Have our minds been reduced to a muddle? These days, I find myself constantly trying to decipher which of the world’s many conflicts we are supposed to condemn, and which we are expected to support. What is the test?
Are the villains simply those who kill civilians and children? Evidently, it is not that straightforward.
As Iran lays its assassinated leader to rest amid vast, angry funeral ceremonies stretching over days, much of the Western press has returned to familiar, unreflective commentary about a dark, bearded regime and its pursuit of nuclear arms.
And yes, the regime is certainly ominous, its leaders are indeed bearded, and it now seems highly likely to want nuclear weapons — perhaps even more so after being bombed by the US and Israel.
But imagine the reaction if a Russian missile had killed a senior Western leader and, in the same strike, also killed his one-year-old granddaughter. The outrage would be relentless.
Yet that is what the United States did to Iran. The child was named Zahra Mohammadi Golpayegani, and her life mattered no less than that of any other one-year-old girl anywhere on earth.
No one in the US government has publicly dealt with her death in any direct way, much less offered an apology. The apparent assumption is that the blame lies with the Iranians for allowing a small child to be present when Washington chose to kill her grandfather in a sudden strike.
A woman grieves during a public farewell ceremony held for the late Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Oh, and by the way, aren’t we against assassination? Isn’t the murder of John F Kennedy one of the worst crimes of our time? Don’t we rightly excoriate the Russians for their revolting poisonings on British soil? I must take another handful of anti- confusion pills before I continue.
Then what would we say if Russia had rocket-bombed a girls’ school in Ukraine, killing 175 people, mainly children?
But when the US obliterated the Minab girls’ school in Iran, there was never any really fierce grief or anger in the West. Why not? What civilised human does not weep and rage at the slaughter of children, any children?
Once again, it turns out to be Iran’s fault for aggressively putting a girls’ school where the Pentagon thought there was a Revolutionary Guard base, or some such tripe. Where are all those sophisticated satellites – you know, the ones that can tell a blackboard from a sub-machine gun at a height of 150 miles – when you really need them?
As for Israel’s bombing and shelling of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, what would we say if the Russians did these things in Ukraine?
We’d be pretty cross. We certainly wouldn’t (as the Americans do) send them more money and ammunition so that they could keep right on doing it.
A picture of one-year-old Zahra Mohammadi Golpayegani, granddaughter of Khamenei, is displayed near the family’s coffins
My point is very simple. Our emotions about these events are in a mess. We are quite right to be distressed by assassinations, by the deaths of children, by the mangling and killing of civilians in wars they did not choose.
But our pity and distress must apply in all cases, not just in some. Our own side, if such a thing still exists, has, alas, done some terrible things which may not be expiated in our lifetimes.
It is not even true that the bad people have, in all cases, started the fighting.
Vladimir Putin is rightly despised for his lawless invasion of Ukraine. But the surprise bombing of Iran, while peace talks were in progress, was a shameful act of duplicity which its victims will not quickly forget.
So, in all these wars, may we please have less righteous passion? We aren’t entitled to feel especially righteous. And may we have more cool thought, which we badly need?
What outcome do we really seek in Ukraine or Iran? Can we afford the price, in lives and freedom, which we are being asked to pay for it? Do we want a more or less permanent war of bombing in Europe, which might at any time spread westwards to our own cities?
Have nearly 50 years of relentless hostility to Iran, and cruel sanctions imposed on its innocent people, brought down the regime? Well, no. Might it be worth trying something else?
For these suggestions I shall of course be called, yet again, an appeaser, traitor etc.
This thoughtless bilge drowns debate in countries which have let simple-minded propaganda drive out thought. Carry on like this and we will blunder into total national disaster.
Diversity drive that just doesn’t add up
His Majesty’s Treasury, in search of new job applicants, has got rid of a key maths-type test, so it can be more diverse.
It explained in a Freedom of Information response: ‘The Numerical Reasoning Test was removed due to evidence of the test having adverse impact on candidate diversity. Subsequently, the levels of adverse impact decreased.’ A spokesperson said: ‘It is complete nonsense to suggest
that we have lowered our hiring standards for the sake of diversity. We are proud that we employ people from a wide range of backgrounds, while maintaining rigorous, merit-based recruitment.’
But could they have said anything so daft if they had not also got rid of the verbal reasoning test? I have long suspected that the Foreign Office many years ago stopped asking applicants if they knew anything about geography or history, and you can easily guess what they no longer need to know at the Home Office, the Justice Department and the Education ministry.
The shame set in stone at Oxford
Last week my colleagues Bill Akass and Richard Pendlebury reported in The Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail the extraordinary story of how Oxford University found itself accepting cash donations from the Mosley family.
The Clarendon building with the centre arch having a plaque with a list of Oxford University benefactors on, including the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust
I strolled from my Oxford home to the Clarendon, in the very heart of the university, to see if it was true that the Mosley name is now carved in stone there, writes Peter Hitchens
Fashionable Leftists generally recoil from the Mosley name, which stinks of blackshirts and fascism, as slugs recoil from salt. And quite right too. Yet not this time.
Amazed that this had happened, I strolled from my Oxford home to the Clarendon Building, the very heart of the University, to see if it was true that the Mosley name is now carved in stone there, not far from the late Queen’s own name, and amidst the names of many innocent and welcome donors. It is.
