An Indifference to Democracy.

This is not a post to discuss our role in Afghanistan. I will leave that to our leader. Though I cannot let this go entirely without comment.

The extent of my comment shall be that if our soldiers are at war, then they should have the appropriate equipment for the type of war they are fighting. Nothing original there. But that is an empty sentiment that politicians use to clear their throats and they do not know what they are talking about. They do not care either, so long as a political point is scored. The details will be left to the bureaucrats and that is why soldiers continue to die. That is a topic for another time. The rest of this post will be on a slightly different tack.

Readers of Defence of the Realm will know by now that this ambush is fairly typical of tactics employed by Iraqi insurgents and we yet again are blundering into the same situations, suffering the same casualties, for the same reasons. This occurs because the MOD has sought to stifle debate and censor politcally damaging information under the guise of "Operational Security" and our lazy and indifferent media have been happy to be spoonfed MOD propaganda without once engaging their critical faculties.

This is a pretty standard tactic from our government. They who sought to deny the public the details and rationale for their wholesale slaughter of the national beef herd during the BSE and FMD crisis. It is the same mechanics that will leave the countryside bristling with useless wind turbines while the media brainlessly quotes their installed capacity ratings. For the same reasons we will eventually end up with £5000 energy bills as we attempt to save the not-very-endangered polar bear.

The government inures itself to criticism, distorts the truth and feeds us straw man arguments based on weak science in the certain knowledge that neither the media nor the public will be any the wiser. And half the time, they're right. The system is designed that way.

But this tells us something of the mindset of our government. All government in fact. That we are too stupid to handle the truth, that we must be sheltered from the details and that really, the running of the country is none of our business. They really would prefer that we didn't participate. This democracy thing is slow and inconvenient and really, why should they involve us? They get everything right don't they?