folio

The irony of parliament’s decision is that it will now make it impossible to confront extremism in our communities. The world will now be framed as a polarised us and them, silencing voices of reason and restraint. Today, just like the government, our activists will silence all dissent, writing it off as treachery and dereliction. It is a tragedy of far-reaching and epic proportions.

Those who oppose warmongers of whatever shade will always be shouted down. In one fell swoop, parliament has radicalised a generation. Now is not the time to speak of food banks, or a winter fuel crisis effecting the elderly or the disintegration of public services. We now know why the Chilcot Inquiry has been delayed: because we dared not learn lessons of the last misadventure lest it dampen our enthusiasm for today’s.

Is there really a hierarchy of evil that makes it acceptable for us to sell arms and provide technical support to a regime responsible for killing thousands of civilians and displacing over a million more? We’re doing just that in Saudi Arabia today with respect to Yemen. Why lament these tragic hypocrisies? We have been engaged in this war without end for well over a century, but collective amnesia allows us to project our reality onto the other without a moment’s introspection.

Patriotism demands that we go to war. Peacemakers are terrorist sympathisers. That was the Sermon on the Mount nobody heard. Only the odd voice in the wilderness truly recalls the Beatitudes, and he is labelled an extremist. To war!