Friday, June 19, 2009

The wit and wisdom of Clive Soley

Clive Soley was one of my least favourite Labour MPs on several counts - his long campaign to curb freedom of the press, his mindless cheerleading for Tony Blair during the Iraq War when as PLP chair he could have exercised a moderating influence, and his general pomposity.

So I was amused to read his speech during yesterday's House of Lords debate on the government's decision to hold an inquiry into the 2003 conflict.

I say to the lawyers that if their argument had prevailed in the past then Pol Pot would still be running Cambodia, because the Vietnamese illegally removed him; Idi Amin would still be running Uganda, because the Tanzanians illegally removed him; and East Pakistan would still be running what is now Bangladesh, because the Indians illegally removed it.

Isn't the noble lord forgetting two crucial facts: that both Pol Pot and Idi Amin are, er, dead?

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1 comment:

Wrinkled Weasel said...

His "defense" for want of a better word, gives credence to the idea that we should burn people we suspect of witchcraft or heresy, since that is what we used to do.

He cites slavery, and the intervention of the British Navy in disrupting the trade. I would ask the Noble Lord, "At which other nation's behest did we do this, and what were the political motives and crucially, what was the public and political consensus about the issue, and on what basis was this consensus arrived at?"

You can be darn sure it wasn't an undergraduate dissertation and a sexed up dossier.


To use the abolition of slavery as a moral paradigm for the war in Iraq is obscene.