Monday 11th August

It is with mixed feelings that we have received the news that America is again involved in Iraq.  If it were only dropping food and tents and water to the beleaguered Christians being massacred by IS it might be welcome news, but they are also bombing people.  Okay, those people are killing religious minorities wholesale, but bombing inevitably means death.  To be honest I cannot see any easy resolution to the mess that we have left Iraq in, and it is important to acknowledge that the present state of Iraq is mostly our fault.  Tony Blair argues that it is down to bad religion and bad politics.  How true Tony.  Your bad religion (praying with George Bush) and your bad politics (Dodgy Dossier and all).  Almost the whole country, probably most of the MPs, and maybe most of the Cabinet in their heart of hearts didn’t want to go to War.  But Tony had promised his good Christian buddy George and so we had to go in with them.

But that was another conflict.  So, should we agree with Obama when he says that America could not stand by while over a hundred thousand people were being attacked brutally by a savage religious sect.   Or should we ask why the same philosophy does not apply to Gaza, where 1.8 million people are being attacked by another brutal army backed by a religious philosophy of intolerance.  Hypocrisy or what?