Unhappy Birthday

It may not quite top the list, but when it comes to things I really don't feel like thinking or talking about, Iraq is definitely up there.

I've just had it up to here with it.

I'd had it up to here with Iraq days after it began, when gigs were getting cancelled, shortly before the whole world went mental. A grossly unsatisfactory situation redeemed only by the novelty of being able to throw the word "war" around in a current context. And the obscene flippancy isn't quite so lost on me today.

So I did sit through that special edition of question time, on the occasion of the fourth anniversary, and listened to the whole thing. Only just. It featured, of course, the token pro-war american diplomat, the fiercely anti-war Tony Benn, some idiot from the conservative party, and the former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, a less obvious choice perhaps, but I felt she spoke the most sense out of any of them. Tony Benn is of course my hero for life, I've heard him speak in person at a conference I went to last year, and it was fantastically inspiring, however in this situation his rhetoric was just a bit too caricatured I felt, and instead of being involved in the argument most of the panel (especially the yank) just ignored him.

Even more interesting, however, and more harrowing also, was the input of the audience, which included iraqis, people of other middle-eastern nationalities, and people who's lost friends and relatives in the war such as one woman whose son was killed while serving.

Her comment, "I'm proud of my son but ashamed of my gouvernment for sending him to Iraq," struck me as bizarre. This sounds like something an American would say. I'm not being funny, and I hate to generalise, but I remember after Lewinsky-gate americans saying things like "I feel ashamed of our president" as if he was a close relative or something, and it sounded odd to me then and still does now. English people, on the other hand, generally don't tend to feel ashamed of their politicians - they hammer them into the ground, they jump down their throats and are the first to condemn them, they don't stand beside them and accept partial responsability for their idiocy! Which, if you ask me, is a far healthier approach.

Isn't that the whole point behind the opposition, the anti-war coalitions, the mass demonstrations and the endless outrage - that are all summed up in the seminal dictum - Not in our name.

I don't think the Brits have any call to feel ashamed for the actions of their government, anymore than Iraqis do for the those of Saddam Hussein.

Why the association? Why the apologism? Whence the shared responsibility? To whom is this misguided loyalty felt to be owed and why? I am not "ashamed" of Tony Blair for supporting Bush and sending troops to Iraq, I'm not ashamed of Bertie Ahern and the Irish government for letting american planes land in Shannon, I'm not ashamed of the people who defend them, who advocate imperialistic regime change and who continue to justify the whole wretched process. I'm outraged and incensed by it. I was outraged 4 years ago, and I'm still outraged today.

Watch last Thursday's edition of Question Time

Tony Benn's Stop the War coalition

Because I will never have recommended it enough, Baghdad Burning.