ROBIN COOK
Aug 9th 2005
The stuff being
spouted now about Robin Cook is enough to turn the stomach. I speak as
one who admired him throughout his career until the final act. Here was
a man of, as has been said, 'forensic intelligence'. But he was not a
man of exceptionally wide contemporary knowledge outside politics. Any
man who thought Hans Blix, given a hundred years of wandering around
Saddam's Iraq, could have discovered whether or not there were still
massive quantities of WMD, has absolutely no understanding of either
Iraq or mathematics. This has now been proved since we have only just,
after many months of complete
coalition access and the assistance of Iraqis on the ground, discovered
massive underground facilities where such things could have remained
hidden.
Then we are asked to believe he was making a great sacrifice on ethical
principles when he resigned. If you believe that, you really will
believe anything. The only future for Robin Cook at that moment that
was acceptable to him (and by that I mean a leading role in a future
Labour Government), was as the man who could claim he had always
opposed a war which he knew would be immensely unpopular and would be
likely to have terrible consequences. The ethical case could be made
equally either way and Cook, believe me, could have sold the country on
either. He chose to make the case that since there was no immediate
threat to the United Kingdom (quite correct) and since the UN could not
be mobilised, the Coalition would have to withdraw unless Blix found
WMD. The proposition that unless the UK was directly threatened it had
no special obligations in these particular circumstances is in my view
totally unethical. Only a
coalition including the US and the UK could possibly remove Saddam. The
idea that Blix could have achieved anything has been exposed a
ridiculous.
No, Cook's resignation was due to the height of ambition, an ambition
brought to an end only by his death but for which he would be, if not
the leader, the eminence grise of a future Labour Party. The fact that
this point has not been made clearly by any national newspaper or
broadcaster, is further proof, if it were needed, of the greasy
prostitutional nature of UK media.
Aug 14th 2005
The above was all I was going to say, but since there is still more
idiocy afoot, I feel obliged to point out a few more truths. It was
probably a mark of respect from the PM that he left the occasion of the
funeral to those who for close personal reasons attended and took
centre stage. Judging by the outpouring from the absurd McCriric he was
absolutely right not to be around, particularly since a Christian
funeral with all the trimmings is a strange procedure for a convinced
atheist. But then we know why Robin was an atheist - for the same
reason why so many others whose parent was a cleric. Religious
understanding must be contextual and make contemporary sense. It seems
it can not only rarely pass from father to son, it is likely to suffer
total destruction on the journey. The relationship is too close. There
are questions that cannot be answered. The ideas that are put in
child's mind when son of a clergyman are likely to form an early and
juvenile understanding which cannot evolve. In adulthood, the rejection
of these juvenile images, along with literalistic understanding of the
Bible, ends up in rejection of religion. Its the Philip Pullman
syndrome. People will say the Church is to blame, that It should leave
people to read the New Testament and make their own interpretation of
it, with helpful suggestions, but lets be sensible: most people who
don't have a clergyman as a parent can do that anyway. It's those who
are not allowed to do that from an early age who end up as
fundamentalists or atheists.