Honour and Shame

All citizens of a democratic state share in the honour of their armed forces. They are the guarantee of the state itself. And how we have all bathed in the honour of the defeat of nazi/fascism in the middle of the last century. It is the iconic, defining event of our modern nationhood, so important that it has deformed a proper, historical understanding of what made our country and who we are.

When the Prime Minister of Iraq tells the United Kingdom to go home and take its armed forces with it, we partake of the shame equally. Shame that we launched an unprovoked attack upon another country and killed hundreds of thousands of their people, shame that to do this our Executive lied and lied again to our Parliament and to the United Nations, shame that what lay behind the lies was oil imperialism and a hope to share in the spoils when our island is literally awash in oil and built on coal.

We have paid in the deaths and wounding of our armed forces, we have paid in the loss of individual freedom and individual safety within our own borders, we have paid in loss of our civilians' lives, our total loss of face before much of the world. We have paid in shame.

What was never paid was the cost of sending men and women into battle properly prepared and armed. And that shame lies with Gordon Brown alone.