Just why are we at war? We continually ask our elected leaders that very question, but we are told what we are told. Everything is shrouded in secrecy. The transparency that politicians continually spout is its self totally invisible. You look through the window but there is nothing but dense fog – the “Fog of War” – obscuring the truth.
Dame Eliza Manningham Buller told the Chilcott inquiry into the Iraq war that reasons for involvement were fabricated. We were told it was necessary to meet the threat of terrorism when actually it created the very conditions to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Blair drew a big target on our chest and said “shoot here”. They duly obliged. As Manningham Buller said it was after we went to Iraq that MI5 found itself investigating reports of terror plots, not before the invasion but as a result of it. As a result the Muslim population has found itself on the receiving end of unwanted attention. “I always thought I was a British citizen” a very dear Muslim friend told me. “Now I’m made to feel like an alien”. Intolerance is rife as politicians like Jack Straw intones his dislike of the veil. Now a Tory MP has taken up the rant. Terrible.
The direction I am looking is at the lobby system. Who does want war if not us, the people? As in so many areas of our existence we are overruled by the profit motive. War is a lucrative business and sellers of increasingly high tech and deadly hardware don’t pussyfoot around when it comes to business. Countries that ill afford and don’t need it end up with sophisticated systems in the name of defence. First of course there has to be an enemy. Unhelpfully the Communists went away so new bogey men had to be invented. The search was on long before 9/11 helped George W Bush re-invent “terrorism” to which the concept Al Quaeda was exceptionally well suited. If the “terrorists” didn’t exist in significant numbers before 9/11 and the subsequent decision to tackle Iraq in spite of no proven connection, as the MI5 experience attests there were those who willingly obliged as a result. G.W. well supported by his friend Tony went to war anyway having, with the help of the paid-up media did the rest. Blair showed the strength of his support for the arms industry with his backing of British Aerospace right or wrong. He went to extreme lengths when their were treasonable suggestions that the firm was into bribery and corruption.

As a result of the leaks the US administration is at pains to say ‘nothing will change”. So it won’t, will it?