The AGE of UNREASON

Despite one hundred and fifty years of post-Darwinian scientific enquiry and discovery, vast numbers of the planet’s citizens are as bewitched as their ancestors ever were by the absurdities, fantasies and mendacities of supernatural superstition. I have argued before that the delusion that its sufferers call “faith” is the source of far greater suffering in the world – suffering through personal guilt and self-hatred, deprivation and oppression, persecution and mutilation, murder and genocide – than all the other abstractions – nationalism, tribalism, politics and ideology – put together. Paradoxically, the dominance of religious bigotry as a force for evil seems to grow ever stronger as the world becomes smaller and liberal education spreads further.

In an editorial of 1941 for Life magazine, the Time-Life publisher Henry Luce described his era as “the American century”. At different points in that time-frame, other candidates for the accolade briefly arose, but hindsight shows that Luce got it right: more than any other global player, the United States shaped the century. How will the present one be known? Already, there seem compelling arguments to dub it “the Muslim century”.

Luce talk

The millennium had barely begun when, “out of a clear blue sky”, the most profoundly world-shaking challenge was made to the confidence of American power, a challenge made specifically in the name of Islam. There are Muslim apologists who fend off the connection between the central tenets of Islam and the 9/11 atrocity, but they are confounded by the words of the Qur’an that I found and have quoted before: “Allah has bought from the believers their selves and their possessions against the gift of Paradise; they fight in the way of Allah; they kill and are killed; that is a promise binding upon Allah in the Torah and the Gospel and the Qur’an” [from Arthur J Arberry’s translation for OUP, though I have changed his own term ‘God’ to ‘Allah’]. It is, of course, no accident that the book of the Qur’an from which this passage comes (which is called, in English, ‘Repentance’) is book number 9 and the verse number is 111.

Islam has been at the centre of the world’s flashpoints in the first 163 months of the present century. A prime mover in the spread of Muslim fundamentalism has been the Deobandi wing of Sunni Islam. Deobandis are devotees of Sharia law, the most proscriptive interpretation of the Qur’an. This wing of Islam is, in every sense, the most aggressive. If it has not already become the dominant force in the Muslim community in Britain, it will do so before you know it. The Taliban are adherents of Deobandi practice. The word “Taliban” means “students”.

Saddam nuisance

Western forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in an initially successful attempt to overthrow the Taliban whose activists had dominated the country for five years. The pretext was “to keep the streets of America and Britain safe”, but the notion that the Taliban (rather than al-Qaida) was responsible for terrorist attacks in the west was never remotely credible. In any case, as everyone knows but no politician will acknowledge, the Taliban will again be ruling Afghanistan within a maximum of three months after western troops have finally withdrawn.

The American and British governments muddied the water and overstretched their own resources by adding an irrelevant invasion of Iraq to their military commitments, for no better reason than that George W Bush wanted to complete what he took to be “unfinished business” left over by his father following the Gulf War of 1990-1. Anxious to establish his profile on the world stage, Tony Blair joined this vain exercise.

Assad sack

Ten years on, Iraq is riven by inter-faith strife. This week, there have been more than 250 casualties of car bombs in Baghdad, at least fifty of them fatalities and almost all of them Shias, which means that the bombers were certainly Sunni Muslims. If that sounds a lot, consider that there have been fifty times that number of fatalities in sectarian attacks in Iraq in the past three months. So much for the west’s legacy.

The Shia are also Muslims and they form the government in Iraq, where they make up the largest demographic (the most dominant Shia representation anywhere in the world is in Iran, where about two-fifths of the world’s Shias live). Shia and Sunni Muslims have been in conflict for many centuries. Do not expect reconciliation any time soon.

The renewed struggle between Iraqi Shia and Sunni is wholly a product of the western invasion. Saddam Hussein was a Ba’athist. The Ba’ath Party, though Islamic, is notably liberal – it may be surprising to note – and opposes Muslim fundamentalism and Sharia law. In some ways, Alawite Islam parallels Ba’athist Islam. Bashar al-Assad of Syria is an Alawite. Like Saddam, he has been more exercised by Arab nationalism than by Islamic orthodoxy. If he falls in Syria, there must be a strong possibility that some form of Islamic fundamentalism will succeed him in that benighted country. This is the dilemma that stays the hand of the international community under pressure to intervene in the brutal Syrian civil war. Unthinkably, intervention might produce a result that had worse consequences for the Syrians, for the Arab world and for the wider world even than the reign of Assad.

Gadd-out-of-here

After all, there is the precedent of Libya as well as that of Iraq. Muammar Gaddafi’s regime was again far more concerned with Arab nationalism than with Islam – Gaddafi was raised as a Bedouin Muslim. Islamist factions infiltrated the anti-government forces in Libya as they have done in Syria. The present prime minister of Libya, Ali Zeidan, is a Sunni Muslim.

Many new Islamist factions have appeared in Libya since the war and several of the militias formed to fight Gaddafi have declined to disband. It was an Islamist cadre that attacked the American consulate in Benghazi last September, killing several people including the ambassador. Abdelsalam al-Mosmary, a critic of the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities in Libya, was assassinated just this week. Sporadic exchanges of fire and regular car bombs, particularly in Benghazi and Tripoli, continue to imperil the stability of Libya.

A Sunni outlook for Ali Zeidan

Through patient infiltration, al-Qaida has established itself in Pakistan, Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, Mali, Nigeria, Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Turkey. It is al-Qaida that still represents the most effective and most ruthless armed expression of Islamic fundamentalism. President Obama has been assiduous in concentrating on pre-emptive strikes against al-Qaida – controversially, more in Pakistan than anywhere – rather than diluting this effort with speculative engagements elsewhere.

But terrorism, guerrilla warfare and the fomentation of uprisings against secularist regimes are not the only methods by which Islamic fundamentalism exerts its muscle. Sharia rule profoundly circumscribes personal freedoms that citizens of liberal democracies take for granted. The judiciary wholly or largely imposes Sharia law in Afghanistan (even without Taliban rule), Pakistan, Muslim parts of India, Bangladesh, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank, Saudi, Qatar, much of the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Brunei, the Maldives, Muslim parts of Sri Lanka and Singapore and Indonesia, Sudan, Mauritania and for Muslims in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Gambia, Djibouti and Comoros.

The late Abdelsalam al-Mosmary

Restrictions imposed by Sharia apply to everyone, including visitors, as unguarded tourists are apt to discover. Visiting a Muslim country is like staying with vegans: they serve you vegan food but, when they visit you, they expect you to serve them vegan food. So Islamists in non-Muslim countries go on demonstrations carrying placards on the theme of “death to the infidel”, but any reciprocal tolerance is unthinkable. How long would you stay alive if you brandished a poster with the legend “Death to Islam” in downtown Khartoum, Riyadh, Mogadishu or Islamabad?

More than any other issue, it is sexuality that brings out the feudal in Sharia law and Islamic fundamentalism. Sharia strictly interprets the Qur’an, so anything in that text that already seems oppressive is made more so by its application. This comes from the section on ‘Women’: “Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that Allah has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for Allah’s guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them” [book 4 verse 38]. Needless to say, the courts will always favour a man’s testimony over that of his wife.

Sweet 16 at the UN

The world knows of the case of Malala Yousafzai, the Sunni Muslim who, at 15, was the object of an assassination attempt by the Pakistani Taliban in the Swat Valley. Malala – her name means “grief-stricken” – had had the audacity to advocate full rights of education for girl pupils, an offence against Islamist views on the subjugation of women. Malala made a remarkable recovery and addressed a convocation of youth delegates at the UN on her sixteenth birthday. She has become a figurehead for women’s rights under Islam and was named by Time magazine in April as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World”.

The brutal, iniquitous and unyielding nature of Sharia law is sufficient cause for opposing the spread of Islam in any of its guises. Hence the European Union’s continuing difficulty with the long-standing application to join made by Turkey, a nation that, while very nearly entirely sited in Asia, occupies a tiny area of southeastern Europe.

Though Turkey’s population is almost wholly Sunni Muslim, it is formally a secular nation. Several days of unrest in Istanbul in May were centred on the perception of encroaching Islamisation by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. Informing this perception was an attempt by Erdogan to reduce the power of the army, widely seen as a significant force for secularism (like the army in Egypt). Several other recent government restrictions were read as Islamist.

Erdogan – not best pleased

The wearing of the hijab has been banned for the entirety of Turkey’s modern existence, a lot longer than in France, where the wearing of the burqa was addiitionally made illegal in 2010. France has a rapidly growing problem with Islam, which now counts a tenth of the country’s population among its supporters. It has been estimated that Muslims could be powerful enough to determine the outcome of presidential elections within thirty years.

Wherever you look, even in Europe, there is evidence of the encroachment of Islam on the very different philosophies, cultures and traditions that have survived strife and oppression in the past. It may be that Islam, that most proscriptive and intolerant of dogmas, is stronger than the rest and will eventually hold sway across the world. It won’t be in my lifetime and perhaps not in yours either, but the need to stem the tide is urgent now.

BULLETS and BALLOTS

What is to be done about gun control in the United States? Given that he will never again put himself up for office, Barack Obama cannot argue that the electorate prevents him from enacting new legislation – not this far from the mid-term elections at any rate. It is suggested that the “fiscal cliff” stand-off with the Republican-controlled Congress will absorb all his negotiating room, but gun control ought not to be a party issue, not if presented smartly.

Nobody suggests that it will be easy. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution declares that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. This clause was inserted 121 years ago last Saturday. The US was a very different place at the beginning of the 1790s when the drive west was getting under way. Over the following thirty years, the population of the country nearly tripled and the proportion living to the west of the Appalachians grew from five percent to twenty-five percent. This was the period when the native American was being systematically driven from his ancestral lands. So the right to bear arms was an unsurprising product of the wild frontier.

An emotional Obama speaks about the massacre

Is such a right necessary now? American lawlessness is often proclaimed as one of the nation’s greatest problems. Of course, the unfettered proliferation of deadly weapons itself promotes that lawlessness. For us in Britain, where firearms are much more often seen on the telly than (as it were) in the flesh, travelling in many parts of the world comes as a culture shock, especially in the matter of packing heat. Whether it is police being armed at so many European borders or teenaged soldiers walking the streets and riding the buses toting their TAR-21s in middle-eastern countries or those dinky little signs in suburban American front gardens that warn “armed response”, the mild-mannered Brits might be forgiven for feeling a touch of paranoia when far from home.

In the last five years, two judgments by the US Supreme Court have ratified the Second Amendment, underlining the individual’s right to possess a firearm for the purpose of protecting his property. Some restrictions have lapsed in recent years and polling suggests that support for gun control has waned at the same time, perhaps related to the perceived threat of terrorism.

But is there really anything remotely sensible to be said against rescinding the Second Amendment? I found a site (also styling itself Common Sense) that offers four arguments against gun control, largely attempting to defeat statistical points. Well, I too would rather eschew statistics and instead deploy reason. This site’s arguments are:

1: Thugs ignore gun laws.
2: Thugs prefer unarmed victims and avoid potentially armed citizens.
3: Crime is deviant behaviour.
4: Quotes the Second Amendment as “the Trump Card”.

This last is not an argument at all and cannot be engaged. The so-called “Colonel” who writes the blog (in actuality a children’s illustrator named Mary Dall) calls the Amendment “absolute, unambiguous and supersedes all arguments”. Well, it isn’t and it doesn’t. As for the first three arguments, the real debate is only marginally about crime. Rather, the discussion is about access. Most Americans seem quite convinced by the proposal that Iran having nuclear capacity is not a good idea. But it is no more of a good idea for American individuals even less stable than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to have access to deadly weapons.

Lanza: a chilling augury

The pro-gun lobby always puts forward the old saw that “it isn’t guns that kill people, it’s people that kill people”. I guess it’s not food that feeds people, it’s people that feed people. But you can bet that people with food are more adept at feeding people than people without food. Now make the analogy with guns. Adam Lanza, the Newtown, Connecticut killer, would have achieved many fewer casualties if he had only been able to throttle his victims. Even with a kitchen knife, he couldn’t have killed fleeing children, at least not without risking the loss of his weapon. The guns gave him the capacity to slay twenty-seven. Perhaps if he had had a missile, he could have taken out the whole school from his bedroom window.

Of course criminals will still get their hands on guns. That happens in Britain too. The difference is that practically all of the 0.1-per-1,000 of the UK population who are killed by guns are killed by criminals, whereas a substantial majority of the 3-per-1,000 Americans who die by guns do so in accidental shootings, domestic disputes or rampages by the unhinged. That is the critical difference that derives from easy access to guns.

Lanza's weapon of choice: the Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle

Moreover, tightening the regulations that govern the licensing of weapons will not make sufficient difference. As we saw in the harrowing incident at Newtown, the mass murderer helped himself to the weapons registered to his mother, who then became his first victim. Indeed, she had taught him to shoot. It might be instructive to learn what proportion of Americans is slain by their own guns.

A lot of Americans – some women as well as men – like to indulge the fantasy of being some dauntless combination of Wyatt Earp and Buffalo Bill. This fantasy is clung to as an inalienable right and, in consequence, the cold dead hand of Charlton Heston still grips the American legislature. Well, neighbourhood law-enforcement is a profession and a sophisticated one with a good many controls and regulations. It is not the business of amateurs. And hunting ought to be restricted too, both for the sake of the survival of America’s dwindling wildlife and to prevent the kind of accident that so besmirched the otherwise blemishless reputation of former Vice-President Dick Cheney.

The Connecticut mansion where Lanza killed his mother

It is blindingly obvious – to rational people if not to the National Rifle Association – that fewer guns in private hands will result in fewer deaths by gunshot. Some now argue that the Newtown children might have survived if their teachers had gone to school armed. That presupposes such a lot of elements cohering – that the teachers happened to have their weapons at the ready when Lanza shot his way into the school, that at least one of them would have had no compunction about shooting him in cold blood, that no child or teacher would have been hurt in crossfire, that no kind of a gun battle would have developed, that no curious child was ever able to get their hands on a weapon, that no accident would ever occur in the storing or maintaining of the school’s arsenal, that the school’s security was always so good that it would be impossible that someone wanting to grab a cache of guns could break in.

The answer is not to arm the school but to disarm the Lanza household. Why is this so difficult to grasp? Why are men with small penises allowed to hold sway over rational thought because of their desire to look big with a deadly weapon to hand? People have to be prepared to surrender their pleasures (killing defenceless birds and animals) and their comforts (armed response) for the greater good. And to those who still argue for unfettered gun possession, the best response is simply to begin the litany of names of the children who died at Lanza’s hands. And then those of the teachers. And then those who died at Northern Illinois University, at Virginia Tech, at Nickel Mines Amish School, at Red Lake Senior High, at Columbine …

MY PLAN for PEACE

In the October presidential debates, very little was said by either the thoughtful, progressive candidate or the opportunist, reactionary candidate about the world. The great majority of the arguments they framed referred wholly to the internal politics of the United States. For sure, there were passing references to foreign affairs and to the various kinds of tumult and change in Libya, Syria and other lands; to demonstrate the width if not the depth of his homework, Mitt Romney even name-checked Mali. But these references were not in any important way statesmanlike. What they foregrounded was what is considered the ne plus ultra of political dialogue in the US: the American interest.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, America has proudly proclaimed itself the world’s only ‘superpower’. If this is a matter of pride in power, why are successive US administrations so insecure in their super status? Why do they behave as the schoolyard bully, cuffing the uppity kids, taking the collectables off the milquetoasts and insisting on going straight to the head of the line when the tuck shop opens? In a manner no different from that of the despised George W Bush, Barack Obama tells his ‘fellow Americans’ and indeed the rest of the world that he puts American interests above everything else.

Obama – street-fighting man?

Wouldn’t it be more useful, more democratic, more libertarian, more confident, more Christian to be the gentle giant, putting the interests of the whole planet above everything else? Isn’t it actually in the American interest for the whole planet to be peaceful and prosperous? Obama began his first term by sounding a relatively conciliatory note towards Iran, whose regime he and most other western leaders believe is bent on developing nuclear weapons. But Obama never followed up on this tone. Economic sanctions have caused and continue to cause great hardship among the populace of Iran. But if American diplomats have ever sat down with their Iranian equivalents to talk out some settlement of this mutual suspicion and hostility, no such talks have been made public.

Now the US grows daily more suspicious of China. Romney and the Republicans – and not only people on the right – urge Obama to “stand up to” the Chinese. What does it mean? It suits everyone not to spell it out. And it means they don’t have to invest long hours in subtle, intricate diplomacy. But I expect the Chinese would like to live in peace and prosperity just as much as the Americans would. What seems to me to be obvious (though it is never said by politicians) is that the advantage of one nation does not automatically exclude some advantage for another. There are alternatives to ruthless competition just as there are alternatives to mutually assured destruction.

Cameron – pugilist?

Not that every other nation is any different. In his fractious dealings with both his own MPs and his opposite numbers in the European governments, David Cameron speaks of very little other than “the British interest”. Across the EU, the Germans, Greeks, French, Italians and Spanish are locked in mutual distrust that one or all of the others will seek to smuggle past them a deal that is not in their own interest. In the early days of the Common Market, there was a notion that all nations would work together and for their mutual benefit, summed up in the term communautaire. It’s not a word many use now.

And if the leaders cannot confidently and openly talk to each other and to their electorates about economics, they certainly can’t communicate any better about warfare. In an age of instant communication of non-negotiable positions, diplomacy starts on the back foot and on no foot at all if any parties are saying that they “will not talk to” any other parties. Politicians fear that they will seem weak unless they express certainty about the results of their actions and intransigent resolution towards the ‘aggressor’ or the ‘terrorist’. So the ‘defeat’ of your enemy becomes a yardstick by which your actions are to be judged, as if the sentiments that nurtured your enemy will mysteriously melt away when a few hot-headed guerrillas have been pushed back on the ground.

A shrewd judge of affairs in the Middle East, Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan, likes to quote this saying: “the gentle art of saving face may yet destroy the human race”. Indeed, because politicians fear that subtlety and light and shade will read as weakness, hostages to fortune are offered in their declarations of intent. Which outbreak of hostilities over the last 50 years, one wonders, has concluded with a clear-cut situation, to which the self-styled good guys can point and say “look, everyone: the loss of life, the destruction of communities and the alienation of hitherto apolitical people was well worth it, completely justified by our handsome victory”?

Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan – elegant

Perhaps the least comprehensible aspect of the response that the world’s flashpoints produces from the secure, wealthy regimes of the north and west is the utter lack of imagination those regimes display towards relatively poor and deprived communities.

I have a modest proposal. We must give the United Nations actual power and that of course means power greater than that of any one member. The UN charter, still almost exactly as written in 1945, needs substantial revision. The permanent members of the Security Council must agree to surrender their veto, the prerogative of the bully over the powerless. No member can be allowed exemption.

The veto means that the UN has no muscle to flex against the US or China or the other elite nations. Which of them will volunteer to forego a veto? It would need a visionary party leader or presidential candidate to carry the case with his own electorate, so as to take a mandate to the other Security Council members; a diplomat of rare persuasive power, who implicitly understands the global gain of a truly powerful UN, to convert even one of the holders of the veto. But someone needs to attempt it. What is political power for if not to change the world? Meanwhile, the remit of the UN’s International Court of Justice needs to be widened so as not to depend on the consent of those states that are party to a dispute, another tough sell.

The UN should assume the power to order the immediate cessation of hostilities between member states. Waging war must be against the UN’s bedrock principles. Any member visiting warfare on another should be suspended forthwith from UN membership. In practice this must mean that all other member states, including those sympathetic to the miscreant’s cause, suspend all trade and other dealings with the suspended member. A blanket economic freeze would soon encourage a government to halt hostilities.

The UN must then have sufficient manpower and materiel to put immediate boots on the ground in overwhelming numbers in any and every land where hostilities break out, in order to impose and hold the peace. How can this be achieved? Simply by requiring every member nation to supply troops, weapons and supplies of an equal value to that which it spends on what it is pleased to call defence. Thus the US defence budget – $711bn in 2011 – would have to be precisely matched by its contribution to the UN’s peace-keeping budget. I suggest that it would not be long before nations saw that they got what we might call satisfyingly less bang for their buck if they cut their own defence budgets.

Netanyahu – gesture of good will

The UN must then have the resources to assume control of negotiation of a settlement between the disputatious nations. Warfare must be a gambit that is made impracticable because it makes each of the warring nations an international pariah. If both sides are taken out of benefit of UN membership, the issue of ‘blame’ is largely futile. The UN negotiators can then begin with a level playing field.

The UN should also have the power to intervene in a sovereign nation’s internal affairs or where there is civil strife (as currently in Syria) between a government and the population that is attempting to dislodge it. The UN’s remit should be truly global and part of that global interest would be the philosophy that instability in any nation is the concern of all nations. At present, for example, Syria’s neighbours are being obliged to cope with a vast influx of refugees. Matters such as the suppression of a particular tribal or religious grouping within a nation state might be confronted on a case-by-case basis. But the UN could hold sway over issues other than warfare. It could wield its power, no longer fettered by national vetoes, to impose restrictions on the activities that contribute so catastrophically to the destruction of the environment.

The recent hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians could have been brought to a quicker end or indeed pre-empted altogether if Ban Ki-moon had had the authority to land UN troops along the Israel-Gaza border. Instead, Ban toured the region’s seats of government pleading for restraint. Binyamin Netanyahu, to whom restraint is a foreign country, is widely accused of bombing Gaza not to stop Palestinian rockets falling (largely harmlessly) on Israel but to ensure his own re-election next year. Such calculations are only possible because Israel believes it needs to please none but its own people. A truly powerful UN would utterly transform the Middle East.

Ban – you, yes you do the dirty work

Barack Obama has indulged Israel with far less enthusiasm than any of his recent predecessors as president, but even he buys into the old saw that everything Israeli governments do is for the security of their own people. Nor does Obama recognise the State of Palestine as many nations now do. Obama would exercise the US veto if recognition of Palestine came before the Security Council. Of the other permanent Security Council members, China and Russia have recognised Palestine, France has not and the UK has offered conditional recognition.

American presidents traditionally declare their “love of freedom” and their desire to spread democracy throughout the world, but they are frequently less enthusiastic about nations being free to make their own choices, especially through the ballot box. The electorate of Palestine may exercise its democratic right to elect Hamas but democratic regimes do not love democracy and freedom so keenly that they recognize the democratically elected regime. “Don’t do what I do, do what I say” is the prerogative of the bully.

And it is this reinforcement of the planet’s power structure by the way that the UN is constituted that needs most urgently to be addressed. The UN could be a true force for good, the most powerful and constructive enterprise that man has ever devised. To bring that about needs leaders of rare courage and stamina. Where are they?

ON MANŒUVRES

During the near-month that I was thwarted from going on line by BT Broadband’s tardiness, arrogance and incompetence, there were many developments in the real world that made my blog finger itchy. The capture of a group of British sailors by Iranian forces, their videotaped humiliation and the self-inflicted wounds by which they handed Tehran the moral victory once back home would certainly have drawn me to the keyboard.

The misjudgment of allowing members of the apprehended party – inevitably in practice the two dumbest sailors, Mr Bean and the chain-smoking mum – to sell their accounts to the tabloids made both the military and the government a laughing stock around the world, especially in the Middle East. Which of us wouldn’t volunteer to spend a fortnight relaxing in the custody of a foreign land if the reward were a six-figure sum for confirming a tabloid editor’s prejudices? (Not me, actually, but then I’ve been to Tehran and I have no wish to return, especially not in its present volatile state).

Meanwhile there has been a will-he-won’t-he fracas – it hardly merits the word “debate” – concerning HRH Prince Harry and his loudly expressed desire to get himself killed in Iraq, either in an explosion or by beheading as a captive. When the inevitable happens, remember how I warned you that the media would hail him as a hero, whatever he was actually doing at the time of his demise.

The establishment’s need to dress up the playboy princeling’s behaviour (past, present and future) in myth-making terms is very germane to the larger point I want to make. That concerns the military’s most ill-advised accommodation with the media’s unsubtle voyeurism about any matter that can be passed off as “human interest”.

There was a time, not so long ago, when all military matters were deemed secret, confidential and not for public discussion. To report even quite banal aspects of military management was a breach of the Official Secrets Act. Of course, the culture of confidentiality allowed all manner of ills to be winked at in service life and I certainly deplore such unaccountability. Indeed, I remain of the view that no profession, including the military, should be allowed to act as judge and jury in examinations of breaches of the rules, especially where the civil law ought to take an interest.

But inevitably the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Now top brass are becoming familiar spokesmen on news bulletins, ready with their sound bites and their pat answers. Successive prime ministers and home secretaries used to hold to the line that upon military issues they never confirmed nor denied any proposal or rumour. Mr Blair still says as much on intelligence questions but we already know a great deal more about the workings of MI5 and MI6 than any previous generation did.

As far as military operations are concerned, it is now standard practice that both print and broadcast journalists talk to military personnel on the front line, before, after and sometimes during engagement with hostile forces. A new term has rapidly established itself to describe journalists who accompany troops in war situations over a sustained period: those reporters are “embedded”.

It’s hard to figure why the commanders should believe that, on balance, more is gained than lost by this dubious accessibility. War is characterized by dehumanizing tendencies. Individual combatants are rather more likely to be seen in an alarming or shaming light than in an inspiring one, even when the unheroic is only expressed in the banality of their language.

Doubtless the front line equivalent of paparazzi will hound 2nd Lieutenant Windsor – or is he a colonel by now? – to ensure that plenty of pics are seen back home. I can see it now: “Prince Wazza!!” as the poor boy makes use of the latrine he has just dug in the sand. I imagine his majestic grandmother would have preferred it if the first intelligence of Harry’s tour of duty in Iraq had emerged upon his return. On the other hand, the Palace is no doubt advised to go for the headlines just as avidly as the rest of the establishment.