Boris Johnson says he has seen the evidence and it is
overwhelming. Others talk of plots within plots and deep, dark shenanigans in
the whole Russia/Syria/Iran malarkey. All I know is that is far from clear exactly
what happened, why it happened, who did it, who urged it, who bought it, who
denied it, etc. All I can say is that the entire business is disturbing,
profound, far-reaching and sod-all to do with me. I glaze over when the Middle
East goes through its regular contortions.
In 1976, the Genesis track Blood on the Rooftops sang:
“Let's skip the news boy (I'll go and make some tea)
Arabs and Jews boy (too much for me)
They get me confused boy (puts me off to sleep)
And the thing I hate, oh Lord!
Is staying up late, to watch some debate, on some nation's fate.”
I remember these words as each new self-inflicted wound
scars the Arab world, as each new senseless act stirs up old enmities and
fractures old allegiances. And I despair as commentators switch sides at the
flip of a conspiracy theory. If it really is as contorted as some claim it is an
insoluble conundrum.
Simple, many say, it’s all about oil, petrodollars. But it’s
so much more than that. Or less; as I said, I don’t know (too much for me, boy).
I want it to be simple and simply resolved and as the world outside those burning
sands finds more oil and gas of its own and invests in new energy-generating
technologies a large part of me wants to see the land of the oil sheiks once
more isolated and diminished in significance. One day all that remains could be
an Ozymandias statue; the sooner the better. But right now, cool heads are
needed.
Yesterday thousands eulogised PC Keith Palmer in a
display of mourning that troubled me greatly. This isn’t something the British
ever really did before St Diana of Wales and not something I think we should
indulge in now. The inscrutability of the Chinese has always made reading their
intent somewhat difficult to deal with. Likewise the British stiff upper lip
used to confound our opponents; our phlegmatism a curiously inscrutable
characteristic. But now we wear our hearts on our sleeves, openly displaying to
our enemies, who have such a low regard for life, how sensitive we have become
to even a single death. Isn’t this an open invitation for jihads to target yet more
public servants?
A nation that can be stopped in its tracks by a single
incident is a weak nation, not a strong one. And right now, on many fronts, we
need a display of strength, not vulnerability. We shouldn’t be looking to solve
foreign puzzles, over which we have long been unsuccessful. Instead, maybe we
should be turning inward, solving our domestic issues first, rebuilding our identity
and not dabbling in the guesswork of Middle East politics. There are plenty of
others engaged in stirring up the wasps’ nest; about time we concentrated on defending
against the swarm.
