Monday 28 March 2011

Can anybody explain why the Opposition always backs the Government when it comes to military action?

A friend recently asked this question "Can anybody explain why the Opposition always backs the Government when it comes to military action?", to which my response was:

1. They're mostly men.
‎2. They are attracted to politics in part because they like and desire power. War is the ultimate expression of power: the power to give life, the power to take it away - we are moving in to powers of god territory.
‎3. Our "representative" so called democracy is based on the idea that we elect them to make decisions on our behalf. We do not elect them, ironically, to represent our views. This is how Tony Blair justified invading Iraq despite the couple of million people who took to the streets to say "No" to war in Iraq. Being used to taking decisions on our behalf but seldom having to deal with the consequences of their decisions, they believe they are infallible and so feel justified in making decisions that anyone with an iota of sense would shy away from, lacking, as we and they do, any real insight in to the matters at hand.

Developing this:
The Uk has to get out of its habit of interfering in the affairs of other countries. Admittedly, this is hard to do as engaging on any level, even if it's only trade, could be considered to be "interfering" but what I mean is: messing around with their politics. It's not up to us to decide who should rule or how they should rule. If countries like Libya or Bahrain aren't democratic, so be it: that legitimises their people to use undemocratic means to change their governments.

This whole sorry affair has also laid bare the pretensions of, for want of a better description, the Muslim world (or the "Umma", if you like). The UK and the USA (usually justifiably) are attacked for "interfering" but when it comes to the crunch, they are happy to leave it to us (wrongly) to sort out their mess. The Qaddafi State in Libya is not just undemocratic, it's also un-Islamic. So what are the people of the region doing to save their fellow Muslims from oppression? Where is Turkey? What is Saudi doing with all those expensive fighter planes we have sent them, to help sort out Qaddafi? What's that big army in Egypt doing? Nowhere. Nothing. Nowt. Why? Because for all of their self-aggrandising, puffed-up talk of Muslim brotherhood, these governments are venal, self serving, and irreligious.

Good Muslims may hold the notion of the Umma close to their hearts, but their leaders prove time and again that they will use Islam to justify their actions only when it suits them to do so and seldom do so when it conflicts with their self interest.

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