I was wandering Google news recently, when I noticed that our very own Prince Andrew has thrown his hat into the ring over the post war handling of Iraq. Criticising the way it’s all been allowed to fall apart.
I’m not going to go into the for and againsts of post war Iraq or even whether we should be in there at all, this blog is usually noticeably silent on current affairs these days. That’s intentional, but I will say that my view tends to be that how we got here is not at present as important as where we go from here. Or equally in this case how frankly and openly we discuss it, and are allowed to.
That’s why I think Andrew was right to say what he did, the actual content could be taken as being British arrogance and he’s come in for a lot of flak in some areas of the UK press, I won’t go into that either. My point is that there is an underlying message there, in between the lines; It goes like this: “You’ve screwed up. You’ve ruined a nation and condemned them to suffer years of fear and strife. Every civilian death in Iraq is on your heads.” My own additional comment is that this mess is not going to stay nice and confined in the Middle East, it’s going to spread and it already has.
Whatever your view on Andrew himself, the fact remains that it’s about time someone in the establishment gave voice to a deep discontent that the people in charge seem to be happy to ignore.
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