Trust me, I'm a politician...

There's a section in the Vietnam War documentary currently showing on BBC4 (watch if you can) where they're reporting on the fall out from the Pentagon Papers leak and the realisation that Kennedy and LBJ had lied through their teeth to the American people. We now know, and lots of Americans suspected at the time, that Richard Nixon lied through his teeth about Vietnam too.

There's a marine veteran speaking to camera who says something along the lines that, prior to the Pentagon Papers, people instinctively trusted the President and his advisors on matters of great importance - war, peace, life, death. Afterwards no-one trusted politicians - the assumption was that all of us lied.

It seems to me that this simple observation from a former soldier summed up the long-term political effect of Vietnam for the USA. For all the winning and losing, elections and campaigns, there is a grumbling view that underneath it all they're probably lying about something. And are prepared to lie about everything up to and including sending young men to the other side of the earth to get killed. So much of what we see played out today in US politics reflects this moment - from low turnouts in elections through endless rounds of campaigning funding reforms to the current suggestions of sinister conspiracy involving Russians, Facebook and shadowy data companies.

For us in Britain, we had to wait a while longer for this epiphany of lies. When Tony Blair stood in Parliament to argue for us to back a US invasion of Iraq, most of us believed that no Prime Minister would bend and warp the evidence - in effect lie - in order to get parliament to back a war. Yet that is what happened, we backed a war because we believed it when Blair said the threat was real, urgent and significant. There are a lot of people who, like that Vietnam veteran from 1971, had the scales fall from our eyes as we realised that, yes, our politicians were prepared to see men die on the basis of deliberate misinformation.

Our politics is better and worse for this epiphany. Better because the public are less prepared to take their leaders simply on trust when it comes to big and important decisions. Although some of the 'wanting to know' around Brexit is little more than spoiling, the public's support for wanting to know is because, frankly, they don't trust politicians not to sell us down the river.

Politics is worse, however, because decent and honest politicians aren't believed - and most politicians, despite the epiphany of lies, are decent and honest. Worse still, politics becomes even more shallow and unpleasant because the media, reflecting public distrust, treats politicians as dodgy, something to be exposed rather than as a set of folk wrestling with getting the right policies and with making the right decisions.

Every time I see Alistair Campbell on telly, in the papers or Tweeting, I want to scream that he was the warped spider sat in the centre of a web of lies - 'spin' they called it - that resulted in hundreds of dead British troops and untold thousands of dead Iraqis. All done to indulge Tony Blair's desire to be America's best buddy. There is no going back, in most folks' minds politicians will forever be liars and deceivers. Most of us aren't, lying's too much like hard work but, because of men like Kennedy, Nixon and Blair, people start with the opinion that we are. Trust me on this, I'm a politician.

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Human rights lawyers - Old Billy might have been right

This particular "human rights lawyer" is the lowest sort of humanity - fitting up others so he can profit from the taxpayer:

Phil Shiner, from Public Interest Lawyers, wrote a letter confessing some of his actions to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal over his firm’s alleged involvement in false claims being made against British troops by Iraqis.

He wrote that "he accepts" he will now face being struck off. Shiner admits he paid a tout more than £25,000 in referral fees to find clients and admits covering his tracks by doctoring evidence.

Public Interest Lawyers had brought forward nearly 200 compensation claims from Iraqis and more than 1,100 cases of alleged wrongdoing and killings by British military personnel.

He brought thousands of allegations of historic abuse against British troops in Iraq that forced the Government to set up the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) that has pursued criminal investigations against war veterans. Almost all of those claims are now known to be unfounded.

Ordinary tommies had their lives ruined by this man so he could make millions from Legal Aid. What disturbs me most is that Shiner wasn't just a crooked lawyer but a crooked lawyer celebrated as some sort of hero by his fellow lawyers. A reminder that this is a profession without any concept of ethics in its marketing and filled with people ready to patronise the rest of us regular folk. At times Old Billy was definitely right.

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There are prayers but no protest, no boycotts...why is this?

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Cranmer relates - again - the words of Canon Andrew White, Vicar of Baghdad who speaks of Christians in that sorry nation:

"You know I love to show photos but the photo I was sent today was the most awful I have ever seen. A family of 8 all shot through the face laying in a pool of blood with their Bible open on the couch. They would not convert it cost them there life. I thought of asking if anybody wanted to see the picture but it is just too awful to show to anybody. This is Iraq today. The only hope and consolation is that all these dear people are now all with Yeshua in Glory."

This good man - a saintly man indeed - presents to us a real extermination, the murder, rape and destruction of a culture dating back over a thousand years. I hesitate to use the word 'genocide' it is too easily bandied about but the motivation of the men who killed that family is clear - they say their religion calls them to destroy Christianity and Christians.

And there are prayers - doubtless pained and anguished. But no protest, no flag burning, no calls for boycotts, no public condemnation from leading figures in the political opposition. Indeed there are no marches, no men, their heads half wrapped in scarves, crying 'death to all muslims' as they gather in anger at what is happening to an innocent Christian community.

I like to think that good Christian men and women would not gather in vengeance but rather to urge on a reluctant government some more vocal criticism of the men who murdered that family in Mosul, who shot thousands of others simply for being the wrong sort of Muslim.

At times I despair at this world, at the hatred that we see in so many places and at the persistence of lies, prejudice and evil. Indeed, for all the men like Andrew White who live each day in celebrating a god of love, there seem hundreds whose god it dark, vengeful and disturbed, who support murder, oppression, rape and the extermination of ancient communities in the name of that god. I hear people who tell me that it is not so, that these men are not of their religion. But do they spit on the ground before them, turn their backs on them, condemn them as the worst of sinners, as men headed for the loneliest, darkest part of hell? Do they throw them out from the place of worship, excommunicate and expel them? Do they?

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Real religious faith versus the murderous corruption of faith...

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Via Cranmer's blog:

He has lost a thousand of his parishioners over the past year alone - murdered by Muslim militants; many of them summarily shot or beheaded. He has recently been speaking to numerous fellowships in the UK to raise awareness of the situation in Iraq, and he received death threats last week from ISIS/ISIL (or IS [Islamic State], as they now wish to be called). Notwithstanding the danger, he has returned to St George's in Baghdad to continue his work. He wrote:

We go back to Iraq on Tuesday. There are so many needs to provide and we thank our Lord for how he has provided for us to meet these needs through you. We have so many Christians who have literally been ousted from their homes with nothing, they are living on the streets.Please pray that we may be able to show them the love of Jesus and provide their needs.

The Islamists are trying to eradicate the symbol of the cross from their new Caliphate.

There was no Mass in Mosul last Sunday for the first time in 1600 years. Those Christians who risk worship must do so in silence, praying under new Sharia regulations that have silenced every church bell in the city. 

Cranmer provides a place where people can give practical, cash help alongside their prayers. I hope many do perhaps including some on the spiritual journey of Ramadan right now.

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On trusting politicians

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For the regular daily political fare we never trusted politicians - you know the drill:

"It's a politician, his lips are moving. He must be lying."

"Why do politicians never answer the question?"

"They'll say anything to get elected."

And so on - as Huey Long (legend claims) told his advisors: "tell 'em we lied."

However, when it came to the serious stuff - war, death, tragedy - our politicians put on their statesman clothes and lived up to that description: honourable. On these grave and important matters we trusted our leaders to be honest, thoughtful and considered.

Then a man came along who was so great and grand, so superior he thought he could exploit that decency. We went to war on a lie. People like me supported that war because we didn't believe a leader would lie about something as serious as sending men to war.

Tony Blair killed that trust.

And no matter how subsequent leaders profess their decency, honour and honesty - or indeed whether they actually are decent, honourable and honest - we will never believe them again.

In some ways this is the very worst thing - among a catalogue of horrors - that Tony Blair did.

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