PETER HITCHENS: One thing our rulers learned from war in Iraq? Make a better job of deceiving us

He had thought this would be a good week to gloat, 20 years after so many fools had supported the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq or (in many more shameful ways) had not opposed it. This is what I said on this page almost exactly 20 years ago, refusing to drop my opposition to the war just because the troops had entered.

“This is not a war for national survival where we all have to come together and silence our doubts or be subjugated…British patriots who believe in fair play should be against this war.”

I pointed out that Anthony Blair ‘hates Britain and has never knowingly supported a war waged, or action taken, in the British national interest. He is interested in this war because he likes the new multicultural, left-wing America…

And I warned, more truly than I knew: ‘As of Thursday night, the centuries-old rules of war and diplomacy went to waste. From now on, any big nation can invade another country because they don’t like their government. If challenged, that great nation can and will turn around and say that the United States did it to Iraq.”

I remain appalled by the behavior of Blair and his propaganda chief Alastair Campbell, and astounded that both still feel capable of going out in public, offering advice to the nation they have duped into supporting this madness. And the BBC takes them both seriously. Clearly both should be living out their days in the penitential silence of a Trappist monastery deep in some remote mountain range. Instead, they are among us and just won’t shut up.

It still saddens me that so many of the fantasies these men spread were believed by people who should have had more common sense. Why are we so easily fooled? I think the British and American ruling classes only learned one thing from the episode: do a better job of fooling the public next time.

And I almost despair that Vladimir Putin’s stupidity and brutality have spared the warmongers in the West the trouble of fooling us into the large-scale, long-term conflict they have been seeking for so long, ever since the invasion of Iraq broke out. in their faces. It is now useless for me to explain how the actions of the West created the Ukraine crisis when it could have been so easily prevented. I’ve tried, and all I get is abuse. Why bother?

They have their war, and unless we can revive the dead arts of diplomacy, it could run and run and run, deepening, widening, getting worse.

Just as there was in 2003, there are now people high up in US politics who think the US is so good in itself that it has the right to declare war on countries it disapproves of, directly or indirectly.

There are people in Britain who are willing to do your bidding.

And then there is the ‘Military-Industrial Complex’, which President Eisenhower (not a pacifist Marxist) warned against so fiercely in his astonishing farewell speech in January 1961.

It’s surprising that this lifelong military man was the one to say it, but here’s what he stated: ‘In governing councils, we must guard against unwarranted acquisition of influence, whether sought or not, by the military. . industrial complex.

‘The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

‘We must never allow the weight of this combination to jeopardize our freedoms or democratic processes…Only an alert and well-informed citizenry can force the right combination of the huge industrial and military defense machine with our peaceful methods and objectives, to that security and liberty may prosper together.’

When he referred to an ‘alert and well-informed citizenry’, he meant us. These events, in 2003 or now, are not inevitable. We have, whether we like it or not, a responsibility to examine them and, if necessary, oppose them.

Peter Hitchens on Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990: Watching TV and Criticism

The time has come… to demand that we stick to GMT

Imagine if your boss had sent you a memo on Friday saying, ‘Be at work an hour early on Monday. This is an instruction, no exceptions allowed.’

You’d think they’d gone crazy, and you’d probably be right.

But when the government declares that they must put all their clocks forward one hour from real time this weekend, they obey.

I admit that you probably don’t know, until the day comes, which way time is supposed to go. But as you sleepily emerge on this Sunday morning, you realize that you should have put all your clocks forward one hour last night. Unless you’re one of the few people with busy Sundays, it won’t really affect you until tomorrow morning, when a wave of jet lag will hit millions of people who struggle to get to work earlier than they want.

Neurology and pediatrics professor Beth Ann Malow, writing in Scientific American, wants you to realize that the two clock changes are not the same.

When the clocks go back in October, people get up later and generally feel fine. The change you are enduring today is the bad one, associated with an increase in heart attacks in a major survey of evidence in the US Journal Of Clinical Medicine. Turning back the clocks, in other smaller surveys, is also linked to fatigue, workplace injuries and overall mortality.

Why are we doing this? It’s thanks to various Edwardian-era weirdos and zealots, the kind of people who would otherwise have campaigned for other fads: world languages, like Esperanto or Volapuk, fish-only diets, or wool next to fur. . But instead they set their sights on spinning the clock.

By terrible misfortune, the bizarre idea of ​​moving clocks, wisely rejected by legislators for years, was taken up by the Imperial German government in 1916, supposedly to boost the Teutonic war effort. British politicians, fearful that this could be a secret weapon, followed suit and we’ve stuck with it ever since, despite a distinct lack of evidence that it increases production, saves electricity or does anything useful.

Now, at last, the time may come when governments around the world are ready to give up. But beware. Many of them want to fix the clocks in the jet-lagged position, instead of natural time. Resist this plan. Insist on the fine Greenwich Mean Time, to which we will all gratefully return in October. Set the clocks back just one more time, then leave them there.