The Policy Blender

Not with you on this one. In my book, war or no war, people are still dying every day through violent action. So there's still something to be pissed off about.

Admittedly there's an argument as to whose fault it was, whether more would have died under Hussein, whether the current government will last, whether we went in for the right reasons, but to say "The war has ended, it doesn't matter any more", in the way I think your caption does isn't something I'd go along with.

Interesting link, though I don't quite know what good protesting outside the HoP is going to do in relation to getting the Islamonutters from blowing up Iraqis. Surely Blair and the EvilOne are trying to stop the 'militants' already? Do you think that he is there to make them try harder?

- Newsflash - it's not Blair and Bush that are bombing the Iraqis: they were the ones that liberated them from tyranny. The ones doing the bombing are those that want to impose a new tyranny.

Innocent people are dying everyday in Iraq because the 'militants' who were initially lauded by the anti-Bush media as the"minutemen", the heroes of the anti-Bush revolution, are blowing them to pieces.

I don't often rant about the Decadent West, but on this one, the sneering Islamic troublemakers - who stir up the hatred of the decadent "Great Satan" - are spot on: we are decadent; we live with freedom and liberty and yet laud those who would take it away and demonise the efforts of those who seek to grant freedom and liberty to oppressed peoples.

It's not often I'm on the same side as Blair, but on the Iraq war he was, in my opinion, spot-on - Saddam was a Sonofabitch and had to go. Shame he felt morally strong enough to make the right decision in private but obfuscate, spin and downright lie in public, but I guess that's how the man sees politics.

My point is - surely people realise that protesting to Parliament about the war when it's over, or the killing of Iraqis by anti-western foreign wannabe-autocrat Islamofachists is clearly pointless. In my view all this "save the Iraqi babies" guff is more about individuals trying to define a purpose for their own lives rather than trying to make other peoples live better.

I'm not saying protesting in general is pointless, far from it, what I am saying is that in leaping on this "blood on your hands today" bandwagon people reveal more about their own lack of understanding of the struggles of the people of Iraq to be rid of tyranny than they do about their own 'compassion'.

Protest to the bloody suicide bombers - they're the ones doing the killing.

Newsflash, ok, cause "Hello!" is, like, so Californian. Dude, like, really, can I get an English colloquialism round here?

Anyway, yeah - if he wants to protest there he can (though obviously it's too little too late) and the war didn't end two years ago whether the people being blown up today are from Britain or not. I bet you a Brit dies in Iraq in the next two weeks. If I win, well, if I win someone dies, so I won't feel that great about it. Never mind that then.

Oh come on??

"Please Sir they started it"?

On the wider issue - we're arguing, again, from the same corner.

Yes, it's good to protest.

No, it's not good that civil liberties - the right to protest - are being stomped on by our increasingly authoritarian government.

Yes, Bob Mugabe and other tin-pot thugs will be laughing at Blair the 'democrat' tidying up the view.

YES - it is funny that they tried to arrest him for posing a security risk - because he clearly isn’t!!! - he's just some sad old loon who's misguidedly making the wrong point to the wrong people!

And of course the war is over. Not because Bush says so, but because it clearly is - the war was with Saddam - he's gone, the guys doing the suicide bombing and civilian massacring are fighting Iraq not us. To try to paint them as 'fighting for the Iraqi people' as the left over here so often does is well off the mark - how can they be fighting for the Iraqi people when they are trying to kill and mame as many as they can? They are terrorising the Iraqi people. They are terrorists. To call them 'militants' as the press insists on doing is to legitimise their brutal and fascist objective.

I nearly fell of my chair last year when the BBC Newsreader read out two reports - one about 'Militants' blowing up a marketplace full of shoppers in Iraq, and the next about 'Militants' (Otis Ferry et al) wandering in to the HoP!

So what are the 160,000 people from UK and US, trained and armed to kill, still doing there? And do we really need a country to have a war? Can't we just have one on terrorists, or terror generally? I mean, just a little one... we're getting too good at wars to have big ones after all.

Sorry, I'm feeling very pacifist today - I woke up to Simon and Garfunkel singing this - to a nice, folky tune. The 'Shrouded in a mushroom cloud of death' line comes from nowhere, it's really quite harrowing.

I guess it's the choice between liberating no-one and liberating a hundred people, but liberating one of them of his or her life - I couldn't make that choice.

"For a libertarian, you're a poor defender of liberties."

You don't have to bow to a consensus to defend liberty.

As someone who was right once said "I think what you're saying is wrong, but I'd die to defend your right to say it"

I think this bloke is a nutter, but I never said he's got no right to protest.

Surely satire is about pitching the ridiculous against the absurd to mock the world in which we live. Brain's protest against a war that is over is ridiculous; that this pathetic old (pythonesque) loon should pose a "security risk" is absurd.

Lock up your sensitivity, satire's in town.

I bet he smells though. Of course, it's his right to smell, though where his smell affects others it's his responsibility to ensure his smell is reasonable.

Rights, after all, come with responsibilities.

Are all those signs on Parliament Square his?

You're right, of course: if I am serious about Liberty I should not express my views in such ways.

I still think he's barking up the spectacularly wrong tree, but I will confine my thoughts to my own head from now on.

I should also like to take this opportunity to apologise to the Government, and to the members of the moral majority I have offended over the last few weeks - in seeking to satirise someone who clearly means so much to them, but not shit to me, I have shown my ignorance of the wider issues.

You win. I am sorry for dissenting from the sympathy for the dissenter. I realise now,

Oh ffs, I can't stay this sarcastic forever -

Long live free speech, long live satire, long live nutters like Brain but down with those who disagree with them… damnit, there I go again…

:-)

You smell too. I mean that in a satirical way. So does Blair, so does Briain, so does Chris. So do I.

In fact the only person who doesn't smell is the Queen. And the man she pays (or we pay) to wipe her arse for her still smells.

He does smell though.

Ouch…

Though I will take "you're as bad as George" as a compliment coming from you :-)

I have a slight confession: in the first draft (well, what I wrote thirty seconds before I posted the piece) I wrote "If only somebody had told him the war ended two years ago maybe he could be a home now" (or words to that effect) but I scrubbed it in favour of "The war in Iraq ended over two years ago, though no one has yet thought to tell Mr Haw" Because I thought the former might have been taken literally. The picture I wanted to paint was of a harmless old nutter winding the government up by protesting about something that isn't even relevant anymore (with hindsight I should have gone bigger on the arrest, but I thought I had that covered. As you rightly point out, the government has legislated against him now, though the new law is yet to be enforced on Brian)

The old saying is right; it's never funny if you have to explain it.

I hate to be so bluntly contradictory, but the war is over. The war was with Saddam and the Baathist tyranny that oppressed the Iraqi people. Saddam and the Baathists are no longer in power. The war is over.

Killing, however, continues. There are people in Iraq (many of them - and the majority of the ringleaders by even the most anti-Bush of accounts - are not actually Iraqis) that want to control Iraq and are projecting their own anti-American agenda onto their attempts to install a new theocratical tyranny onto Iraq. This is terrorism - They deliberately target allied attempts to re-build the country (I know, I know, we knocked it down, but see above Saddam and Baathist tyranny); they target civilians going about their business, getting on with their lives, to try to grind the country socially and economically into the ground. They want the Allies to leave so they can rule Iraq. They are terrorists. They have no democratic mandate; they are not - despite their and their western cheerleaders claims - acting with the permission of and in the interest of the Iraqi people. This is not the war we fought against Saddam. This is terrorism.

You know, and I have said before in these pages, that I would defend anybodies right to their own opinion and anybodies right to protest. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance after all.

I have my opinion. Brian has his. I think he's wrong, that's my opinion. That doesn't mean that I think he's wrong to express his opinion nor to stand up for what he thinks is right. This is bread and butter stuff, I should be needing to spell it out in these pages.

As for whether the piece was funny or satirical or not; well that's subjective. I would be careful in dismissing the value of something that does not fit with a particular world view. I do disagree with Brian; I did take the piss out of him. I also sought to satirise the situation by paralleling the ridiculousness of his protest (as I see it: remember, my opinion) with the absurdity of his arrest on grounds of a "security risk". You may not find that funny. I do. You may not find that to be satire - they're your eyes, I don't see through them, but all I ask is that you open both of them.

Satire hits nerves. Private Eye certainly hit one with their 'Diana Issue' in '97. What I'm asking for is perspective, detachment and understanding. I poke fun at Brian because he's there. Blinkers off please.

Matt's original comment was spot on - "In my book, war or no war, people are still dying every day through violent action. So there's still something to be pissed off about."

It is something to be pissed off about. Brian's pissed off, I'm pissed off, hell; I'd even hazard a guess that Blair's pissed off.

I've offended the sensibilities of people that are pissed off. Am I sorry? No.

Am I right to point out that Brian is barking up the wrong tree? I think so, maybe others don't. Whatever and whoever is right, are we changing anything? The brutal answer is no. Sorry Brian. Not you not me not many people at all have the power to stop the killing in Iraq. I wish we had. I bet Blair wishes he had. We don't.

We live in a free society (though in our usual tirades and satires we would argue that - ID cards/legislation etc). The Iraqis have a chance to live in a free society thanks to the difficult decisions our leaders have taken. That is important and it is worth caring about. I wish the energy that I see being wrongly channelled against Blair and Bush for "continuing this bloody war" were put towards securing a safe and free future for the Iraqi people.

Surely there is an irony in someone protesting against a war that is over? It may be that I find it particularly ironic because all the people that protested against the war in the marches would have almost certainly been killed for their impertinence if they lived in Iraq, but I still draw an irony in the pathos of the lone vidual against what many regard as a war ('the occupation') that has clearly ended. That says something about society, and I wanted to project it. As for ridicule - I give you a man protesting against a war that is over, a government that arrests a harmless nutcase for being a security risk.

As I pointed out before, we as a society - in fact we as human beings - like to hold onto discernable truths. One of those 'truths' has been the assumption of guilt for the Iraqis that have been killed in the name of freedom. We bare that guilt, because our elected leaders took the decision to liberate the Iraqi people. That will be our burden as members of a free society. But what I see as illogical, is elaborating that guilt onto the consequences actions of others that are beyond the control of our leaders and our forces. Yes; innocent people died in Iraq whilst it was being liberated from tyranny - we must take some blame for that, it was our decision to liberate Iraq. Yes; people are dying now whilst a new tyranny attempts to pervade their land - our forces are trying to stop them, but they are not at war with the Iraqi people; far from it. What the allied forces are doing in Iraq is essentially good; they are trying to protect the Iraqi people from the calculated violence of terrorists who would have them living under tyranny.

Of course I've upset sensibilities - I've pointed out the absurdity of an anti-war protester protesting a war that is over. To be anti-war is the zeitgeist, of course that's rocked a few boats. The affection to which the anti-war nutcases are held is bizarre, given that our freedom to celebrate such disaffection is one of the liberties that the Iraqi people were previously without. Is that not another irony in this sorry situation?

I do of course agree that Brian's protest has a wider value to our society. In fact the earlier point that he should remain until the government don't care about him anymore is a salient one. The 'recent assaults on liberties' referred to above do legitimise Brian's protest. He becomes the prophetic Shakespearian fool, his pathetic plight divining our ominous authoritarian future. If our government can legislate to prevent Brian exerting the right to protest that is key to any liberal, free society and criticising their decision to go to war to enable others to live in a liberal, free society without the burden of tyranny, then there is an irony indeed.

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