There are several qualities that I prize above all others. One of these is integrity. Personal integrity and respect for the integrity of others. Within each of us there is an internal blueprint that we consciously develop or semiconsciously absorb. At the periphery there are those for whom sublimation is an unconscious process and these individuals are those who find themselves exploited and particularly vulnerable. Integrity is that quality that recognises personal freedom and endorses the freedom of each of us to go about our business unimpeded and without undue let or hindrance. The exception is when an individual chooses to inflict harm upon others or their actions place others at risk.

The point is moot, and a philosophical one at that. Where we draw the line is a subjective matter and I am minded of the US Senate’s committee on pornography who reasoned that they could not define pornography par se but they knew it when they saw it. It is just so with the actions of an individual and when precisely they become a risk or a threat to the integrity of others.

I find politics and politicians a curious lot. It is entirely possible that they all set off on the great race with a high degree of personal integrity and are well intentioned. It is, after all, the one arena where they can bring about significant change. Isn’t it? Yet, like fry in the nursery pools of clear mountain streams, so few of them pass through all the obstacles to mature into those salmon that will perpetuate their genetics and so preserve and continue the species. I find myself exposed here and feeling vulnerable. Why? The current inquiry into the Iraq war gives the lie to the various arguments foisted upon us by the powers that were and I was duped at the time into concluding that war was an inevitability with such a malevolent and stubborn threat to world stability.

Only now it seems that there was no threat. Sadam Hussein was isolated and weak, Iraq a broken and failed state. This was no Hitler marching his forces into the Sudetenland, this was no despot at the helm of a world power gone bad. This was a rogue state already surrounded by neighbours keen to keep Sadam Hussein and his regime in its place. Of course there is the humanitarian argument, look at what he did to his own people, look at this inhuman monster, is there no end to his depravity? Yet he’d already had his wings clipped by Iran and had been militarily humiliated by an earlier coalition in response to his incursion into Kuwait. The argument for leaving a failed state to resolve its own affairs is probably more persuasively put by the bereaved families of those mainly US and UK soldiers who went into Iraq to protect the Western democracies.

It now becomes evident that there was no compelling case for invading Iraq, no compelling case for deposing Sadam, no threat to the West and no connection between Iraq, Al Qaeda and the events surrounding 9/11. There was no smoking gun and Sadam Hussein was guilty only of belligerence and a machismo that saw the US, UK and UN as interfering nannies. The case has been put many times regarding many leaders in the world that if these were the criteria for invasion then the US, UK and UN would be invading and deposing leaders 365 days a year. But they’re not. In time we may come to know what compelled the see saw of deceit (the Bush – Blair axis) to attack the axis of evil through Iraq, somehow I doubt that really made Al Qaeda quake in their desert boots. It appears that the US administration had decided, for whatever reason, on regime change for Iraq in 1998 and that the smokescreen of shock and grief at the events of 9/11 provided a ruse and an excuse for scapegoating and attacking Sadam Hussein’s Iraq.

I am no conspiracy theorist. I do not see black helicopters hovering overhead and government agents skulking in alleyways. But I do think a grave situation regarding trust and integrity has arisen within the cohort of the political classes and those who aspire to leadership in the supposedly free democracies of the West. The Iraqis and the Arab world will not be impressed by the case that was made for going to war and the tissue of deceit and coercion that it inevitably will be exposed as. I am slightly embarrassed that I fell for it, I argued with friends at the time that there was no other option, Sadam had forced the coalition’s hand and blah, blah, blah. I was wrong, deceived by the weasel words of spin doctors and people playing games with the lives of others and expecting them to pay the ultimate price to underwrite their follies and misadventures in the desert.

How am I left? I am minded of the words of the mystic William Blake , ‘I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.’ I would change it slightly: I must embody a system or be enslaved by another man’s: I will not reason and compare: my business is to embody creation. The over-riding principle in this being that the works of men are nothing compared to the works of nature, whose impartiality and integrity is absolute. I am reminded of my own folly in falling for the old silver tongued rogue, never again, never again. Let nature be your guide, let the mechanics of creation be the template upon which you base your works and may your allegiance be to universal truth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8380139.stm