Enquiring minds

November 24, 2009 — admin
Sir John Chilcot

Sir John Chilcot

It’s not unusual for the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre to be full but perhaps rarely are events held there that cause a queue to overflow outside. This morning, the Chilcot Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the Iraq War began with Tony Blair expected to be among those giving evidence.

Now that he can no longer expect diplomatic immunity from prosecution after his EU presidential bid failed, this must be a nervous time for Mr Blair. Several newspapers have run stories suggesting that the facts of the matter are at significant variance to the official account of events, including that Blair denied military options were being considered when in fact they were.

What I hope will happen as a result of this inquiry is that we will know:

a) Whether or not Blair and others deliberately manipulated evidence, parliament and public opinion to go to war

b) Whether or not his central claim of “45 minutes from destruction” was true and how it originated

c) Why there was a woeful lack of planning for what happened after the Allies controlled Baghdad – the clock to insurgency then started ticking

d) How much US policy dictated British strategy in Iraq

We all suspect we know the answers, or at least many of them, to these questions. The picture emerging six years after invasion was that politicians exaggerated and spun their way to public approval for a war that the Americans wanted and that there was a price for not following them into.

But let’s not forget that the cost of war in Afghanistan and Iraq has stretched to billions and billions of pounds that have be scraped away from areas such a local authority highways, Revenue Support Grant, policing and even the Armed Forces themselves. The person who approved every penny for this shallow, shambolic military intervention is now sat in No 10 Downing Street, all of 500m from the conference centre.

We should not forget his role in this. Yes, Blair wanted war. But he also wanted welfare reform, Euro membership and to follow Tory spending plans. Gordon didn’t seem to have a problem blocking these things – so why wasn’t he more vocal in his opposition of the war? His role in signing the cheques seems to have been swept under the carpet.

It is interesting to note, of course, that Woking MP Humfrey Malins voted against the Iraq War and resigned from his position on the shadow front bench in protest. How right he has been proven to have been.

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Nobel goes O-barmy!

October 9, 2009 — simonashall
Saturday Night Live's version was slightly different

Saturday Night Live's version was slightly different

When I was at school, we learned tha tthe Nobel prizes were among the greatest expression of human achievement in the areas they were awarded. We did case studies on Albert Enstein (physics, 1921), Marie Curie (physics 1903) and Archbishop Desmond Tutu (peace, 1984) and were told how dreadful it was that Mahatma Gandhi was never awarded a peace prize.

I suppose that the prizes have always been reactions to world events and therefore it is inevitably that particularly the peace prize will be political. In 1998, the committee seriously considered awarded the prize jointly to Martin McGuiness and David Trimble – before being convinced that this idea would be so repulsive to the unionist community that Trimble would certainly be pressured into refusal.

With hindsight, John Hume – the eventual joint recipient – probably had done less to further the peace process than McGuiness but that’s the realpolitik for you; once you command IRA battalions, you sort of give up your ambitions to be internationally recognised for peacemaking. And at least Hume had done something.

I’m not a big fan of Barack Obama but nor do I despise him. There are many good things about the man – his intelligence and charisma, for one, and also the fact he provides a figurehead and role model not just for black America but for black people across the globe. It was a vital milestone in American history that the descendants of those who came to the continent as slaves should enter the White House as president. That Obama achieved this 25 years before anyone thought it would happen is an immeasurable testament to him.

But that, so far, is his single biggest achievement. I struggle to find anywhere in his programme so far – keeping open Guantanamo, increasing activity in Iraq and Afghanistan, laying off the Israelis as well as any Republican and going hell for leather to push through provocative healthcare reforms – the essence of Gandhi, Tutu or any other of the peace laureates. That’s not to say it might not happen.

The award of the peace prize to Obama then looks like a political one designed to inject new life and status into an administration that, barely 200 days old, looks pretty tired and indecisive and was mocked last weekend on Saturday Night Live for doing two things – Jack and Squat. I thought Al Gore’s award in 2007 was pretty strange – this one looks somewhat more calculated.

There are plenty of areas in the world where war rages, not of all which record the United States as a passive bystander. It is surely the role of an independent Nobel committee to award into these ignored, undereported conflicts rather than seek regard by association with Obama in the same way as our tawdry Prime Minister.

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August 26, 2009 — simonashall

I guess you had to be there. The Sixties, I mean. To understand what it is about the Kennedy clan that was so important that it propelled them to global icons and the political embodiment of the age.

It certainly wasn’t achievement. JFK only had two years to do anything – and only succeeded in invading Cuba and holding off the Soviets. His brother Robert had a little longer but also found himself frustrated by the establishment. The fact that they were both assassinated has swelled their significance, importance and ideology further than it ever went in their lives.

Ted Kennedy’s death is sad – deaths always are. And a brain tumour is a nasty way to go – for the Kennedy family and liberal America, today is a day for mourning and that is to be understood and appreciated. Ted Kennedy wasn’t without his accomplishments, as one would expect for a man who had sat in the Senate since 1962.

But at least Kennedy got 40 years longer than Mary Jo Kopechne to enjoy sitting in the Senate. His questionable motives for being in a car with her as well as the circumstances surrounding her death didn’t mark him out as an exemplary human being, whatever his political impact.

And I’m sorry, there’s also the small matter of his support for the IRA. He may have changing his tune as the winds of peace swept through Northern Ireland in the 1990s but his cosying up to the Republican movement and support of Irish nationalism do him no favours in the eyes of the civilised. Yes, there are questions of sovereignty and civil rights to be addressed in Ireland but Ted Kennedy’s initial stance was not one of engagement and reconciliation.

Interestingly, the BBC opinion boards show a great deal of tributes from Irish posters and somewhat less enthusiasm from UK ones. But that’s the BBC – funded by the British to provide for the rest of the world.

One wonders whether those who have similarly been involved in partially-explained deaths and supported terrorism will be given across-the-wall-TV coverage when they pass on? It is the ability of the Kennedy clan to capture attention that I have never understood.

They are an average, if wealthy, family at best.

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Lockerbie dilemma

August 19, 2009 — simonashall

One Thursday morning in the Christmas school holidays of 1988, I remember going into my parents bedroom and they told me that a plane had crashed in Scotland and a lot of people had been killed. On the news, the image of the cockpit section of the Boeing 747 Clipper Maid of the Seas was being broadcast everywhere along with rough sketches of what had occurred.

Later that week, my Dad discovered that a business associate of his, Richard Cawley, had been aboard Pan-Am flight 103 and while I was too young at the time for this information to register it demonstrates that the number of those affected by the horrible events of that day went beyond even the 270 innocent people on board and on the ground and their families, who have suffered so much.

Years later, two Libyans stood trial for their part in bringing down the plane and one, Abdelbaset al Megrahi was found guilty. Now it looks as if he will be freed on compassionate grounds in a decision sure to cool further the Anglo-American relationship – one being made by an SNP politician in Edinburgh.

The fact that the conviction itself is patently unsafe is not relevant. My own opinion has long been that Pan-Am Flight 103 was not brought down by a bomb at all and that in an incident similar to United Airlines Flight 811 and China Airlines Flight 611, the front starboard cargo door sprung open in flight, causing an explosive decompression and disintegration. Al Megrahi may have been involved in purchasing explosives, which may have detonated during the decompression, but I have never believed this was the initial event that caused the crash.

Aside from the legal arguments, the point is this – that the currency of the UK’s “special relationship” with America now rests with nationalist politicians in Edinburgh – an unwelcome side-effect of a poorly thought-out devolution.

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