Why there should be conscientious support as well as objection The names of the 50 young Britains killed, so far, in the Iraqi "venture" Whether or not the British government was right to send troops to Iraq is not going to be resolved by this elaborate analysis of what was, and what was not, spin, being unpicked by the Hutton enquiry. This lavish desire of some people, and the press, for largely irrelevant intrigue has no bearing on the fact that British people should not be dying in Iraq for Iraq never was a direct threat to our freedom. There always will be differing views on the justification for warfare. However, one of the main problems is that they who fight and die, have little purpose, and those who send them, less, for the British military are no more than an armed section of the civil service. Commitment to a cause worth fighting for During the English Civil war the fighting forces were made up from local militia of volunteers. The way that fighting progressed during that period and the lessons learned from that awful passage lead to the writing of an English constitution. This recognized the importance of the right of people to form militia in support of some issue but it also protected the right of each man to conscientious objection and refusal to fight for any cause he did not believe in. In addition there would be no coercion to force any such free person to fight. It was well understood that those who fought should be those who considered the reason for the fight, to be a just cause, such people would be committed fighters. People were simply not expected to follow the arbitrary wishes of some government, let alone a fanatical Prime Minister. British youth as cannon fodder Following that period the inertia of corrupt governments and interests kept that English constitution under wraps. British and European affairs ended up with men being pressed into military service, this lead to many fighting, to the anguish of their families and communities, against their will. Politicians became quite adept at "justifying their cause" by whipping up something called "patriotism" with appeals to nationalism, the flag and a host of other symbols, all primitive collectivist concepts, far removed from concepts of individual liberty and freedom of choice. This lead, with advances in technology, to a horrific culmination in the First World War in which there were many cases of excessive, and even militarily, unecessary deaths of young British men. In many cases deaths resulted from the actions of incompetent officers. A lack of humanity and cruel arrogance even resulted in British officers ordering the execution of young British men who either refused to fight, were in shock or knew that to follow orders meant a sure death. Many such people, with a spark of life, a desire for survival and, indeed, some intelligence were arbitrarily branded as "traitors". This lead in some cases to several officers being murdered by their own men who had become fed up with the excesses involved. Military as a 9 to 5 job About 15 years after the end of the Second World War, conscription and national service was replaced by the formation of "professional" military forces which is essentially an armed section of the civil service. Unlike the wish reflected in that English constitution, there is no voluntary militia combined with valid conscientious objection but ominously a civil service which follows the wishes of government. Now, too easy for fanatical heads of state to launch killing machines There is therefore a gap in democratic safeguards against ill-conceived military ventures because there is inadequate clarity and indeed military justification for decisions to fight. There is no effective conscientious objection because the military, no matter what they think, simply go and fight some "enemy" predefined for them by politicians. No questions are raised as to whether the "enemy" identified by sometimes a few people in power, are indeed people who deserve to die. The British public are excluded form any such decision. They cannot exercise their good judgement, based upon a community conscience, to weigh up whether the activities and purpose of a people, somewhere, justifies a decision whose intent is to kill them, naturally at the price of the death of some young British men and women. No, inner circles of government usurp this right revelling in the sick logic that no questions can be entertained about the families and innocents who become collateral damage statistics. Innocents die in their thousands but because this is a governmental civil-service-military-complex-affair then the issue has been stripped of any democratic rationality for there is no conscientious support nor objection permitted. An "official" killing machine is let loose. By moving military forces towards a more generalized structure which would permit conscientious support as well as objection, governments would be forced to articulate more clearly reasons for fighting. In such an environment there might well be found military solutions which do not entail warfare and needless deaths. Blair doesn't get it, and he never will In a television appearance some time ago, Tony Blair was asked, how could he justify the deaths of innocent Iraqis as well as our troops in the Iraqi venture. His reply was to the effect that there are always casualties in warfare, and of course, with adequate gravity, he also stated that he always regretted such deaths. But that was a reply which did not measure up to the consciousness nor sense of the question. Indeed it did not answer the question. When there is no conscientious support or objection to warfare, politicians can, it would seem, afford to forget their conscience and set us on a dangerous path. They can take leaps of faith, see visions of danger, "believe" that they are right and set a killing machine rolling. The name of this game is always to move with haste, drum out some dossiers justifying the war written by some other section of the unelected civil service to justify the armed intervention of another part of the civil service. No conscience just chasing something called an "enemy" to defend something called "Freedom, democracy and the rule of law". A need to change the law An unacceptable and tragic event has occurred in this Iraq crisis. In addition to some 49 pointless deaths of regulars and a civilian fire fighter, there is the case of a young man from Glasgow who has been killed. Tim Luckhurst writing in the Independent (31st August 2003) writes of the case of a Russell Beeston who was recently killed in Iraq. Russel was a reservist and sent to Iraq under the terms of a mandatory summons which arises from the Reserve Forces Act of 1996. We cant ask whether or not he really wanted to go. But to have any mandatory summons to fight in a pointless war conjured up by a bad government with a fanatical leader, is wrong and it is therefore a bad law. No doubt if someone appeals there would be jury-less court deciding the case. Britain has gone too far down this route of irresponsible decision making leading to the murder of others as well as young Britains. Empowering the community conscience This is an issue where the community conscience needs to be empowered to control the excesses of arbitrary decisions by government. Arbitrary decisions by government, it will be recalled, is also called tyranny. Tyranny is alive and well but it is successfully camouflaged by appeals to buzz words such as "patriotism" defending other buzz words such as "democracy", "freedom" and "rule of law". The shadow boxing, assertions, "convincing appearances" and moving screens, on show at the Hutton enquiry remain a side show to this more fundamental issue. The British need to take stock of the role of their conscience in defending themselves against tyranny, and thereby becoming capable of preventing the unnecessary deaths of innocents.