The International Community and its Failings

You might think, if you happened to be a terminal optimist, that having served as arguably New Labour's most abject foreign secretary in a far from uncrowded field, with his two most memorable achievements being the swindling of the Chagos Islanders and the panicked appeal to the United States for a note to Teacher excusing his collusion in kidnap and torture - you might just possibly think that the Other Milibeing would prefer to sneak out of the country quietly before taking up his Thunderbirds post in New York. But not a bit of it. Prominent among the many attributes which the Other Milibeing shares with the Reverend Blair is an ironcast immunity to the knowledge of when he isn't wanted.

The Other Milibeing has been speechifying about Iraq and Afghanistan; and while he admitted that everything has not been exactly ticketty-boo for the past ten years or so, he has been wagging his finger at the "international community" for letting a couple of unmitigated disasters deter it from jumping into the fray all over again. The Other Milibeing sermonised about learning lessons; again like the Reverend Blair, he has clearly remained immune from the lesson that it is best not to go on lying once you have been caught: "There were no WMDs and if we had known that in 2003 then there would have been no justification for war." The Other Milibeing registered annoyance at al-Qaida for not abiding by George W Bush's Mission Accomplished sign: "In Iraq, the war was won easily but the peace has often looked like war"; and worried about Afghanistan descending into "a new kind of civil war" now that the crusaders are leaving. Perhaps the whole adventure should have been more about oil. Apparently the Other Milibeing thinks somebody ought to do something about it.