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The institutional challenge of conscience

When the institution of government fails to defend individual freedom, sooner or later, in England, government and state institutions will be challenged.

Tony Blair is a classic demonstration of everything that is wrong with British governance under the political party system. This has allowed him to almost single-handedly decide to commit, by proxy, the population of Britain to becoming indirectly responsible for the murder of over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians. This is in the wake of an estimated 500,000 deaths of Iraqi children at the hands of the food for oil scandal organized under United Nations auspices.

Tony Blair’s original justification for invading Iraq was based upon amateurishly produced and irrelevant “intelligence” documents which, amongst other things, stated that Iraq was a danger to British interests because of its weapons of mass destruction.

Even if Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction they were not a threat to British interests. So there was no need to invade.

Having invaded, it was discovered that there were no such weapons. Therefore Tony Blair’s justification was completely without merit on the basis of any threat to British interests or on the basis that any such weapons existed.

The fact that the United Nations rulings were not being addressed by Iraq was not a justification for murdering, under a United Nations mandate, some 500,000 children before the invasion and, in excess of 100,000 Iraqis, after the invasion. In space of just 15 years, policy incompetence has lead to the death of twice the number of innocent civilians than the number of burial plots ² filled at Arlington Cemetery during the last 150 years. This is a measure of the scale of the civilian slaughter.

Tony Blair has therefore changed his justification for the aggression. But this should not deflect attention from his enduring responsibility of misleading the people of Britain. He used arguments which never had any facts to support them. His new justification is that the Hussein regime was undemocratic and therefore getting rid of it was a good thing. As far as is known, Saddam Hussein was not responsible for a sustained rate of killing of completely innocent civilians as has been witnessed at the hands of the coalition forces. The degree of precipitation of this political decision has been exposed by the complete lack of preparation and understanding of the intensity of feeling and potential for violence breaking out between different factions in Iraq. Indeed, much of the recent killing is at the hands of different Iraqi factions. But this violence was unleashed in Iraq by incompetent USA and UK policy. It is somewhat like the aggression unleashed upon Iraqi children under the oil for food scandal. Here the West kept blaming Saddam Hussein while turning a blind eye to complicity swimming in a sea of corruption and back-handers flowing through Western governments, the UN and commercial companies. The lack of sensitivity to the human tragedy by governments is reflected in the fact that if Saddam Hussein was responsible for the murder of the Iraqi children, why then did the West do nothing when ample evidence and publicity was given, at that time, to what was going on?

Why forgive?

Tony Blair can be free to follow his conscience, such as it is, in his personal affairs. However, he has no mandate nor right to impose his doubtful moral standards on the people of this country when, as can be seen, they have resulted in a predictable non-forgiveness on the part of those whose lives have been shattered by the policy he supports.

Lately two seemingly separate events have brought home to people in England the significance of what is going on in their name and in the name of democracy. The messages of those who were responsible for the attack in the London underground related to the United Kingdom’s invasion of Iraq as well as issues related to Israel and Palestine. A mother of one of the victims happened to be an Anglican priest called Julie Nicholson. Because she was unable to forgive the person responsible for the death of her daughter, Julie has given up the priesthood. If an Anglican priest cannot forgive the aggression of those who protest our aggression in Iraq how can we expect that Iraqis should forgive coalition forces for murdering in the name of democracy?

This question in fact has nothing to do with hollow institutionalised religion but has everything to do with humanism and human family values. Any parent invests an immeasurable amount of dedication, effort and love in the creation and bringing up of their children. Siblings grow up in family groups and have natural allegiances, loyalties and love between each other and for their parents and grandparents. So the loss of any person, as a result of external aggression and murder, affects many others, all of whom individually have the very same right as Julie, not to forgive.

People, like Tony Blair, repeat too often that they do things because they know that they are right. But the end seldom justifies the means especially when this involves the murder of people, each one a person of value to their families and friends. Tony Blair can be free to follow his conscience, such as it is, in his personal affairs. However, he has no mandate nor right to impose his doubtful moral standards on the people of this country when, as can be seen, they have resulted in a predictable non-forgiveness on the part of those whose lives have been shattered by the policy he supports. This has resulted directly in the death of British civilians, and indeed military, for no good reason other than Tony Blair “believes” he is right.

Following orders given in the conduct of an illegal war would be illegal

If the conscientious objection of an individual be motivated by considerations of legality of an action and, in the case of a doctor, associated with a desire not to be associated with the wanton killing of innocent civilians, then the military should be bound by law to respect that individual decision.

If the fighting of an undeclared war is illegal then so are any orders conveyed to anyone in the armed service in support of the conduct of that war.

The other case is that of an Air Force doctor, Flt Lt Dr Malcolm Kendall-Smith who had already undertaken two tours of duty in Iraq and who had refused to do another tour of duty on the basis that the war in Iraq is illegal. In terms of proportionate action and natural law the invasion is illegal. The United Nations has been used to provide a thin shell with which to embalm the invasion of Iraq in a resemblance of administrative procedures, but this is not the same as being legal. The illegality argument, in the case of Britain, is upheld by the fact that all of Blair's justifications before Parliament were found to be without merit; they were not true. The fighting has been without any human justification and is against all normal principles of law as would normally be understood by those who consider law to be a basis for protecting the innocent by upholding of the defense of individual freedom.

However, as in many institutions and government departments, the military run their own courts and legal procedures internally and separate from the national legal system. In practice, such administrative law procedures are well known for having a role of protecting the image of the institution; that is they are biased because they select what they will address. Therefore in this case the military tribunal (court) manipulated their response to focus only on whether Malcolm refused to follow orders. The outcome of course was a foregone conclusion and achieved what the military and especially the government would have desired, but was, as all can see a waste of court time for it did not address Malcolm's claims. They avoided the question of the legality of the war like the plague, the government would not have welcomed this, for to do so would have thrown up the dishonesty surrounding the justification of the war. To defend the legality would have thrown the military, from their point of view, directly into the realm of politics. But then since the military are involved in an unacceptable campaign some rationalization of their position would have been in order. Their avoidance of this line suggests political interference or leanings or perhaps some interest in honours to be provided through the good offices of Tony Blair.

Conscientious objection as a right

People in the military have an undeniable right to conscientious objection. As a doctor, Malcom has seen the mayhem in Iraq first hand and also he will have been aware of The Lancet’s (the British medical journal) reports on the horrific Iraqi statistics on deaths of civilians at the hands of the coalition forces. As a doctor, who needs to abide by the Hippocratic Oath, there are grounds for equating his association and support of a service, which is involved in the voluntary or involuntary slaughter of civilians, as a complete violation of his professional responsibility and undertaking. For the military to consider that their internal procedures and administrative legal proceedings can run roughshod over this is unacceptable. Indeed, the judge, so-called, in this case stated that "You have, in the view of this court, sought to make a martyr of yourself and shown a degree of arrogance which is amazing….Consequently you have lost any credit you might have been given for guilty pleas." He was sentenced to 8 months in prison.

The amazing arrogance here would seem to lie with the judge and the military tribunal rather than with an individual following his free conscience. The prosecution lawyers had stated that Malcom could not “pick and chose” which orders he followed. But this is what would be expected of them and in any case they also are wrong.

The issue of conscientious objection is poorly understood. It is often equated with an unwillingness to fight on the grounds of pacifism. However, the original English constitutional basis for conscientious objection arose markedly during the English Civil War as a basis under which no man could be forced to undertake actions with which he did not agree. So someone asked to join a militia to fight Protestants, when he himself was a Protestant, or a Catholic with Protestant relatives, he was entirely within his rights to refuse to act or more fundamentally to refuse to join the militia. At the end of the day it was about family values and connections not about religion per se. The beneficial result of conscientious objection, for the military campaign, was that those who volunteered to fight were fully committed.

Unfortunately, the British military are not local militia made up of committed volunteers. The British military are part of the civil service which from time to time is called upon to take military action. But just as the British civil service in its dealings with people of other nations needs to deploy professional standards and avoid harming foreign civilians so the military needs to be subjected to equivalent standards.

If the conscientious objection of an individual be motivated by considerations of legality of an action and, in the case of a doctor, associated with a desire not to be associated with the wanton killing of innocent civilians, then the military should be bound by law to respect that individual decision. As it is, like many administrative legal procedures, the military can bend the rules by changing their focus away from grounds for conscientious objection based on legality, to limiting their focus on whether or not someone followed orders. In this case the military tribunal slipped up seriously since if the fighting of an undeclared war is illegal then so are any orders conveyed to anyone in the armed service in support of the conduct of that war.

The failure of this military tribunal to consider Malcolm's claims questions the safety of allowing the military to become the judge and jury in such cases when civil courts could handle this more fairly. Cases such as this should come before a jury.

Political parties, false representation and the image of democracy

But returning to the nub of this issue. The institution of political parties has become so ineffective in representing the people of this country that a prime minister can take decisions on a personal basis without involving his cabinet and commit the armed section of the British civil service, the military, to a campaign which has caused an unacceptable number of civilian deaths.

The people of this country tolerate the sway of a government that holds power with less than 22% of the vote of the electorate to take bad and destructive decisions in the name of the people who voted for them but also, through an illegitimate proxy, for the other 78%. This is also unacceptable because political party propaganda sustains the myth of democracy and promotes this both nationally and internationally. It is only natural that the people of Iraq, and elsewhere, think that, because we are a "democracy", all of the people in Britain support this barbarity. This is one of the reasons some of the so-called terrorists sought to influence events by killing civilians in London.

Tony Blair now, in the light of the massive policy failure in Iraq, is attempting to retrospectively justify such actions in the name of the spread of democracy. But the sort of democracy within which Tony Blair has risen to power and where he manipulates power so ruthlessly does not protect individual freedom either within the country or abroad.

Irresponsible and Cavalier responses to important questions

In early 2003, The Independent on Sunday published a revealing series of replies by Tony Blair to a selection of questions sent in by their readership. Blair was clearly out of his depth. For example, Helen O'Sullivan of Hertfordshire put the question, "How can you reconcile a pre-emptive attack on Iraq with your Christian beliefs, especially in the view of pressure from church leaders around the world?"

Tony Blair initiated his reply by stating, "Of course my beliefs and values are obviously hugely important to me. I would never go into a war if I thought it were morally wrong or if I thought it was not in the best interests of this country."

Helen O'Sullivan mentioned the pressure of church leaders. This is signal enough that anyone holding the "values" of a church might be expected to respond to those leaders. Blair sidestepped this valid point in his reply and did not state what those values are. It would seem that Tony Blair considers himself to be a “practicing” Christian because he acts out the public theatre of institutional symbollism, but in terms of the Christian tenet of being known by one's deeds, his performance has not been that of a Christian.

But then, who really cares what he thinks?

The country is made up of many people, most of whom consider themselves to live in a secular society and not one where a leader's personal religious interpretations should be the basis for taking decision on behalf of the population as a whole. Under normal circumstances this would be a Parliamentary decision, voided of religious colour, but reflecting constituency feeling. Tony Blair has been way out on a thin limb for a very long time but he is now surrounded by weak parliamentarians in his party, and in opposition, who, like him, do not want to rock to boat and risk losing the influence of their party. Such moral cowardice makes no appeals to human values nor to the imperative of the protection of the innocent; the issue is party power at all costs. Given the disastrous outcomes of his decisions, Tony Blair should either renounce his position or his religion, but being who he is, he will not. He will however, have the audacity to continue to promote his self-righteous stance based upon "his values" and "his beliefs" without ever bothering to say what these are.

One plausible reason why Tony Blair cannot even hint at what his values and beliefs are, is he does not know. Like his political outlook, his religious beliefs seem to be based upon some leap of faith. This does not seem to relate to any reasoned and measured assessment of human ways and responses based upon experience and sensitivity of the common expectations which exist within families related to mutual support and love, irrespective of the people in question. His seems to be of that shady world where innocent children are branded through baptism as being of some institutional religion in spite of the fact the the children have no idea what is being done to them nor what is being stated in their name. It is as if Blair seeks to baptise the British public into his morality on war, that all should take such a leap of faith, because he tells us that he is right. But who really cares that what he thinks is right when history will judge Tony Blair cruely for his advocacy of such an irresponsible approach to the lives of others?

No humanity no humility

His lack of humility, reflected in his de facto lack of genuine concern about the collateral deaths of innocents, results in all that he says to be pervaded by an air of arrogance. He has been schooled in the "art" of exercising "convincing" body language and hand control movements to transmit "the honest politician in control" look. But according to Labour Party insiders, Blair is none of this. The carve up he orchestrated within the Labour party was not the work of some pious value-laden Christian, but the work of a calculating politician who knows what is best for him.

Other readers asked why Blair advocated attacking Iraq when this country did not represent a threat to the United Kingdom. Others asked of the nature of the intelligence showing that Iraq poses a threat. Tony Blair's replies were all of the "I believe" mould and failed to provide any convincing arguments or evidence. Becky Home of London, for example, asked, "If your government has detailed knowledge supporting the fact that Iraq poses a threat to the rest of the world, why hasn't that knowledge been shared with the rest of the world?" Tony Blair did not even grace this sensible question with a reply and thereby undermined his own basis for decisions, that is the flimsy "dossiers" on Iraq whose publication was accompanied by his theatrical and exaggerated posturing as to their importance.

The fact is Blair does not know

The predictable failure of the USA and UK policies in Iraq has led to conditions which represent a rapid unraveling of any past imaginary gains. The most obvious outcomes have been the election of Hamas in Palestine and a belligerent leadership in Iran and the associated question of nuclear arms.

We drift towards an uncertain future in which the American and British public will continue to take the blame, as democracies, for the foolhardy messianic and faith-based decisions of their current leaders. As a result the people of America and Britain remain at increasing risk of taking the brunt of any subsequent fallout, including terrorism.

In reality neither the British not the Americans had any hard evidence and nor did, at that stage, Israel's Mossad. Mossad, however, as per their normal practice of getting others to do their fighting, was "feeding" snippets of information into the Amercian "channels". Bush and Blair remained completely in the dark and were being fed third rate and even misleading "intelligence". Therefore the strategic dangers of inappropriate decisions based on fallacy were immense. The reality is that this duo served the interests of other groups whose overall motivation is definitely not the security of the people of America or the United Kingdom. The immediate interests being served were those of Israel. The predictable failure of the USA and UK policies in Iraq has led to conditions which represent a rapid unraveling of any past imaginary gains. The most obvious outcomes have been the election of Hamas in Palestine and a belligerent leadership in Iran and the associated question of nuclear arms. However, the political parties concerned continue to stage manage all of this in the same incompetent fashion with appeals to the threadbare United Nations. We drift towards an uncertain future in which the American and British public will continue to take the blame, as democracies, for the foolhardy messianic and faith-based decisions of their current leaders. As a result the people of America and Britain remain at increasing risk of taking the brunt of any subsequent fallout, including terrorism.

The Pope and Blair

In a cartoon by Steve Bell in the Guardian in early 2003, Tony Blair is kneeling before the last Pope who is sternly shaking Blair by the ears. The Pope gravely advises Blair that warring against weapons of mass destruction is like raping in the name of chastity. Bell's Pope conveys a Christan message. In justifying his current stand, Blair makes much of his "success" in taking similar decisions in the Balkans war and he reminds us that Milosovic is behind bars. Before Blair was born, Catholic Croatian Ustasi murdered some 840,000 Serbs (orthodox Christians), Jews and Roma (Gypsies) in Croatia in 1941. They stole their possessions and property in the name of creating a “pure” Catholic Croatia. This country is now in line for membership of the European Union. This genocide was fully supported by Archbishop Stepinac, and Pope Pius 12 received the Ustasi leadership with enthusiasm at the Vatican; tea, group photographs and all. But where were any appeals for war crime trials? These were indeed suggested by some American politicians but the Catholic lobbies quickly doused them. The last Pope, the one wagging Blair's ears in the cartoon, set in motion the beautification of both Archbishop Stepinac and Pius 12, for them both to become saints. The Vatican had always worked against a unified and Orthodox Christian-dominated Yugoslavia and was associated with the original gun running to the Ustasi through Hungary.

The Mossad chief, on a more formal basis, gave briefings to closed NATO Council sesssions on 26 June 2002 in Brussels on the topic of the nuclear threat from Iran, Iraq and Syria. In a perculiar combination of objectives to be secured by violent means, NATO and the Blairs of this world helped the Vatican complete this work¹ and opened fronts further afield in direct support of Israeli interests. But then, whenever an opportunity presented itself, the last Pope was the first to take centre stage as a world leader for peace, rebuking those who promote warfare just as has the current Pope has done recently. Church leaders, like party politicians, presume people are less well informed than they are. Their actions increasingly undermine their own intent by substituting stage-managed events for acts of essential and universal human relevance.

Within the secular affairs of state, asking for leaps of faith on the part of the electorate is no basis for taking decisions in the affairs of man.

Therefore the question put to Blair on his views on the advice of church leaders on war was perhaps naive in terms of the past and current political reality. It was however valid in terms of commmon and vitally important human considerations. Indeed, with the church leaders we have, Tony Blair might be forgiven for ignoring them. However, as a political leader, his inability to address the importance of such individual moral but simple questions in more explicit terms was troubling. It reflected badly on his intellect and only emphasised the spiritual void occupying institutional religions. He could not find any message which, if phrased in terms of our common humanity, could have been meaningful. He could only assert that he was right because he believed in what he was doing.

A distinction has to be drawn between the demands of church leaders for leaps of faith in upholding their "institutional values" as a basis for mind control and conversion. Such people are not concerned with rational argument, justifying their decisions, election manifestos or governance. On the other hand, Blair's appeals to faith within the political environment only serve to increase the irrelevance of governnance to the majority of the people of Britain and indeed, to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi families. Within the secular affairs of state, asking for leaps of faith on the part of the electorate is no basis for taking decisions in the affairs of man.

Thorstein Veblen, on the topic of marketing, considered the Church to be one of the most supreme examples of success in that it has encouraged people to pay up for almost 2,000 years but has never delivered the goods. British governance, under the currently weak and humanly unresponsive party system, grotesquely demonstrated under Blair, qualifies for the same dubious merit.

The matter of conscience

Institutions will always be challenged by human conscience. Another observation by Thorstein was that institutions are fashioned by the conditions of the past and therefore are never quite in tune with the conditions of the present. But common humanity being made up of natural family allegiances, love and a desire to protect those one loves, has been a constant throughout history. Leaders of institutions invariably lose sight of the stated objectives of their institutions. These are invariably expressed in terms of improving some aspect of the human condition. Institutional decadence is marked by leaders becoming diverted by questions of sustaining institutional influence and power rather than sustaining their influence through the example of their efforts, reinforced by practical and beneficial outcomes. Institutions can and do increasingly operate at the expense of people. The community or individual conscience however is more difficult to fashion, mould or corrupt in this way since it is spontaneously regenerated with every birth. It has the characteristic of being driven by common sense. Institutions, and the people associated with them, who go astray will always be challenged by conscience.The only basis for judging such challenges is not to hide behind institutional dictats, regulations and orders but to assess to what extent people acting on behalf of the institution are impinging on the freedom of people anywhere in the world. This is not a matter of "interpretation" of law but rather a matter of the facts as described, in this case, by death and mayhem at the hands of institutions.

¹ The top was blown off the Yugoslavian pressure keg under pressure from the then (1991) German Chancellor Kohl.

On 26 November, a meeting of Christian Democrat government and party leaders was held at Stuyvenberg Castle near Brussels. This included Chancellor Kohl, the Prime Ministers Andreotti, Lubbers, Martens, Mitsotakis and Santer and the meeting decided to recognize Croatia and Slovenia before Christmas. This meeting outcome was not made public. In spite of this, Kohl, the political opportunist, the next day announced in the Bundestag that the German government would recognize Croatia and Slovenia before Christmas and that European unanimity would not be required. He gagged the EU by stating the issue of recognition could not be linked to the conclusion of the Treaty of Maastricht and that Yugoslavia should not dominate this "important" EC summit taking place in Maastricht in the Netherlands, on 9 and 10 December.

There were many objections to Kohl's precipitation. For example Mitterrand declared that although his country was not against the recognition of Croatia’s independence, it could only come about if all EC countries supported it and after the rights of the Serb minority in Croatia had been guaranteed. He also stated that (correctly) "I do not think that the recognition of Croatia would improve matters at this moment."

But the weight of the German support suggested than the European Union would side with the Catholics who had carried out the "ethnic cleansing" in Croatia beginning in 1941. This is why Serbians, mainly Orthodox Christans, reacted the way they did. This comment does not weigh in any way the attrocities committed by all sides in the ensuing violence which broke up society along ethnic and religious grounds and continues to this day.

² Arlington Cemetery is located across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. More than 260,000 people are buried in Arlington Cemetery, many graves dating to the origin of the cemetery, the Civil War. Even Soldiers from the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Mexican War have been re-interred here. It continues to receive those who have died while on active duty.