19 April 2005
Crisps, fags, pensions, tax and spend, immigration, Rover, school dinners, the EU. This election is being fought on a whole range of big issues: except the one that matters.
Don't you understand? It's the war, stupid. Just the war. Only the war. Always the war. Any debate that does not place what this Government has done to foreign policy at its heart is not worth having. Any vote that does not take this issue into primary account is barely worth casting. If you don't do politics, there is not much you do do, say the Electoral Commission. But if you don't do the war, all that remains is chatter. Vote for what you think a politician will achieve, based around a loose bag of pledges, promises, bluster and speculation. The war is not like that. It happened. We're in. They're dead.
What do you think? We mocked the recent US elections but at least they enjoyed a debate centred on the single most important issue of the early 21st century: the desire to export Western democracy by force. Over here, we have become a nation of Basil Fawltys. Don't mention the war, says Tony Blair. I mentioned it just now but think I got away with it, chirps Michael Howard. And what does Charles Kennedy say? Nothing.
This should be his moment. This is his big chance. The Tories have their slogan: "Are you thinking, what we're thinking?" But for many the answer is: "Well, no, not really, Michael old son, because I'm thinking this country is run by liars who have misguidedly allied it to bullies, thieves and vicious thugs, and it turns out you voted for them." Charles Kennedy didn't. He needs to let more people know this.
There remains a tremendous amount of anger over the invasion of Iraq and Kennedy is the only party leader that can rightfully lay claim to it. Howard supported the war, Blair started it, but Kennedy spoke against it throughout. This is what any capable marketing executive would call his Unique Selling Point. The Lib Dems should be the true opposition party in this election, yet they are stuck peddling the same tired lines as the big two. It is as if the kids gathered on the White House lawn to chant: "Hey, hey,LBJ, are you entirely comfortable with your projected tax-GDP ratio today?"
As it stands, there is a very real danger that we will re-elect a prime minister who has overseen the most fundamental change in foreign policy since the dissolution of the Empire, without forcing a proper debate of his beliefs. Wherever one stands on the subject of the war, this is unhealthy.
I know, I know. What war? According to President Bush, after May 1, 2003, there was no war in Iraq, which must come as a shock to the families of the 1,410 American serviceman that have been killed there since that date, plus relatives of the 57 British soldiers that have died fighting nobody. At last count, on April 12, coalition troop deaths stood at 1,723, a toll rising daily, largely unreported. The most recent fatalities were American soldiers Manuel Lopez III (20), of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, and John Miller (21), of the National Guards, 224th Engineer Battalion. I mention their names because you won't read them elsewhere. And if we treat our own casualties so disdainfully, what about the civilian lives lost? Is this not what we should be discussing? The rebuilding of Iraq is so chaotically managed that about £4.8 billion of Iraqi oil funds under coalition management are missing. Still our Government has us in bed with these people. A Question Time icebreaker, perhaps?
Meanwhile, the title of the hottest new show on al-Iraqiya, the television station set up by the occupation authority, translates as "Terrorism in the hands of justice". Seated before an Iraqi flag, cowed prisoners — insurgents captured by the army or police, many sporting injuries — are questioned by an off-screen interrogator, revealing their crimes against the Iraqi people. Yet isn't parading humiliated captives for the purposes of propaganda what Saddam Hussein did? Is this the democracy we are so driven to export? Hello, Tony? Michael? Charlie? Anyone fancy having a word about this stuff?
Pollsters will say that Iraq is not high on the list of public concerns, but only because there is a conspiracy of silence starting at the top. Blair does not want to bring it up because Iraq divides his party; Howard does not want to appear a hypocrite and Kennedy is too busy trying to give up smoking. The only ones prepared to take it on are real heavyweights such as Reg Keys, whose 20-year-old son Tom was killed in Iraq, and who is standing as an independent against Blair in Sedgefield. But Iraq is item one, whatever your stance. If you believe the West is truly under threat and is justified in acting against rogue leaders and nations, you should express that in support for the Government.
If you feel a Labour prime minister has sold this country out to right-wing America and feel betrayed, you must demonstrate that, too. At the very least, you should have a voice.
Instead, we have regressed 30 years. Heads in the sand, fingers in our ears. In 1971, Reginald Maudling, the Home Secretary, summed up the Conservative Government's attitude to the drip-drip of death in Northern Ireland. "An acceptable level of violence," he called it. And that is where we are in Iraq now. An acceptable level of fraud. An acceptable level of fear. An acceptable level of disorder. An acceptable level of murder. Nothing worth talking about, anyway. Go back to sleep, Britain. And don't mention the war.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-18169-1575923,00.html
