What is it about being a Sensible Centrist that makes you utterly incapable of accepting you may have made a mistake? In microcosm this is evidenced in Stella Creasy’s bizarre and self-defeating Twitter campaign to prove either (depending on who she’s replying to) that she didn’t say what there is video footage of her saying, or that she did say it because it could be true, according to the only source she appears to have found in agreement: a neo-con think tank.
But on a larger scale this comical character flaw has a more insidious, harmful edge. Politicians and commentators who have watched with the rest of us as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, far from bringing the promised peace and stability to the region, have caused untold harm to millions of innocent people and created the perfect conditions for the worst people to take power, as seen this week in Kabul.
“Now is not the time to gloat,” say those who cheered when the vote was won to send troops abroad in October 2001, while at the same time refusing to acknowledge that doing so may have been a mistake. Apparently it’s the “Stop The War Crowd” who have been “shown up by events this week” – the ones who said that starting a forever war in Afghanistan would result in failure and create a power vacuum that would see thing made worse than ever – not those who sought to see Arab blood spilled as soon as possible, apparently in retaliation for the 9/11 attack that Afghanistan had little or nothing to do with.
Even some Tories have seen the error of their ways regarding these wars, but the Grown Ups on the Labour Party right and the usual gaggle of smirking opinion merchants in the media refuse steadfastly to even acknowledge that lifelong anti-war campaigner and despicable fiend Jeremy Corbyn might have had a point when he and just three other current sitting MPs voted against military action two decades ago.
There’s a pathological inability among what some consider “moderate” voices to reflect on things they’ve said or done previously. Even when a recent statement contradicts a previous one there is an bizarre refusal to even try to explain that maybe they’ve changed their minds (which is ironic given that this same cohort is the one most responsible for the People’s Vote debacle).
The Left are characteristic in their own steadfastness of thought, don’t get me wrong, but what we see from the likes of Creasy, Dunt and Campbell (the man most instrumental, one might argue, in preparing the case for war; a case that was built on lies) is an altogether more childish display of stubbornness and sour grapes.
Creasy said during her address in the Commons this week that “if the Taliban provide safe haven for Al Qaeda and ISIS we will not stand for that!” apparently unaware that ISIS and the Taliban have been at war with each other for six years. She then went on to make weak semantic arguments based on claims nobody had made. The details are all over her Twitter feed and the drama is still going strong three days on.
At what point do constituents have the right to tell her to log the fuck off and do some work? At what point do we ask if she’s okay; like, is everything alright at home? (At what point should the fact she has entered a subscription to the Spectator as an ongoing expense, and appears to be raising money via GoFundMe to use as a “fighting fund” despite being an already handsomely-paid public servant be looked into?)
But there seems to be no end in sight; Creasy’s own online war is still going stong, as she tweets random accounts who have retweeted a screenshot of a video of her speech with things like “don’t contact me again!” even though they hadn’t. And too there appears to be no forthcoming capitulation, no moment of contrition, not even a low “mmm” of humble self awareness from the ghouls who would like nothing more than to send our boys back to get a few more notches on their barrels.
But don’t you dare propose that they should say such things. Don’t you ever suggest that maybe they were wrong back then. And whatever you do, don’t say that their “facts” are wrong now! Holding your MPs to account via a social network they joined voluntarily as a means of communicating with their constituents is the act of an abusive troll! Why must you wrong them? Why? When all they want is to be left in peace to spout their badly researched guff to the world. Now go away, and please don’t contact me again.
NPO 