And another thing…

IT’S BEEN a tough year for an awful lot of people.

I’ve been moved by the public outpouring of support for British soldiers in Aghanistan, particularly in these last few months. My heart goes out to all the families of service men and women who lost their lives in the past 12 months and who face the ringing in of the New Year with an empty place round the family table

And it’s been a bloody awful year economically for far too many of our fellow citizens and their families, trying to cope with unemployment or even the loss of their homes.

And God knows it’s been a traumatic and humiliating year for MPs. The difference between us – MPs – and the two previous groups mentioned, of course, is that we brought our misfortunes on ourselves and can’t blame anyone else for them.

So, here’s to a better New Year, to the safe return home of all our service personnel, and to better ecoomic news – not just for politicians and statisticians but, far more importantly, for ordinary men and women.

And, yes, here’s hoping for a New Year when MPs can start to rebuild the trust we have lost.

So to every one of my readers, let me wish you and your families a very happy, safe and prosperous 2010.

IT’S AT times like this that I’m glad I cancelled my New Statesman subscription.

James Macintyre just posted a piece entitled “The hypocrisy of Eric Joyce”, which basically claims that if you supported the invasion of Iraq (which both Eric and I did), you therefore have no right to suggest that the public’s patience might be running out with the argument that British efforts in Afghanistan are aimed at preventing terrorism in Britain.

And Macintyre (who isn’t nearly as funny as his brother Michael, by the way) resurrects that old, dishonest, craven and blindingly stupid argument that the war in Iraq “actually brought Islamist terror to Britain’s streets for the first time.” In Macintyre’s mind, Islamist terrorism never existed before 7/7/05, despite the oft-repeated mantra that we now live in a globalised world, and despite the fact that Islamists have been murdering their political and religious opponents in cold blood and in great numbers for decades. But until 2005, not in Britain, so that’s okay.

Isn’t it wonderful how some on the Left try to pin the blame for terrorism on the British government, and not on the murdering psychopaths who actually set off the explosives on London’s transport system?

As it happens, I don’t agree with Eric’s reasons for resigning; the war in Afghanistan is sadly necessary and the public’s impatience with the mission’s progress can have no bearing on the rights or wrongs of our presence there.

But hypocrite he is not.

MY FRIEND and colleague, Eric Joyce MP, has tonight resigned as parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to the Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth.

I wonder if he’d like to write another guest post on this blog?

JOHN Maples, the Tory MP, asked Harriert Harman today at PMQs to remind the House why British troops were in Afghanistan. It was an appropriate question, given that the names of seven servicemen had been added to the list of the fallen at the start of the session.

The controversy that will always surround the subject of Iraq is often extended to Afghanistan. You often hear anti-war types condemning British involvement in "Iraq and Afghanistan", as if the circumstances of our involvement were identical. 

(Remember Paul Marsden? He was the Labour MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham who defected to the LibDems shortly after troop deployment in Afghanistan. He did so because of his opposition to the war in Afghanistan. Problem was, the LibDems had supported the military intervention there as well. Poor Paul…)

There is no question over the legality of action in Afghanistan, or its legitimacy in terms of UN authorisation. Given the offensive action taken against America by a certain honoured guest of the Taleban at the time, the US had no choice but to demand bin Laden be handed over. The Taleban’s refusal to do so was in effect an invitation to the international community to invade. Which the international community rightly accepted.

So the legal basis for invasion and occupation was firmly established, as was the UN’s moral justification. But beyond the immediate necessity of bringing bin Laden to justice, there was an added reason to support the Afghan campaign: the fight against fascism.

If you persecute gays, treat women as second class citizens, rule by intimidation and violence, deny citizens the basic tenets of democracy and consider those of a different ethnicity, race or religion to be worthy of death and imprisonment, then you are a fascist. And the Taleban, being able to tick all of these boxes, were and remain fascists.

Some on the Left in Britain try to give the impression that they’re opposed to fascism while marching in support of the Taleban and Saddam’s former regime, a regime modelled deliberately on Nazism in many respects. They are liars and hypocrites. Their voices have not been listened to in this debate, and neither should they be. British soldiers are fighting and dying in the campaign to build a democratic and free Afghanistan. We should be hoping and praying for their safety and for their success against the remnants of a vile and disgusting fascist regime.

IF YOU wanted to devise a sure-fire strategy for making the BNP more popular and for increasing resentment against this country’s Muslim minority, you could do no better than the “anti-war” protests in Luton yesterday.

To greet British troops returning from active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan with placards denouncing them as “butchers” is beyond disgusting. It’s the British equivalent of the the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, whose members famously (infamously) picket the funerals of US soldiers by displaying “God hates fags” banners.

I don’t know whether the protesters are deliberately trying to damage race relations (I suspect they don’t care one way or the other) but they will certainly succeed.

And I feel it’s only a matter of time before someone starts laying into The Daily Mail for carrying this story so prominently on its front page. But why shouldn’t it? It’s a perfectly valid story in which many people are interested. Most other papers carried it anyway, albeit in their inside pages.

In this case, we should blame the message, not the messenger. Those who chose to stir up racial tensions by staging an inappropriate and unnecessary protest are the ones who should take the blame for they damage they have done.