Millions protested across Europe against the attack upon & invasion of Iraq. The USA, UK & the 'Coalition of the Willing' carried on with their lie-based campaign anyway. What lessons can be drawn? It is becoming a distant memory now but once upon a time, something that will be remembered by the older ones among us, there was a feeling that our votes actually counted for something. At that time there was more of a distinct difference between the main parties that you could choose from. Can this be said today?  Do the votes cast at presidential or general elections count for anything these days? When lobby groups, advisers and non-governmental organisations and other elite vested interests have the ear of the powerful, what part does the electorate play other than give one side or the other the franchise for the next four years? What would be the difference if they simply took turns one after the other at running things in coordination with their chosen vested interests?  Turning to foreign policy, how much say do the electorate in the USA, UK or EU have in the expenditure of billions of taxpayers’ money on Ukraine? Where was the mandate for this generosity with money that could otherwise be spent on improving the lives of those taxpayers who worked hard thinking their governments would do the right thing by them? Were those electors given anything resembling a choice on this?  It was believed until recent times that wherever possible western governments, aligned as they supposedly were with the values of the United Nations, would do everything possible to bring violent conflicts to an end. It has long been the case that it was expected they would use their ‘good offices’ to calm waters and bring the warring sides together in negotiations with a view to resolving differences in some form of settlement. No more it seems. Instead the agenda has flipped where they encourage even more war, death and destruction. What is going on? Where are actions that conform to the principles enshrined in the founding documents of the United Nations? And, you could ask, where is the United Nations on these questions? Has it become entirely toothless and if so aren’t we at far more risk now than we have been in living memory. If the doorkeeper that is the UN, there to reduce tension and advocate for peace has become complicit in the promotion of war is no longer on guard then the door to a potential Armageddon is wide open. It is abundantly clear that the western powers, the USA, UK and most of the EU have no interest in finding a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. Instead of pouring water on the flames they are determined to keep supplying fuel to it instead. With us having no right to say anything about it and it being inferred that it is all being done in our name? How far have we come as people if this is even remotely true. Are we all warmongers now? What happened to our sense of horror at the prospect of war. Did we all, with our politicians to the fore, completely forget what excruciatingly terrible things occur daily during a war? I suspect most of us, unlike our political “masters” have not fallen in love with war. We may well be confused due to the one-sided, totally simplistic war mentality exhibited by our politicians and media, but surely we have not fallen into the pit of darkness that comes with jingoistic hatred of an enemy just as human as we are. If that is our condition then we are lost indeed. Such hatred, as we all surely know, confused as we may be, inexorably destroys the hater as well as the targeted foe who we decided to call subhuman in order to justify ourselves.  The fallback character assassination technique is to call whoever the latest target of our political classes is the new Hitler. This consigns such people to the avidly wished for disposal category. Taking all our “knowledge” of such people from thoroughly sources that deliver a comic book rendition of god versus evil we feel no need to think, only to react. Something must be done and if it is war, then so be it, we get behind that in a state of moral rectitude. Only to discover later that what were told was not worth the paper it was printed on. We were duped. Once again. Where is democracy when you need it most, where were we given the choice to kill and destroy, to even remotely take the responsibility to wreck lives and livelihoods? Can we be satisfied that just because we marked a cross against a name in a voting booth we simply have to assume this one or that one is doing the “right thing”? Is continuing to promote more war EVER the right thing? Where will we find peace internally if we continually promote it externally? And if we allow our leaders to abandon the principle of seeking a peaceful solution to conflict and both major parties agree on war and ever more war, where in this do we have any democratic choice?

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