Airstrip One

Parris not plastered

Another good article by Matthew Parris where he asks the seemingly obvious question:

Second, I have been trying without much success to pose a different question, but have found that such is the unconsciously imperial outlook of a post-imperial nation that I can persuade few of my countrymen even to see it as a question: why should we British be pitching ourselves with such violent commitment into this war?

This second question is unashamedly selfish. Assuming that the Americans are likely to go ahead with their strategy anyway, and given that they are plainly capable of doing it without any help from us — and whether that strategy is right or wrong — why risk British blood and British treasure in an international venture over whose command we not only lack any veto, but any serious influence at all? Our eagerness not to be left out of whatever the Americans do strikes me as humiliating, making enemies we didn’t need to make without purchasing much tangible benefit in any supposed American debt of gratitude.

I would go further and say that the terrorists are plainly not trying to stop us doing anything if you don't count our puppy dog impressions in Iraq, just America and Israel, and therefore it is up to those to countries to sort it out. Which, it must be said, they seem to be doing quite well.