Earlier this year, one mainstream British political party stood out as being opposed to the war against the Iraqi leadership. It was the Liberal Democrat party. Its leader, Charles Kennedy even went as far as to go to a protest in Hyde Park and marched under the banner 'Not in my name'.
Later in the party's annual conference he gave this speech:
Click here for the transcript of the speech
in which he says:
"But we also have in mind another very important group of people - the innocent civilian population of Iraq. They have suffered terribly under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. There is no question about that. But war could so easily make their plight so much worse. There are no bombs sufficiently sophisticated, sufficiently smart, to avoid causing civilian casualties. And bombs aren't the only danger they face.
Any war will cause a refugee crisis of huge proportions - not to mention the dangers of famine and disease.
There are concerns nearer home. There is a real danger that the war could alienate British Muslims. Many moderate Muslims already feel that they are victims of prejudice. Action against Saddam could fuel that prejudice and leave the law-abiding Muslim population of Britain feeling excluded and aggrieved.
Those are factors which have to be weighed very carefully in the balance before any decision is taken to go to war. They're factors which I fear haven't been considered nearly hard enough.
Well he was proved wrong on almost every score.
1. Where is the refugee crisis? Where is the humanitarian catastrophe? There simply isn't one. There is of course a problem of looting and terrorism. The former is aggrevated by the fact that Hussein released many criminals before abandoning Baghdad. The latter is the actions of people who want to be the new slavemasters of the Iraqi people and who hope that they can bully their way to power.
I haven't seen the figures for the UK, but I do know that asylum applications for Iraqis wanting to go to Germany have fallen off a cliff since the start of the war.
Click here to see a graph of applications to Germany in 2002 and 2003.
Notice the huge fall in such applications since February. Iraqis are staying in Iraq to make a go of it. The refugee camps that were set up in Jordan to cope with the human flood are empty.
Where is the famine and disease, Charles?
2. The British muslim population has remained entirely peaceful. Although he doesn't make an outright prediction that they will riot, he clearly uses language designed to lead us to that conclusion, so that he can say 'I told you so' later on if rioting occurs. Well it didn't, perhaps because the people he's talking about have more common sense than he does.
3. There were civilian casualties and every one was a tradegy but the Hussein regime was killing 200 people per week - and that's not including the numbers killed in the wars against Iran and Kuwait. If we take 10,000 as the number killed by the US invasion, we are left with the conclusion that after only 50 weeks, the invasion will have SAVED lives. Every week thereafter, another 200 people will have been spared.
So, having demonstrated that he knows nothing, Kennedy should be expected to keep his stupid mouth shut. Instead he comes out and says that it's great that Hussein is captured.
What, Charles? You didn't want this to happen. If you march under the banner 'Not in my name' then you have nothing to say. So say that instead.
_ DY
at 7:44 PM GMT
