools, have been making a mint and the market for Health Interims is more healthy than the industry they supply - it's big, big business. Executives in the public sector are paid very well - far more than many of their private counterparts considering they create no wealth. Then there are the pensions. Let's not go there - I had a recent statement on my plans and frankly the prospect of retirement depresses me greatly. I can see myself never being able to stop work.

Workers in the Public Sector just don't get that point as they hassle for more pay citing the private sector as the yardstick.

It's not just redundancies - the public sector is like a vast sponge for money and it just keeps expanding. Latest estimates show that almost 1 in 4 jobs in the UK are in the public sector while the sector just absorbs more money and wastes a vast proportion of it on projects that deliver little and continually over run. In the MoD there is dreadful control of assets, huge contract overspends and then too few people at the business end with little enough equipment to do the job, while the civil servants back home pocket a share in a £48m of bonus payments. Injured troops or the families of the dead get precious little compensation for their losses when clerks in the MoD can sue for massive payouts for little than a bit of bullying or stress - try Helmand province for a bit of repetitive stress. MPs consume vast expenses for little to show for it and cannot see why the public is at odds with them - indeed, they want more pay and to continue to stand at the next election. The NHS is full of padding and overspends yet vital drugs are not given due to cost. Education is delivering mathematically sub-standard and illiterate graduates who cannot even get jobs - the list goes on. Yet we have not saved a penny despite a huge borrowing crisis.

Now we have the final insult. As soon-to-be 84% owners of RBS, we (the public) watch in sheer horror as traders and executives are to be paid over £1.5bn in bonuses from making profits that we (the public) have created for them by bailing them out and giving them free money to re-capitalise, none of which they have passed on to the economy.

It's a story that you could not write it's so idiotic and unbelievable. Globally £15 trillion has been spent on saving the banks and all we have done is lined their pockets by giving them profits as easy as spearing fish in a barrel. As Gordon Brown enjoys a resurgence in public opinion even though the public do not understand why we fight wars, his crony, Lord Myners, says that, 'Bankers should get into the real world'.

Let's just remind ourselves, this is the same Government that told us we could not get caught up in recession as our economy was so strong, then it would not hit us so bad for the same reason when it did and now of the G20 richest nations we are the only one still in recession which is the longest on record for the UK. Let's also remind ourselves that WE own a huge stake in most of the high street banks and WE are the major shareholders of these companies. WE have the capability to demand how they pay their people.

The Government continues to sit on the fence and just lob insults - as they should have done to have avoided the crisis we are in, they should ACT now. To hell with competition, stop the bonuses and reform banking.

There Are Two Sides To Every Story

Now that the MP Expenses furore has faded, it was safe to think that we had seen the last of the story. Not so.

Recently, the likes of Harriet 'I'm not the problem, I'm the solution' Harman voted through a minor change to the Green Book that allows MPs to claim a flat rate every day for subsistence, without having to submit any receipts, as an additional allowance. That's £9,125 under the new rules that no MP has to justify, just submit a claim and get it - for doing nothing other than turn up for work. Mere mortals like us have to buy our daily meals out of our taxed pay but MPs get a full £9,125 per year as additional, tax free salary that they do not have to justify to us in any way, just for having the title of MP.

£9,125 is an interesting number in a year when numbers have been so big we can hardly imagine what you could buy for the sums - it's one small enough for us to understand, at last. But it's an interesting number in that £9,250 was the amount of money awarded to Cpl Duncan initially after being shot in Afghanistan while another war wounded soldier was originally awarded £8,250 for fracturing a thigh on a training exercise. After taking their cases to a tribunal, they were awarded £46,000 and £28,750 respectively after it was found that both had suffered significant complications after 'recovering'. Still numbers small enough for us to understand.

The MoD is now appealing against those higher awards and is insisting that it should only have to pay the original amounts for the original injuries only - to hell with the complications.

The original amounts - £9,250 and £8,250 - not even two MPs annual tax free subsistence allowance that they do not have to justify with a single receipt.

Campaigners like Falkland hero Simon Weston, who knows a thing or two about wounds, thinks that the MoD are out of touch. I don't think so. I think the whole body of MPs - every single one of them - is out of touch with all reality as well as the goons at the MoD. These smug cowards are more concerned about getting their daily meals paid for than making sure our loyal troops are looked after before, during and after front line service.

This new allowance was voted through by small committees manned by the likes of Harman, Alan Duncan and Nick Harvey who piously told us that the MP expenses system would never again get abused - no announcement was given, no publicity and no debate. Done deal - life goes on, just as it does in the banks.

In a year when we have spent more money on saving the careers of greedy bankers than we can comprehend, we cannot find the the heart and sense to look after our wounded heroes for the want of a few pounds in comparison to the astronomic sums we have wasted on people not worthy of walking on the same ground as our heroes.

This is not just a Government thing - this is every damn Politician who rides the gravy train. They have zero conscience, no principles, no scruples and no guts. We may laugh that the likes of Esther Rantzen is contesting Luton South but at least it will stop the likes of Moran ever getting elected again - let's hope someone with similar morals stands against Julie Kirkbride who just seems to have lost all touch with reality. She lied, cheated and fiddled us out of money for years and she thinks that on the say so of a few deluded locals she should not stand down.

It's a sad day. If the public had a vote, I am sure everyone would vote against MPs having their subsistence allowance of £9,125 and make sure every penny of that money and much more goes into a fund to properly care for the troops who are getting wounded on our behalf and looking after the families of the fallen.

Diane Dernie, mother of Bombardier Ben Parkinson who lost both legs and suffered brain damage after being injured by a bomb in Helmand Province, perhaps summed it all up, given the lifetime of care her son will have to receive after doing his duty. "It is very, very sad that on a day like today, when all the news is as bad as it is, and has been recently, that the MoD can still think to cut what are not overly generous payments," she told the BBC. "It just beggars belief really and proves that yet again they don't understand how people feel about our troops."

MPs are claiming that the appeal is seeking 'clarity about earlier judgements' so that more money can go to the more seriously injured. Given Cpl Duncan is only now serving his first tour of duty since is injury in 2005, it seems to be irrational to use this as such a test case. Further the amount of money spent on legal bills just to get this appealed and heard will be far more than the extra compensation paid out. It would look slightly better if Cpl Duncan had been some 'Sgt Bilko' figure keeping himself away from the front lines and slacking. The fact he is serving another tour of duty, to my mind, renders the argument defunct.

The simple fact is that we are arguing about giving the kid a sum of money just a fraction over what is given to MPs for daily meals each year - every year without question or justification.

How the likes of Harman can simper her rubbish at us and sleep at night is beyond me.

Led By Sheep

The real British Lions are fighting in Afghanistan. In this month alone, 16 soldiers have died there bringing the total to 185 since the start of a conflict that we have all forgotten why we are fighting in.

Yesterday, Sir Jock Stirrup was at Downing Street refuting the PM's insistence that enough was being done to equip our fighting men while the Head of The Army, General Sir Richard Danatt said, as he stepped down, that we simply did not have enough resources deployed in Afghanistan. It is a tough time for Brown, who in his tenure as PM and Chancellor has overseen the systematic cutbacks in our Armed Forces at a time when we have endeavoured to fight more wars.

Meanwhile, Peter Mandelson was out 'shopping' for the Armed Forces and saying that they will get the equipment needed. I suspect he is quite good at shopping.

Action Not Reaction

The fact of the matter is that the situation has been allowed to get this serious and desperate that it has taken 16 lives this month alone and the two most senior Forces Chiefs to break rank and openly criticise the Government in order to get a reaction out of the Government. Had it not been for 16 men dying in July, life in Helmand for our Forces would have gone on as usual. Now the New Labour 'spin machine' worked so sweetly by Mandelson tries to make it look as if a) they give a damn and b) are doing something about it.

It's a far cry from the huddled bodies and massive fees paid to investment bankers in order to get answers on the bank bail outs. Money was no object then and ministers were ready to do all night sittings to save the necks of people who had screwed us so royally. All the regulators, executives and Non-Executives are still in their jobs bar a miserly few and £11.5m in investment bank fees and £26.8m in legal fees was paid to the very people complicit in the disaster.

It's like paying the Taliban to get advice on how to get more helicopters. Frankly, they probably have more idea than our Government does.

What appalls everyday people is that we question why the soldiers are in Helmand and what they are fighting for anyway. But that does not mean that we think any the less of our Armed Forces - they are led by sheep at the very top, who know nothing of how to equip an Army and stand by the men they so quickly send into danger.

In their crisp suits and serious faces they make it a 'priority' to do something only when the two most senior Army Chiefs break the political law by standing up and denouncing them. And the Opposition are no better, seizing on it only for political gain. There does not seem to be an honest person amongst them or any that actually gives a flying whatever for the 16 men who died this month and the 185 families that have been affected by the decisions of gutless people so far.

Politics is all about politicians feathering their own nests in the good times and saving their own necks in the bad. This year has been an 'Annus Horriblus' for modern politics and it is time we were served by honest people who backed up what they say with real commitments and action.

Our Armed Forces deserve far better than this and they deserve not to die for no reason or for the lack of the right equipment. It is utterly shameful that we have let them down so pathetically.

Afghanistan - A War For No Purpose?

It's difficult in a war situation to define success but Gordon Brown today has declared that the recent shocking 15 deaths of British soldiers in Afghanistan in just 10 days as 'progress'.

One thing I would like to make clear - the incredible bravery and hard work of our Armed Forces in Afghanistan is beyond reproach. We have the most professional and best people in the world fighting on our behalf and I do not think there is not a person in Britain who is not proud and awed by the sacrifices they make daily.

It is the Politicians who should be getting the criticism. History has told us that even modern armies have struggled in this rugged land and the might of the Soviet Forces in the 80s could not control Afghanistan and today the combined Allied Forces cannot control large tracts of territory amidst ever bloodier fighting. In 8 long years, little has been achieved beyond the seizure of the capital, Kabul and Helmand province remains an unconquered and dangerous territory where British Forces are getting killed at an ever increasing pace.

The Argument Against

Ostensibly, the enemy in Afghanistan is the ultra-hard Muslim sect, the Taliban. They are the ones who throw acid into women's faces and implement a hard regime based around the most fanatical interpretation of the Koran. It was they who originally harboured Osama Bin Ladin and his Al Qaeda terrorist network and allowed them to train and operate from a safe haven. It is alleged that the Taliban fund themselves through the drugs market and at one point it was estimated that over half the world's poppy supply for illegal drugs came from Afghanistan. Indeed, one of the outcomes of this war, Tony Blair told us, was that we would be able to decrease the amount of drugs on the streets of Britain. That, like many other stupid promises about Afghanistan, was utter rubbish and the supply, by all estimates, has actually increased since the Allies moved in.

Anti War protesters would point to the fact that the Taliban is pretty much a sect and has occupied Afghanistan as a place to have its religious life. As a regime, it has no real foreign policy, according to author James Ferguson, and it is claimed that Al Qaeda has effectively left Afghanistan and taken up residence in Pakistan.

The Argument For

The clear argument is that Afghanistan is a potential conveyor belt for terrorist recruitment and training, While the Taliban themselves may not have a foreign policy, they allow the likes of Al Qaeda to operate training camps and schools which develop terrorist convictions and skills, so allowing them to send the finished articles to Western lands to bring terror and bloodshed. It is also claimed that many of the 7/7 bombers were trained in Afghanistan and controlled by people from there.

This makes the war we are fighting critical if we want to stop terrorism, we are told.

What Does Not Make Sense

The invasion of Afghanistan by US Forces following the terrible day on 9/11 was swift and decisive. The world, having digested the event and been directed to the lineage of terror that led to Bin Ladin and Afghanistan, supported the move - Britain was 'shoulder to shoulder' as Blair famously pronounced. In 8 years, we have come no closer to Bin Ladin and Al Qaeda still remains pretty much intact, causing atrocities on a sporadic but devastating basis and all intelligence points toward a world with a vastly increased state of emergency due to terrorist threats.

The real rattlers nest came on the invasion of Iraq. There were no Taliban there, no connections to Bin Ladin or 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction, just a regime and dictator who were spent forces in world politics and threats, although Saddam Hussein was still a major threat to his won people. What Iraq did was to open up a front where any enemy with a gripe against the West could go along and train on the job, have a glorious career in the eyes of their peers and take out a few Allied Forces in the process. But more than anything, it served to 'up the ante' in the age-old struggle of Christians vs. Muslims.

If there can be any doubt about this, just look to the pious nature of the two leaders involved - Tony Blair and George W Bush. Blair now leads a 'Faith Tour' while Bush made no attempt to hide that God was on his side.

What both wars have shown was the lack of preparation and understanding of the enemy, the history, and the terrain. There seemed to be no real game plan, no real strategy and no clear 'end game' which would indicate when a war was actually won or lost and what the outcome would look like. 8 years on and Afghanistan is still a powder keg and very little real progress has been made.

In a bizarre twist, in the 80s it was the likes of the SAS who worked alongside the very people we fight today to helped them harry the Russians, just as Rumsfeld famously shook Saddam's hand to supply him with weapons in his war against Iran. Politics through the ages has changed with the wind and double talk and hypocrisy has been pretty much the norm. Things have changed little since over thousands of years when it comes to wars and agendas.

So we pretty much reap what we sow. Young kids and their officers are dying daily in Afghanistan and we struggle to understand why. In 8 years we have got no closer to capturing Bin Ladin or stopping Al Qaeda carry out dreadful deeds.

How will it all come to and end? When can our brave soldiers come home?

There is a theory that such wars are a necessary convenience. Much like the 'Wag The Dog' scenario, wars divert attention and show that we are doing something. We, the public, are far too stupid to understand why wars are required, if indeed they are. Information can be carefully controlled and whenever there is the slightest real criticism on intentions, tracks are covered by invoking 'necessary secrecy' like vetoing the publishing of the minutes of Cabinet prior to the decision to go to war with Iraq. Or the sham Public Inquiries we have had, and yet to have, on Iraq.

There is always the danger, however, that what the Government is doing is the right thing. Although history tells us that no foreign power since Genghis Khan has ruled Afghanistan to any effect, we still seem to think we can conquer an almost indomitable people and, in attempting to do so, we only harden the resolve of everyday Muslims to support things which are indeed against their nature and their religion.

We can all point to parts of the Koran and Bible that promote war and revenge but ultimately we have to trust ourselves. At some point we are going to have to live with one another on this earth. We had better get used to the idea.

'Hey, You Must Be My Antie'

The discovery by a group of scientists that ants that originated in Argentina have formed a vast single mega-colony that has spread across the world shows that there is another species other than humans that has colonised this planet heavily.

The Argentine ants have colonised every major continent except Antarctica and have have been spread by humans unintentionally. However, Argentine ants can teach us a thing or two about social behaviour too. While ants from within the super-colonies stretching some 3,000km along the European coast may squabble amongst themselves when sub-colonies in Spain meet the main Europeans, if you take ants from the Mediterranean colony and mix them with those from Japan they behave as if they are family.

It seems the Spanish ones must be going through the 'Armada' phase of their history.

Ants are generally hugely territorial and aggressive to other species and these experiments reveal that the vast colonies on different continents must be related. They recognise each other through the chemical composition of their cuticles and they rub these together and have the ant equivalent of having a few beers rather than fighting.

No Cold War, No Terrorism in Ant World

It is incredibly surprising that ants of the same species could colonise the earth in this way - similar to humans. But it is far more surprising that they can behave as passively toward each other given their far less developed intelligence system. Humans, on the other hand, are far more territorial despite being of the same species. As we wake up today, the US army have launched the largest offensive since the Vietnam War in Helmand province in Afghanistan. Only now are the US Forces withdrawing from Iraq. Terrorists from our country can set off bombs in the Underground system and cause carnage. We could go on and on and as far back as we like - we are a barbaric species to one another.

We may be more sophisticated beasts with amazing intelligence but when it comes to relating to one another on a grand scale we are dumber than ants.

Thorny Issues

Let's get something straight at the start - I thought at the time and still do that David Davies was an egotistical prat. His puerile display of self gratification when he resigned his seat and forced a farcical re-election campaign was a mighty waste of time and money and an abuse of an arguably daft political system. The only decent outcome is that he remains in the political wilderness.

However, if anything, it detracted us all from the thing he was supposedly trying to highlight - the erosion of civil liberty by the extension of the detention period of an unaccused individual to 42 days. I believe strongly in civil liberty and habeas corpus but when it comes to Terrorism it becomes a massive grey area and the security of the public is paramount. If it stood as a general point then I would have supported him.

'Known Knowns and Known Unknowns'

Rumsfeld's famous phrase is worth repeating. We live in a world which has changed dramatically since the day the world stopped on 9/11. I vividly recall the events unfolding before me in sheer aghast horror and relived them in the excellent film Flight 93. I recall equally being on a train into London when 7/7 occurred and worrying how my wife was in her office in Spitalfields unobtainable - then seeing the carnage that had been wrought not by foreign terrorists but from citizens of our own. The world had changed beyond all recognition.

So when the US response came in Afghanistan, I had no quibble. But when we jointly invaded Iraq and John Charles De Menezes was gunned down in cold blood on a train in London, I believed we had changed the world for the worse, not the terrorists. Blair always said that it was the terrorists who did it, they started it, but I do not for one minute believe that terrorism was on George W Bush's mind when he ordered the invasion of Iraq and I don't think that terrorists train or compel police to be incompetent.

Since these events we have constantly been held in a state of low level terror, drip-fed information designed to keep us on our toes and to agree with policy. We have let Guatanamo go by as a necessary method to treat indeterminate people on non-sovereign territory while Abu Ghraib was put down to over zealous individuals rather than a Supreme Command that basically said do what you want to these people - they are worthless. A lack of understanding of a complex situation has caused terrible loss of life in Afghanistan and Iraq and it came from the dreadful lack of planning and knowledge displayed by leaders like Bush, Blair, Brown and Rumsfeld.

When interviewed about a year ago, a US Marine in Iraq was asked by a reporter, 'Why are you here?' He replied with total honesty, 'Because of 9/11.' Yet Iraq and Saddam Hussein by Bush's own words had nothing to do with 9/11.

This has been the problem with the escalation of world tension. Even our own incompetent Intelligence Agencies who fell to Alistair Campbell's leadership and produced the piece of shocking fairy tale that was the basis of our decision to invade Iraq, have said that by invading Iraq we would cause more terrorism - because we have now given anyone with a gripe against the West a focal point to do so, a raison d'etre and a good career.

Why Should We Think Again?

I bring this very tough subject up on two counts. Firstly, and most importantly, amid all the lambasting about Government incompetence over its handling of the Financial Fiasco, the 145th British Soldier died yesterday in Afghanistan since 2001. He was from the First Batallion of Rifles and he died in Helmand Province. He followed Marine Darren Smith who died of his wounds on Saturday while being transferred to Camp Bastion.

While I query why our soldiers are being used this way, I think they are the best and bravest people on this earth. They are dying on our behalf and there is no greater sacrifice. Remember that today for the sake of the families of those two men and the 143 others who have died in Afghanistan alone.

It will put the rest of our troubles into perspective.

The second reason I bring this subject up is that Dame Stella Rimington, former Head of MI5, has spoken out against the West's policies. "The US has gone too far with Guantanamo and the tortures. MI5 does not do that," she said. "Furthermore it has achieved the opposite effect - there are more and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification."

She has previously been critical of the government's policies, including its attempts to extend pre-charge detention for terror suspects to 42 days and the controversial plan to introduce ID cards. "It would be better that the government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism - that we live in fear and under a police state," she said.

Her comments come ahead of the publication by the International Commission of Jurists which is chaired by Former Irish President Mary Robinson who said, "Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and to repeal abusive laws and policies enacted in recent years. Human rights and international humanitarian law provide a strong and flexible framework to address terrorist threats."

The report contends that the US and UK undermine the framework of International Law. Personally I think they repeatedly break International Law in the name of Freedom and Democracy - the two virtues we wish to bring to the worlds they invade. Our example of what Freedom and Democracy is about is pretty questionable.