Saturday, November 17, 2007 

Neil Clark and blogging narcissism.

There are plenty of unpleasant creatures within the "blogosphere", most thankfully on the far-right in America, but Neil Clark is doing his level best to try to emulate their success in being both self-promoting while also having a disgustingly high opinion of themselves. Having won one of the numerous "best blog" awards there are, he calls on CiF for a blogging revolution, claiming that his views are the most in line with those of the general public.

Unity provides an excellent fisk, so I'll only go through some of his weaker arguments:

British political bloggers are overwhelmingly middle class and male, London-based and university educated. An extraordinary percentage of them seem to work, or have worked, in financial services. Genuinely working class voices do exist (see the blogs of The Exile, Martin Meenagh, Charlie Marks and Mick Hall) but there are all too few of them and as a consequence the issues which most concern ordinary working people - rising utilility and food bills, poor public transport, pitiful state pensions, worsening employment conditions and escalating street crime - are largely ignored.

I can't do much, like Unity, about being male, but I'm not middle class, not in or from London, and haven't been to university. Was going to, but didn't due to various reasons. I'd suggest the reason why most of the issues that Clark suggests are largely ignored are because they make, rightly or wrongly, for sterile political debate. Everyone's against rising bills, for better public transport and pensions, and concerned about street crime - and they're all concerns that bloggers themselves can't individually do much about. That's why blogs tend to focus more on the issues where there is great controversy and debate - immigration, foreign policy, law and order, civil liberties, etc. I'd also suggest that the reason why those issues are the ones that most occupy bloggers are because they're ones which large sections of the media also ignore, or have an almost uniform opinion on. The fact the bloggers obviously tend to be political anoraks or party wonks also adds into why those issues get much more discussion than the bread and butter issues tend to.

Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one who despairs when the likes of Hazel Blears come out with bullshit like all those on doors only talk about schools, the NHS and crime; as if those are the only things that politicians can do anything about, should be interested in, or as if that means most voters are completely inward-looking. While cynicism about politics might be at a new high, debate on the larger issues themselves has never been so vibrant.

A classic example of this in occurred in the summer, when a group of allegedly "anti-war" bloggers decided that the most urgent priority of the day was not campaigning for an immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq - or trying to prevent potentially catastrophic US/UK strikes on Iran, but linking up with notorious pro-war hawks to try to gain asylum for Iraqi interpreters who had worked for the illegal occupying forces.

However anti-war or opposed to the Iraq disaster you are, it's simply wrong to say that the occupying forces are there illegally. They're both mandated by UN resolutions and the Iraqi government, although perhaps not the Iraqi people, still support their presence. Clark also relies on a false dichotomy; that somehow you can't want the troops out of Iraq immediately or oppose war with Iran whilst also calling for the Iraqi interpreters to be given refuge. Notoriously, Clark described those who risked their lives then because of their hope that regardless of how the war came about, it meant the removal of a vicious dictator and the chance of building a new Iraq quislings, and others who support his stance have also called them scabs, as if they were somehow breaking a strike against working with the occupiers. Perhaps Clark ought to read today's dispatch in the Guardian from Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Basra. If he has any humanity, it might just prick his rhetorical bubble:

The assassins chat, eat kebabs and stroll around in small groups, discussing their sinister trade. They buy and sell names of collaborators, Iraqis who worked for the British, as well as journalists and uncooperative police officers, businessmen and the footsoldiers of other militias.

Depending on the nature of their perceived crime, the price on a collaborator's head can vary from couple of hundred dollars to a few thousand. The most valuable lives these days in Basra are those of the interpreters and contractors who were employed by the British before they withdrew from the city.


Clark would leave the "quislings" to their fate. Somehow I don't think that view would win him much support with either the working class he claims to have solidarity with or "the majority of ordinary people."

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Friday, October 12, 2007 

Iraqi employees campaign continues.

David Miliband has written about the FCO's policy on helping the "locally engaged staff" in Iraq on his blog. Dan Hardie writes about what else you can do in his latest post on the we can't turn them away campaign, but where better to stress the strength of feeling than on Miliband's own talking shop? Try your best to polite. Here's my comment, lest it isn't published:

Mr Miliband, I'll try to be polite in my response to this post, but when you fail to even mention in your entry why the locally-engaged staff need either financial assistance or resettlement, as you put it, it's difficult to take your claim that you feel strongly about this issue seriously.

As the many others above me have already made the point on why the current commitment simply isn't enough and excludes those who are in desperate need of safety, I'll instead approach this from a different angle. If reports in certain sections of the media are to be believed, you yourself were at best agnostic about the Iraq war. Whatever you feelings were then, it's apparent that our involvement in Iraq has been a disaster. At the very least 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died; the last Lancet report, which the Foreign Office privately indicated was based on credible methodology, suggested the toll could be as much as 650,000.

Let's not be involved in one more death in the poor benighted country than is necessary. These individuals risked their lives, and dared to dream in a better tomorrow for their country. To abandon them now would be the final insult and repudiation of their hope. I appreciate the difficulties involved, but those currently outside the remit of the announced change in policy deserve better.

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10/12/2007 08:08:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, October 08, 2007 

The Brown inadequacy.

At the risk of upsetting Mike Power...

Just what, then, was the point of last week's dash to Basra and then Baghdad by Gordon Brown? Today's announcement in the Commons that by next spring the number of British troops in Iraq will be down to 2,500 only deepened the mystery; if Brown had really wanted to shaft the Tories he could easily have done what he told parliament today then, even if he would have broken his promise to make such new changes in policy in front of MPs. Why did he need to reannounce such a slight draw down in numbers when he apparently went to OK or at least discuss this further withdrawal with al-Malaki and other Iraqi ministers? He could have easily avoided all the justified accusations of spin and shifting the story away from the Conservatives by simply keeping his visit quiet for security reasons. The assumption has to be that this was meant to be a teaser, to be followed up by the meat today as part of the start of the election campaign, which most likely would have been declared tomorrow night.

All that was thrown out of the window once Brown understandably cowered in the face of the menacingly ominous polls. There doesn't appear to have been any contingency plan if it was decided, after nodding and winking for two weeks, that an election was just too risky, and the choices made on the hoof on Friday night led directly to the far more punishing kicking that Brown took today during his press conference. As Patrick Wintour set out in this morning's Grauniad, Team Brown first informed the 4 editors of Sunday broadsheets, then got hold of Andrew Marr so that a pre-recorded interview with Brown explaining his decision could be made the following day. Not only did this piss off ITN and Sky News by giving the BBC an exclusive, affecting their coverage, which was still far more scathing today than Nick Robinson's was, the resulting meeting of minds was so feeble, with Marr throwing numerous soft balls that it only increased the anger and tenacity of the questions put to Brown by the assembled hacks today. If Brown had instead taken the beating which he was always going to receive yesterday, touring studios or coming out and being completely honest and stating that he had considered an election but decided that it was simply too soon, he would have had a far easier ride. Instead, the bad news and humiliation was spread over three full days rather than just the two it could have been.

Watching Brown standing at the lectern, the cameras delighting in seeing his scribbled notes, each question the equivalent of another stab in the front was painful enough at home, and Brown as it went on looked more and more out of his depth. If Blair had been in the same position he would have kept the facade up; Brown simply couldn't, and it clearly showed. Whether the public will enjoy seeing a prime minister visibly squirm at the hands of the press should be interesting to find out, as Blair was only ever troubled when confronted with actual members of the public, as his appearances on various shows prior to elections and the Iraq war showed. Perhaps after Blair's seeming infallibility it might be novel, although if it continues Brown's hard-won representation for strength will quickly shatter.

It was important then that his performance in the Commons was far stronger, and this he more than managed, helped by Cameron's pre-occupation with the events of last week rather than what Brown's statement had actually just put forward. The Conservatives simply have never had a policy on Iraq, first blindly following Blair and then pursuing inquiries into it while never recanting their support or putting forward what they would either have done differently then or now, and they're not about to change that. Welcome as a call for an inquiry was, which David Cameron articulated after his backwards looking raid on last week's spin offensive, he missed the open goal taken up by Ming Campbell of just what point there was in keeping such a small number of troops at Basra airport for no overall reason. The "overwatch" stage put forward is just so much nonsense: both the government knows and the army know that their only remaining reason for staying in Iraq is because they safeguard the American convoys' transporting equipment and supplies from Kuwait through to Baghdad. Even after all this time, angering the Americans by making them deploy a few more troops to the south is strictly verboten.

That said, you perhaps sympathise with the Iraqis once you understand what's more likely to be put in place to protect those convoys once we do finally leave: the murderous, legally immune mercenaries of Blackwater, firing at the wind to "protect" their quarries which pay them so handsomely for doing so. Such sentiments aside, we know full well that the generals want out, and now, not at the end of 2008. A full withdrawal could easily have been organised for next spring, in line with all the other promises and commitments set out in Brown's statement. Instead, Brown again showed his cowardice rather than his courage, unwilling to rile the Americans that did so much to destroy his predecessor. If reports in the Torygraph are to be believed, he hasn't even learned the most vital lesson of his premiership: that the "war on terror", regardless of who's in the White House, fought in the way it has so far, has been the biggest disaster of this current century.

Equally pusillanimous was Brown's piecemeal, too little too late recognition of the sacrifices and contribution of the Iraqis themselves that have worked with the army, now increasingly facing a terrifyingly bleak future. The numbers we are talking about possibly being given refuge are in the hundreds, not the thousands, as Dan points out. To put such an arbitrary, unrealistic threshold of twelve months' service before we even give "a package of financial payments", let alone sanctuary here in the UK to such brave men and women who believed in the future of their country, regardless of the ways in which Saddam was initially brought down, is to potentially condemn some of their number to death. As Dan also identifies, to offer resettlement elsewhere in the Middle East rather than here is also to not necessarily put them out of harm's way; Syria and Jordan, countries where the vast majority of the 2 million or more Iraqis have fled, are both struggling to cope with the numbers of refugees, but are also unknown quantities at the moment. Their allure of safety may be deceiving. Any financial settlement is going to be need to be suitably generous to those who choose not to settle in the UK to make up for that shortfall in security.

It's not even as if there's going to be any major opposition to such packages or mass granting of refuge to those who have worked for us; the Sun ran an approving leader on Saturday that welcomed the assurances given to the Times, even calling it a moral obligation. They could hardly do anything else after having more than a hand in getting the war rolling in the first place. The Mail long ago dropped its support for the invasion, leaving perhaps only the Daily Express to raise noises, and who takes any notice of that busted flush any more? The government could afford to be far more daring, and it might be more down to the civil servants in the front line organising everything rather than the politicians for the stalling and so far weak acceptance of the need to act. Tomorrow's meeting, moved to Portcullis House, will emphasize this.

The whole circus of the weekend and today though only highlighted the current deficit that our politics are facing. Both Cameron and Brown represent more or less the same policies, with the Tories perhaps being the slightly harsher of the two, yet the merest switching of the polls in the marginals towards one rather than the other has supposedly triggered either a crisis or a period of navel-gazing for the prime minister. The election, had it been called, would have been nearly wholly meaningless, with both seeking power for power's sake rather than out of any real desire for actual change, despite the bluster of both parties. The Liberal Democrats have been slipping as a result, yet they are currently offering the only major critique of both parties' style and rhetoric, with Nick Clegg effortlessly on Newsnight exposing both Theresa May and John Denham's arguments as facile. The great shame is that we've been denied a contest which could have helped bring about the major step change that politics needs to get out of its current, seemingly inexorable decline.

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10/08/2007 07:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, October 06, 2007 

We can't turn them away update.

Somewhat encouraging news on the We can't turn them away campaign front. The Times reports:

Iraqi interpreters and other key support staff who have risked their lives to work for Britain are to be allowed to settle in the United Kingdom, The Times has learnt.

Hundreds of interpreters and their families are to be given assistance to leave Iraq, where they live under fear of death squads because they collaborated with British forces. Those wishing to remain in Iraq or relocate to neighbouring countries will be helped to resettle.

After a two-month campaign by The Times, Gordon Brown is set to announce that interpreters who have worked for the British Government for 12 months will be given the opportunity of asylum in Britain.


The most reassuring word here is "hundreds". The campaign has always argued that we don't just owe the 91 known interpreters sanctuary here, but also all those who have worked for the army in Basra in any respect. They are just as potentially in danger, especially once a full withdrawal is finally completed.

The hope has to be now that this is actually followed through. Dan has already suggested that the person who leaked this to the Times may have gotten ahead of themselves, with apparently neither the army or the Foreign Office as of yet being aware of any change in policy. All the more reason for there to be as large a turnout as possible at Tuesday's meeting in Westminster.

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Friday, September 14, 2007 

Cowardly assassination of a real resistance fighter.

I'm not one to make liberal use of the word "cowardly" when describing attacks by terrorist groups, especially those that result, either purposely or accidentally in the death of the perpetrator himself. Whatever we think of the motives behind suicide attackers, or what personal inadequacies or perverse thinking leads them to make such a unjustifiable decision, the act itself of ending your own life, in essence for what you believe in, even if you believe that the act itself will result in your installment in paradise, is not one which can be described as "cowardly". While suicide has for a long time been caricatured as taking the cowards' way out, and we can criticise the person for not caring about the mess that their death will both leave behind and create, the taking of ones own life requires strength that can never be dismissed as being easy to achieve or as an essentially empty act.

This is why the spectre of suicide bombers on the loose is so viscerally terrifying; the cliche of "them" loving death while we love life does have some merit to it. We do everything we can, not just to escape death, but to prolong our lives and to halt the visible signs of aging, while their attachment to at least this plane of existence is so flimsy that they'll sacrifice everything for something completely unachievable and take numerous innocents with them in the bargain. Susan Sontag's comments just after September the 11th, that "cowardly" would be a term better applied to those who also make use of planes but who rather than using the machines themselves as weapons drop their explosive cargo from a great, safe height, have never lost their resonance.

The assassination of Abdul Sattar Abu Reesha, the leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, most likely by a improvised explosive device planted in his car by al-Qaida fighters disguised as petitioners who visited the Sheikh yesterday on the first day of Ramadan, was however most certainly a cowardly act. Rather than killing him using a suicide bomber, as al-Qaida in Iraq's calling card has been, they used their weakest and lamest tactic, used to kill dozens of American soldiers, as well as countless other innocent Iraqis.

We shouldn't overplay the significance of the emergence of the Anbar Salvation Council, which is exactly what Petraeus did earlier in the week in his statements to Congress and the Senate, but the rising up against the "Islamic State of Iraq" has always been the most welcome development to occur in Iraq in years. It showed that no longer were the Iraqis prepared to exchange one tyranny for another, from Saddam's secular police state to al-Qaida's extremist implementation of Sharia law, which had for a time prospered amongst the Iraqi tribes that had the most to lose from Saddam's overthrow. Their tactics may have at times been no better than that of the fighters they turned against, but they remain the best hope of eradicating the "Islamic State", something that the Americans can never possibly imagine to achieve.

While Abu Reesha's death shows just how deep the problems in Iraq still are, away from the rosy image presented this week, it by no means marks the blowing apart of the hopes of pacifying Iraq, as Patrick Cockburn writes. If anything, Reesha's death is likely only to galvanise those opposing the takfirists into being ever more determined to eject the murderers that set-up home after the invasion.

Another welcome development was contained in an interview with the spokesman for the Islamic Army in Iraq, who made clear that his group, unlike al-Qaida, are prepared to negotiate with the Americans. It can't be coincidence that as al-Qaida continues its barbarism, exemplified by the indefensible attacks on the Yezidis, the other insurgent groups continue to move towards a position of opposing the "Islamic State" while being prepared to end their own struggle, as long as the Americans themselves also withdrawal. As the release of another new report suggests that the death toll since 2003 could be even higher than previously feared, the need to bring the conflict to an end becomes more urgent than ever.

Similarly, the deteriorating situation in Basra, as reported by the Times which makes clear just how unsafe former employees of the British army now are, necessitates that we quickly identify all those we owe a debt of service to and offer them sanctuary, even if only temporarily. You can still make your voice heard by contacting your MP and informing them of the "we can't turn them away" campaign.

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9/14/2007 08:31:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 05, 2007 

Iraqi employees campaign update.

The latest news, courtesy of Dan Hardie and Justin on the Iraqi employees campaign:

If you haven’t already written to your MP, please do so: outline what’s happening and why we should be concerned, ask them to contact the relevant Ministries (particularly the Home Office but also the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) and also invite them to the meeting. Talking points for both letters are here. Any blogger who has participated in this campaign is invited as is any blogreader who successfully invites their MP. Just email Dan Hardie at danhardie.blog@gmail.com and an invitation will be heading your way.

Stress to MPs that mainstream print and TV journalists will be present: that is the kind of thing that tends, for some reason, to attract them. And stress that this is the first blog-based campaign in the UK. This is how politics is going, and they need to see what it looks like.

Dan spoke to an ex-Royal Engineer yesterday who told him of an Iraqi employee murdered since this campaign began. Now that the British contingent has withdrawn to Basra Airport, we can probably expect more power-drilling, cigarette-burning and shooting of Iraqi employees. These people are dying right now. The pressure needs to be maintained on MPs and the various ministries involved.

Hope to see you on October 9.


I won't be going, but if you haven't contacted your MP, especially if they haven't responded yet, please think about doing so.

In the interests of presenting the other side of the argument, as Neil Clark did so wonderfully when he demanded that these "quislings be kept out", we have Shotgun, currently involved in a battle royale with John Hirst, eloquently elucidating his feelings on the matter here, here and here.

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9/05/2007 07:57:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, August 10, 2007 

The inhumanity of one "anti-imperialist".

I began this week by writing a piece about the ructions on the pro-war left, linked in with Johann Hari's attack on Nick Cohen's polemic on the failures of the left and Oliver Kamm's article on the same day claiming that the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki shouldn't be viewed as a crime. I'd never of imagined (although I perhaps should have) that by the end of this week I'd be writing about how one anti-war supposed leftist seems to have been trying his best to be as inhumane as those who cheered on the "shock and awe" in the first place.

It's well known that Neil Clark, rather than being an anti-imperialist as he describes himself, has a tendency to be apologetic towards such human rights defenders as Slobodan Milosevic, but even by his low-grade of rhetorical standards today's piece on Comment is Free scrapes the very bottom of the reactionary, unpleasant, nauseating barrel. Titled "Keep these quislings out", it's the first, and probably will be the only article to attack the growing campaign for Iraqi employees of the British armed forces to be given refuge here.

The entire basis of the article seems to be based on the mind-numbing, idiotic belief that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Despite the fact that the blogging campaign for the Iraqi employees' plight to be recognised was started by Dan Hardie, who opposed the war and opposes the continuing presence of British troops in Iraq, and that the vast majority who have wrote about it were all anti-war, the simple fact that some of those who supported the war are also now supporting the campaign has been enough for Mr Clark to aim his limp arrows against the translators in their entirety. There's nothing wrong with chucking vitriol at Harry's Placers or that fat turd Stephen Pollard, but doing so for the purpose of denying those with the threat of murder hanging over their heads is the moral equivalent of refusing to even piss on someone who's on fire because you don't like them.

Clark then compounds the insult by referring to those who have worked with the British forces as both "quislings" and "collaborators". It's quite clear what Clark's pointing towards: that those who dared to believe they could rebuild Iraq, regardless of how Saddam was overthrown, are the modern equivalent of the fascist apologists and enablers of the 1940s. This is all the more hypocritical because of a recent posting on Clark's own blog, entitled "There was only one Nazi Germany", where he agrees with Jonathan Cook that it's impossible to paint Iran as a modern-day fascist state. It seems it's fine to bring up the inescapable Nazis after all, as long as they help along your own twisted argument. Perhaps Clark ought to have read the accounts of three interpreters who were interviewed in yesterday's Guardian, especially the first:

I chose to work for the British because I love their democracy and passion for human rights and I want to see it in Iraq.

And who could possibly disagree with those sentiments, even if you disagree with the method which brought the British into Iraq? Iraq is a hellhole now, and it's a hellhole of our own making, but what kind of inhumane bastard would deny the Iraqis the opportunity to rebuild their country in our image purely because of who supported the war in the first place, or as the case is, their escape from murderers who share none of the democratic sentiments they do? It's also not as if Clark has only recently taken to throwing the "quisling" tag around: back in 2003, he wrote a comment piece on the murder of the Serbian prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, calling him the quisling of Belgrade.

Clark ends his flatulence with this especially noxious, illogical blast of wind:

If that means some [the Iraqi employees] of them may lose their lives, then the responsibility lies with those who planned and supported this wicked, deceitful and catastrophic war, and not those of us who tried all we could to stop it.

But this is a false dichotomy. The responsibility doesn't just lie with the warmongers, it also lies with the murderers executing those they see as collaborators, a view that Clark himself seems to share. It's up to those of us who tried to stop it to now redirect our efforts to ensure that as few more people die as a result of what was done in our name as possible. Clark instead would prefer that more blood is spilt rather than giving "self-centred mercenaries who betrayed their fellow countrymen and women for financial gain out of Britain" the opportunity of a life away from the constant threat of death purely because of the job they chose. As Jamie points out, if you don't oppose cold-blooded murder, how can you oppose war? Or is it, to come back again to the quisling charge, that Clark views such men and women as untermensch?

As others have suggested, maybe it's a good thing that such a disgusting, despicable piece of writing appeared on CiF. If this doesn't motivate more people to sign the petition and write to their MPs on behalf of those we've abandoned to a unimaginable future, then very little else will.

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8/10/2007 07:53:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 07, 2007 

Oh, the irony.

The US is considering a request from the British Foreign Office to release five former UK residents from Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

A senior US official said Washington would seek guarantees that the men would be treated humanely and would not be allowed to pose a security threat.

Welcome as this news is, the overwhelming urge to punch whichever smart arse US official thought it would be funny to seek a guarantee that the five prisoners would be treated humanely after spending years in a modern gulag with in some cases the detainees being force-fed after going on hunger strike can't be overstated. Whatever these men are alleged to have done, we have always had a responsibility towards them that we shamefully declined to act upon. That's it taken this long and a change of prime ministers for it to come about has blackened our name further. It's also doubtful, especially now, that they pose any kind of security threat. All the former British detainees held at Guantanamo were released without any charge, and have attempted to rebuild their lives, much as these five are now likely to do.

The government now has to do the similarly decent thing and provide refuge to any Iraqis who have worked with the British forces, endangering themselves and their families in the process. Anything less is just as much a betrayal.

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8/07/2007 09:25:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, July 23, 2007 

We can't turn them away.

Dan Hardie has set up a worthy campaign calling for the countless Iraqis working for the British forces to be given indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom, considering the campaigns of murderous violence now being waged against anyone thought to have collaborated with the occupation. While those in the south are at less risk than those living in the far more violent north, we have a duty to offer every one one of these brave people and their families refuge. For the Home Office, ever watchful of the figures for both those seeking asylum and that have come here to work to wash their hands of these individuals is just the latest disgrace to come out of the last 4 years of shame. Dan's advice on what to do is thus:


If you feel that this is unacceptable and that Britain should prevent Iraqis from being murdered for the ‘crime’ of working for British troops, could you please write to your MP and ask him or her to press the Government for action. You can use the excellent website ‘Write to Them’ ( http://www.writetothem.com/ ) or post a letter yourself.

Please be courteous when writing to your MP. It would be a good idea to read the reports above, and cite relevant facts. We would suggest that your letter could contain the following points:

If you really do find letter writing daunting, I’d suggest you copy and paste the letter below and adapt it somewhat. But you are strongly advised that the best thing to do is to compose your own letter:

Dear (MP’s name)

As your constituent, I am writing to discover your views on the treatment of Iraqi citizens who are working or have worked for the British Army, for the contractors supporting it, and for the Coalition Provisional Authority in the South of Iraq. In particular, I would like to know if you support the right of these people to indefinite asylum in the United Kingdom. I strongly suggest that they do indeed have this right. They have, by definition, put their lives at risk by the support they have given to British soldiers who were sent to war by a vote of the House of Commons.

Whether you- or I- supported or opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq is immaterial. The risk run by Iraqis working for British troops is even greater than that run by the soldiers themselves. British soldiers are now suffering very high casualties in Iraq, and are continuing to serve bravely- but their local staff are obliged to live among neighbours who will, in many cases, be sympathetic to or even belong to the armed groups fighting the British army. We owe these people a clear moral debt. We cannot allow them to be murdered for the ‘crime’ of helping our service men and women.

The most effective way of helping these brave Iraqis is to offer them indefinite right to remain in the United Kingdom. There is plentiful evidence that armed groups in Iraq make a practice of murdering not only their ‘enemies’ but their families too: and for this reason we must extend the right of asylum to the families of those who have worked with us. This policy should be enacted immediately whether our forces stay in Iraq or are soon withdrawn. Applications for asylum cannot be ‘processed’ in a lengthy fashion: the situation in Basra is deteriorating, the ability of British soldiers to protect those that work for them is seriously compromised and any delay is likely to lead to the murder of Iraqis who have worked for the British military. I would appreciate your views on this matter.Yours sincerely
NAME

Update: Davide has set up a petition on the Downing Street website that you can also sign.

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7/23/2007 06:52:00 PM | | | links to this post

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