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Iraq and the
stink from Britain’s Parliament
Christopher King urges the British people to call to account
their representatives who unleashed war on Iraq and “failed not
only our interests but also those of the Iraqis they claimed to
be helping by acting ... from corrupt motives, with
recklessness, bad judgement and incompetence”.
By Chrisopher King
09/16/07 "Redress
Information" -- -
This is the country of the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights,
the country that invented Parliamentary democracy. These have
failed us. With the Iraq war we abandoned our heritage and
unmistakably entered profound political corruption. Our
Parliamentary democracy exists for the good of our country. Our
British culture also attaches to it the notion of acting for the
good of others. Let us not become bogged down in lawyers’
quibbles that anything is legal if there is no law against it.
When the bodies pile up there must be an accounting.
Our government has abandoned common law, the ancient law that
expresses the values of our culture with its freedom to rule in
the interests of justice and the good of the country. It argues
statute law whose limitations allow weasel words to countenance
corruption. This is how the Iraq war occurred and how it is
still justified. Those elected to represent us considered
themselves our rulers who could act as they chose with our lives
and country because there was no law against it.
We have seen with our own eyes a turning point into
unprecedented political and moral corruption. Every Member of
Parliament who voted for the Iraq war is tainted by it. That
they were deceived by a duplicitous prime minister cannot be
claimed when a million citizens in the streets told them from
their knowledge, their hearts and their cultural heritage that
it was wrong. Parliament ignored them and betrayed the
foundations of our national identity. Did those who should have
represented our opinions, culture and country’s interests act
from sloth, corruption, hubris or in support of foreign
interests? It does not matter. They abandoned their
responsibilities as well as respect for human life itself.
We have heard from Parliament, “The time is not right for a full
inquiry on the war – it will undermine our troops in the field.”
Our troops were not merely undermined but betrayed by
Parliament’s vote for war.
We hear from Parliament, “The terrorism on our streets is
nothing to do with Iraq. The terrorists hate our way of life.”
The bombers said it was because of Iraq. They should know. They
do not hate our way of life; they hate the last hundred years of
invasions of their countries, political interference and theft
of their wealth.
We hear from Parliament, “Our brave troops are fighting to
defend our freedom, our way of life and for the Iraqi people.”
Our brave troops are in fact fighting for American oil
companies, for Israel and for our ex-prime minister’s chance to
make some serious money.
All, our ex-prime minister who misrepresented the war,
government and Parliament, have a duty to act in our country’s
interests. They also have a general duty to act with rightness
and justice. They have failed not only our interests but also
those of the Iraqis they claimed to be helping by acting,
variously, from corrupt motives, with recklessness, bad
judgement and incompetence. I recall hearing, during the war
debate, one of our representatives say of those of us who went
into the streets with a message of sense and humanity, “We will
vote as we see fit. If they don’t like it, they can vote us
out.” No-one disagreed with him. It is not good enough.
There may be no statute against wasting our soldiers’ lives, our
wealth and compromising our national security in illegal wars.
Nevertheless, many persons including political advisers, were
paid by the Crown from the public purse to carry out their
duties competently and in the interests of our country. Every
person who was paid from the public purse and supported the Iraq
war was derelict in the duty for which he was paid and must be
called to account.
The stink is not from the mountain of slaughtered Iraqis’ bodies
and those of our soldiers. It is from our Parliament and from
our government. More legislation from this new prime minister,
who also voted for the war, will not cure it. The filth needs to
be cleaned out. Like the Augean stables, we need a river of
citizen opinion and judicial integrity strong enough to do it.
Do supporters of the war object to this language? I will accept
criticism from any of them who will spend a day in a Baghdad
hospital outside the green zone or view just one of our citizen
soldiers in his coffin on his return from Iraq.
With their withdrawal from Basra we need no longer worry about
undermining our troops’ morale, which our ex-prime minister
would have had us believe is as delicate as that of schoolgirls
on their first date, by a thorough inquiry about the war. The
problem now is: Who will do it? Those MPs who voted for the war
have shown themselves unfit for office and are thoroughly
compromised. The legal profession kept silence when Lord
Goldsmith pronounced the invasion legal. Half the country knew
that it was illegal and the United Nations agreed. Was this
discrepancy of no legal interest at the time? Is it currently of
no legal interest now that the war has failed in every one of
its stated objectives after a cost of seven billion pounds,
nearly two hundred British soldiers dead, uncounted hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis dead and the devastation of that country?
The man most responsible for this debacle has been paid off by
his sponsor with a job in which he can lie low pending better
offers, hoping that we will forget about it while, bizarrely, he
arranges peace in the Middle East. It is not good enough.
We need to think as did our forefathers who fought for a
thousand years to develop responsible government for us at this
time. We need to apply our cultural heritage of common law and
find our way again. Our democracy has failed because those who
took its citizens’ money for guarding it have failed. In fact it
is not they who guard democracy as they would have us believe.
Democracy is by definition a matter for the people to determine.
If our citizens do not demand an accounting, their destiny will
remain in failed hands and our country will be lost.
Christopher King is retired consultant and lecturer in
management and marketing. He lives in London, UK.
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