War breaks out; inanity reigns

Exactly 21 years ago this very month, the Falklands War began when Argentina invaded the Islands. British forces were quickly sent to the South Atlantic to take the Falklands back. Spearhead wholeheartedly supported this decision. British territory had been occupied. British people had been placed under foreign rule. There could be no doubt that unitary action on the part of Britain was unavoidable and right.

Last month, Britain joined in a US-led unitary coalition to attack Iraq. No British territory had been invaded. No British people had been subjugated or in any way put under threat. No British interest was at stake. Military action by Britain has therefore been absolutely avoidable and wrong.

These are the very simple issues that should inform our attitude to the war that has now broken out in the Middle East. A nation in its right mind only goes to war when its own territory, people or interests have been attacked or threatened, or those interests are in some other way served. Nations prepared to shed the blood of their armed forces personnel for any other purpose have got to be deemed insane.

And a state of national insanity is the only possible description that can now fit the situation in this country. We have gone mad, stark staring mad - or at least our politicians have gone mad, accompanied by a large section of the opinion media which has been backing the war.

That statement should be qualified. The attack on Iraq is an act of madness from the national point of view. This is not to say that those ordering and supporting it are necessarily mad in the personal sense. Overwhelmingly, they are people capable of thinking and acting perfectly rationally in almost any other context. Their madness is compounded of two things: they are victims to the fashionable ideological diseases of liberalism and globalism which, once their basic premises are accepted, lead otherwise sane folk into support of policies that are utterly insane; and let us face it - they are also people whose personal ambitions and even livelihoods are dependent upon their being prepared to endorse policies which in a different situation they would utterly reject. This category includes many politicians in parliament and probably the majority of journalists in the media. Powerful - very, very powerful forces have decreed that Saddam Hussein must be destroyed, and the career interests of a great many people dictate that they must go along with this course.

But that is not all. A significant part of the current national madness has been demonstrated even in the ranks of those who had opposed the war. A great deal of weight has been placed on the question of whether the attack on Iraq should have been launched without United Nations support, and the anti-war lobby has opposed the attack on the grounds that no such support has been forthcoming. In fact, the UN position on the war should be irrelevant. Whether or not the UN supports military action against a country has nothing whatever to do with whether Britain should take it. If the national criteria which we have spelled out justify Britain going to war, we should go to war regardless of the UN. If such criteria do not provide justification, we should not go to war even if the UN Security Council and Assembly vote overwhelmingly in favour of it.

Insanity not new

What has been written above might seem suggestive of a new departure in British foreign policy, but in fact it is far from that. If we look back over the past 100 years, the Falklands conflict notwithstanding, Britain has in fact again and again embroiled herself in conflicts which she could and should have kept out of. As is the case today, great moral outrage against assumed ‘enemies’ has been stoked up which has conveniently shrouded the basic question of whether true national interests justified war. Again and again, the debate has hung on the question of whether the current international bogeyman is a good guy or a bad guy, whereas it should always have hung on a simple cool and carefully calculated consideration of whether, in strategic terms, our nation stood to gain or lose by joining hostilities.

We see today the same hysteria employed, fuelled by horror stories which surely only the moron constituency can swallow. In a report in the Daily Mail on the 21st March we had a foretaste of what to expect. Jane Corben, writing from Amman in Jordan talked of associates of Saddam, including members of his family, boiling opponents alive, cutting their hands, feet and tongues off, gouging their eyes out and raping female relatives in their presence. Whether Miss Corben or the Mail editor really believe this kind of stuff seems immaterial. They are journalists paid to present such stories just as a lawyer is paid to argue the case of a client in court quite regardless of whether he thinks it's sound or not. In another piece in the same paper on the very same day, correspondent, Philip Knightley quoted an American military officer telling the Washington Post: "This the most information-intensive war you can imagine... We're going to lie about things." Well, that is at least a frank declaration of intent for which we should be grateful. Sir Arthur Ponsonby told us a long time ago that when nations go to war the first casualty is truth. However, there is a world of difference between untruth used as a necessary tactical weapon in a war which from the national point of view is just and right and untruth used to justify a war which from that same national point of view has no justification. The war against Iraq belongs to the latter category, as have other wars in recent history in which Britain has been involved. They have all been part of the pattern of national insanity that has distinguished British policy over a century.

The best serving the worst

One quite puerile argument that has been used by some politicians and journalists is that, now the fighting has started, the nation must put its wholehearted support behind "our boys" and thus suspend all criticism of the war in which they are engaged. This is a quite cynical piece of exploitation of the fine young men (and a few women) who are out there in the battle zone - as well as an exploitation of the public's natural patriotism in a cause that actually has nothing whatever to do with real patriotism.

One look at pictures of our fighting troops is enough to tell us that they constitute the very best specimens of the British race. It is a tragedy and a crime that their lives are being put on the line (and in a few cases have already been lost) in service to the dubious causes of the politicians who have sent them there. There must be many of us who, as we sit by our TV sets and witness them marching into action, would dearly love to see Tony Blair and his ‘New Labour’ gang up there in front, braving the missiles and the bullets in the conflict they have been so keen to unleash - indeed perhaps performing the first useful piece of work in their lives by being employed in operations of minefield-clearance!

The point is that by attacking the war we are not attacking the troops who have to do the fighting; we are attacking the politicians who put them there for that purpose. This magazine, for one, most certainly is not going to be intimidated into keeping silent over this crazy war by politicians and journalists using our soldiery as shields behind which they hide from deserved criticism.

The war in Iraq is a perfect example of the best fighting for the worst, brave young men and women inspired by the finest ideals of service risking their lives for the pond life at home who act as the lackeys of foreign interests and possess not an ounce of patriotism in their puny bodies.

The reality: war without end

Such is the overwhelming concentration of firepower now being directed at Saddam Hussain's forces, it is not likely that this war will last long. Indeed, it could to all intents and purposes be over, barring a few skirmishes, by the time this issue reaches our readers.

But it will be then that the problems will really start. There will be the immense task of rebuilding Iraq from the rubble that allied shells, bombs and missiles will have created. And who do you think will be paying for all this? You've guessed it in one - the British and American taxpayers! We will foot the bill for Blair's and Dubya's military adventure. The cost will be absolutely vast - and this will be something quite apart from the cost of the military operations themselves, which have been estimated at £5 billion to Britain but will probably be far higher.

And of course a massive part of this will be the rising cost of oil resulting from the destabilisation of the Middle East in which the build-up to the war, and now the war itself, will have resulted. This will add crippling burdens to the economies, not just of Britain and the US, but of all nations dependent on oil imports.

So much for the economic costs of this war. What of the political costs and the costs in terms of security to all western nations, but particularly Britain and America? By this war we are sowing seeds of hatred in the Arab and Islamic worlds by comparison with which that existing up to now will be small potatoes. The war is being presented as one against terrorism; in fact it is likely to multiply acts of terrorism a hundred-fold. The peoples among whom this legacy of hatred will survive are no match for advanced western nations in military technology and sophistication of weapon power, and that is why in a conventional war they stand no chance. But they are peoples out of whom many thousands, possibly millions, will emerge who have no fear of dying with "Allah" on their lips in order to bring death and destruction to the infidel world by which they see themselves oppressed. Further Twin Towers atrocities, not only in the United States but here in the United Kingdom too, can be regarded as a near-certainty. The ability and willingness to commit such atrocities in our own towns and cities constitutes the power that these races have over us - to counter the power which, in other ways, we have over them.

And not only that, but they have, in our very midst, vast numbers of the very people perfectly capable of unleashing that power to our detriment and destruction. The lunatic immigration policies permitted by Britain and the United States over the past thirty years have created huge alien populations in both countries which include the very fanatics able and willing to carry out the terrorist acts which are the Islamic world's one available retaliation for what is now happening in Iraq. This, needless to say, compounds the insanity of the present war.

And of one thing we can be quite sure. These populations seething with anti-US and anti-British hatred which we now harbour in our cities will soon be reinforced by large numbers of Iraqis, who it is predicted will be heading for our shores in consequence of the devastation of their country for which they will hold us responsible. Even officialdom itself has acknowledged that more than 100,000 will be coming here. We can straightaway double that figure to get a glimpse of what we are in for!