TONY Blair's imminent appearance before the Iraq war inquiry reminds me of the time when, days before the war, I attended a meeting in Batley at which various Muslim and Christian speakers, and the town's MP Mike Wood, spoke in protest of the coming invasion.
As I entered the hall, I noticed gruesome photographs had been put up around the stage, showing people with horrific injuries.
For a moment I didn't get it. Why were these speakers, who were so opposed to the war, displaying evidence of the cruel
ty of the tyrant it sought to remove?
Then I drew close enough to read the captions and saw my mistake: Of course they were not pictures of Saddam's victims, but of Iraqis who had suffered through the first Iraq war and as a result of sanctions imposed by the West.
This, the implication was, is what is about to happen all over again.
It was a good point, powerfully made.
But it disturbed me that for a moment I'd thought I was looking at what the war was intended to put a stop to.
And in a sense I might as well have been. We all know about the atrocities Saddam perpetrated against his own people and his neighbours.
But throughout the entire Iraq debacle it seems to me that one group whose plight has been overlooked in all the rows over WMD and dodgy dossiers has been the Iraqi civilians who might have expected Western powers to protect them from a dictatorship modelled on fascism and enforced through terror.
(I must say I don't accuse the speakers in Batley of overlooking Iraqi civilians; I'm thinking more of certain elements of the British media.)
When the insurgency flared and dragged Iraq into a nightmare even worse than that which Saddam had imposed, some commentators backed the kidnappers and beheaders rather than those elements that sought to introduce a peaceful democracy.
There comes a point at which hostility to Western intervention becomes and appeasement of terrorists.
A similar thought occurs when I see those righteous ranters threatening to stage a march in Wootten Bassett involving empty coffins - ostensibly to remind us of the Muslims killed by our soldiers in Helmand.
To listen to them, you'd think the enemy was Islam itself, rather than a savage theocracy that condemns its (largely Muslim) population to oppression.
Thankfully, Islam UK is representative only of a minority.
Baroness Sayeeda Warsi is criticised by some Muslims for her line on Afghanistan. But by supporting the campaign until an acceptable conclusion is reached, despite opposing the war at its outset, she rightly makes the Afghan population as a whole her priority.
And if you believe the official line, rather than the conspiracy theories, we're in Helmand to prevent the spread of a terrorist threat that does not discriminate between civilians in the UK on the grounds of their religion or politics.
In other words, the blinkered firebrands of Islam UK will be safer riding the tube thanks to the sacrifices of those whose coffins they would spit on.
There are sound reasons to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but to present them as wars against Islam itself is both simple-minded and dangerously irresponsible.
awolstenholme@ywng.co.uk
