Tony on Saving Civilisation

The Vicar of Downing Street has commenced a trilogy of sermons in which he apparently plans to tell us all about foreign policy. The next two instalments will be delivered in Australia and the United States, presumably because John Howard, George W Bush and their cronies are among the select few who still believe the Reverend's idea of foreign policy has anything constructive to offer.

The first instalment, delivered at Canary Wharf today, castigated Iran for "meddl[ing] so furiously in the stability of Iraq", which the Reverend's foreign policy has done so much to bring about. In a slightly esoteric excursion into theology, the Reverend claimed that Muslims who committed acts of terrorism were not being true to their faith, and then went on to say that a "strain of extremism" within that faith had given rise to the terrorists' motives. It follows, then, that religious extremists are being true to a strain within their faith which is also not part of their faith. The Reverend's logical faculty remains as healthy as ever, it seems.

He informed Islam that it had started out reasonably well - inclusive, practical and "way ahead of its time in attitudes to marriage, women and governance" and "extolling science and knowledge". Indeed, he made Islam at its birth sound virtually British. However, by the early twentieth century, with the British Empire in retreat, the Muslim world was "uncertain, insecure and on the defensive". Clearly, Islam needs to pull its socks up.

Accordingly, the Reverend's policy of starving and bombing people until they vote for what is good for them is "not a clash between civilisations". The Reverend's enemies are, by definition, not civilised; indeed, those who persist in their errors can end up de-urbanised, too. The battle in which the Reverend is engaged is "a clash about civilisation. It is the age-old battle between progress and reaction". Bombing countries back to mediaeval conditions is not a reactionary policy, presumably thanks to all that state-of-the-art radiation.

The Reverend said that opponents of the war were supporters of "a doctrine of benign inactivity" who felt that we should "Leave it all alone or at least treat it with sensitivity and it would all resolve itself in time; 'it' never quite being defined, but just generally felt as anything that causes disruption." The objections to such a doctrine should be immediately obvious. For one thing, George W Bush does not believe in leaving things alone or in treating them with sensitivity. For another, neither does the Reverend. For a third, the disruption which has been caused by the Iraq war would have been far outweighed by the possible disruption potentially arising out of the non-existent policy of not doing anything which was not pursued before, had such a policy been pursued as opponents of the war advised.

According to these rather vague people, "the policy of America since 9/11 has been a gross overreaction" rather than a calculated oil grab; "George Bush is as much if not more of a threat to world peace as Osama bin Laden", as if it were not perfectly clear who has killed the most people since 2001; "and what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else in the Middle East, is an entirely understandable consequence of US/UK imperialism or worse, of just plain stupidity", a charge which does not even need answering. Blaming the US for its own actions is "profoundly, fundamentally wrong". Although mistakes have been made in Iraq, such as dissolving Saddam Hussein's army before it could be used to democratise the populace, the Reverend appears frustrated that these are not the mistakes for which he is being castigated. "Opponents will say Iraq was never a threat; there were no WMD; the drug trade in Afghanistan continues," he observed with his usual uncanny prescience. He then pointed out that "Iraq was indeed a threat as two regional wars, 14 UN resolutions and the final report of the Iraq Survey Group show". Tony says it, so it must be true.