Oil Be Freeing You.

I've been posting to this blog for a while now (if a little intermittently) and so far have pretty much avoided the issue of our struggle for democracy in the Middle East and Iraq in particular. There has just been so much written and spoken on the subject that I wanted to leave it until I had fully gathered my thoughts and could deliver a true reflection of my opinion.

When Tony Blair assured the British people in 2002-03 that Saddam Hussein was in control of an arsenal of Weap..., those thingies of mass whatsit, I was extremely dubious. No surprise, as the UN inspector Hans Blix had, despite being ejected from the weapons sites, deduced that Iraq carried no such power. Indeed, Blix inaugurated the now oft-repeated clamour to inspect the real source of danger on the world stage - North Korea (if one were to be unkind at this point, one could draw the assumption that the USA would not want to get into a conflict with a small nation that has already 'kicked their ass' on the world stage and would rather go after someone they have recently beaten).

My suspicions were already aroused on hearing the propaganda that Osama Bin Laden was conveniently hiding in various places around the globe that were of particular importance to the oil industry; Afghanistan with it's strategically important pipelines (and a nice sideline in heroin, which I believe is now up and running to full capacity again); Pakistan, who underwrite many of the Middle-Eastern oil ventures and had just attained nuclear-capability (a definite no-no for an Islamic state. Why can't you be more like India?); Iran, who had lost the Western investors hundreds of billions of dollars of investments when the Shah (who had been a good little sandboy and sold the oil nice and cheap) was overthrown by the Ayatollah in the recent past; and Iraq.

In hindsight, our combined World Force For Peace (or whatever it's called) would have been better invading the White House if they wanted to find Bin Laden, or WMD's for that matter.

Despite all this, I was in an awkward position as far as the potential threat Iraq posed was concerned. I did not want to believe that our Prime Minister would lie to us on such a grand scale and in such a manner that would lead to the loss of so many lives. I tacitly gave my support to an initial invasion to determine the actual capability of Hussein and to nullify it where possible. And by 'support' I mean that I kept quiet like a good citizen and didn't join the Hyde Park march even though I was in London on the day, decisions which can never be reversed and which I deeply regret now, of course.

Now, five years on, what have we achieved? Conservative estimates suggest that the death-toll has exceeded one million dead (the majority by far Iraqi). We have installed a puppet government that regularly passes edicts that contravene even the most basic of human rights. Terrorist activity has been aroused not only in that area, but globally and the funding for terrorist networks has been assured for decades to come. Our forces patrol the streets like the invading tyrants they are, committing the sorts of atrocities that characterise such a Nazi-like enterprise. The telling figures from the conflict are that about one -and-a-half-thousand contractors have been killed in Iraq since 2003, with a further 12,000 injured. Just how many contractors do you need to give the Iraqis freedom? How many contractors, for example were taken to the Falklands in 1981?

We all now know that this false war is a sham. I suggest that we stop calling it 'The Gulf War' or 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' and start calling it what it is: an invasion. An occupying force.

Who's next? Well, no surprises there: it's Iran. Don't forget that the Iranians callously captured a boatload of our troops in 2006 (troops that were illegally encroaching on Iranian waters in what can only be described as a provocative and foolish manner), treated them well and sent them home. But never mind that, there is now definite proof that Iran is funding Al-Quaeda and supplying terrorist with weapons. No, really, DEFINITE, this time, honestly.

The West is gradually creating a quasi-empire in the Middle-East and the reason, as always is power. Oil is only money and money is fairly meaningless to the kinds of people that can carry out such atrocities on such a scale. The irony is that I don't believe for a minute that Tony Blair is one of those people. To anyone that watched as he aged rapidly during the last few years of his Premiership it was obvious that this man will find it difficult to wash the blood from his conscience in his last years.

But the really disgusting part of all this is our role; we who could have made at least a political and social point when the elections came around. We didn't, and because of this we are all responsible for this mass-slaughter.

Generational Insanity

I was talking with my parents last week about the gathering scandal surrounding the disappearance of young Shannon Matthews in Yorkshire. For those of my imaginary readers that don't know about the case, visit the BBC website and run a search in her name. Our discussion moved on to the subject of crime in general and child-molestation in particular, when something odd occurred to me: my parents are barking mad.

Not raving lunatics, but quietly psychotic. You see, I have often heard them expound the benefit of torturing and executing criminals, or lay the blame for our deteriorating society on the 'immigants', or announce that we should simply obliterate the Middle-East with nuclear weapons to rid the world of such a troublesome place. I rather fancy that if you come from what we refer to as a civilised western background and you have parents of, say, 60 or 70, you may have heard similar outbursts. But two things worry me and give me hope at the same time. The first is that my parents actually mean what they say! Given the opportunity, I believe that my parents (and most of their generation) would carry out or seriously consider acting upon the most extraordinary of impulses. There would be a whole subclass of neutered, lobotomized, branded and tarred unfortunates, and our cemetaries (or refuse dumps) would be full to bursting with the corpses of those who were found to have crossed the line, or even just rumoured to have done so.

The second thing that worries me is that, as time passes and I stumble awkwardly into middle-age, I am becoming less and less tolerant myself. I don't know for sure whether this is because I am changing in my outlook, or because I am not changing with a steadily more easy-going society, but it is worth considering that every generation's (and by generation, I mean every thirty years or so) standards and morals always seem horrifying to the previous and next generation. Take, for example, my father, who will be quite literally sickened by a television programme about cross-dressing homosexuals, or morbidly pierced new-agers (while I would just be slightly bored), but actually believes that the world today would benefit from a World War, involving the loss of tens of millions of lives, a process he would refer to as 'thinning out'.

War is, in fact, the major note of contention between my generation and the previous one as far as I can see. For most people of my mother's age, it does not really matter that our government has taken us into a conflict with lies to increase the profits of rich business corporations. They just want some arabs killed because they see them as threatening our way of life(!). They were raised in the late thirties and early forties, when propaganda was a way of life and probably gave comfort to them as children, with its promise of justified war-mongering and swift victory.

But there is a difference between the views of my father and those of his parents. They actually witnessed the horror of war first hand, and as is usually the case, condemned it utterly. As far as the other sociological issues go, however, they were even more draconian. It is worth remembering at this point that at the beginning of the nineteenth century (probably at the time my great-great grandparents were in charge) a succession of animals, including pigs and monkeys were executed in Britain for the crime of treason. Barking.

These ramblings have led me on to another of my persistent questions: has there ever been a more selfish, self-absorbed, critical, greedy and morally bankrupt generation than that of our parents? If you, like me, grew up with your mother and father bemoaning the state of society, crime, architecture, crappy household goods and rude behaviour as if it was all your fault, it must have occurred to you at some point that the world we now live in is to all intents and purposes fashioned in their own image. They were a generation that divorced in record numbers, chose careers over children, consumed vast quantities of the worlds resources, polluted the environment on a hitherto inconcievable scale, sold our industry down the river to Asia, consumed illegal drugs in record numbers, borrowed money to the detriment of the world economy, created weapons of horrifying destructive power, plundered Africa, persecuted minorities, perpetrated holocausts and genocides and began the mass abortion culture that, for better or worse, still increases to this day. Then, for good measure, they decided to retire early and blame the resultant shortfall in the National Insurance kitty on illegal immigrants.

And how do they behave now? They are, for all their moralising, the single most rude, brash and outright vulgar of any class of people you can hope to find. They are pushy, tasteless and spoiled. My day-to-day measure of decency is to analyse what kind of people thank me for the small kindnesses I perform throughout the day: holding doors open; a cheery smile; letting a car out of a junction. The grey foxes, I am afraid, perform atrociously, whereas their parents were among the most polite.

I can't think of a single sociological achievement of the last generation that didn't have it's roots in the previous one. The political, scientific and cultural revolutions of the early 20th century eventually gave way to a sort of global pie-eating contest.

Believe me, I have a lot of respect for individual members of that generation, my parents included. But taken as a whole, I wonder whether our present system of existence will ever recover from their complacency and greed.

All of which gives me a little hope. For all I worry about my son, and the life he is going to lead with the threat of street-violence, drugs and hoody-style gang culture, I can rest easy at night knowing that he won't be wrongfully disfigured by some vigilante old goat mistaking him for a pig. Unless we move to Norfolk.