Having made the long and weary trek from the basement to the fifth floor in search of coffee and a fleeting glimpse of what the weather might be doing, I happened to catch a bit of our discredited glorious leader Mr T. Blair chatting to some inquiry that seems to be happening. The gist of what he seemed to be saying, and to be fair I wasn’t paying much attention as I was in need of coffee, was that a certain Mr Hussein had done lots of nasty things to people that weren’t us and Mr Blair thought that Mr Hussein probably had weapons which he could use to hurt other people who still weren’t us quite badly. Because of this Mr Blair espoused that it was not only reasonable but in fact quite sensible to go and do something really nasty to Mr Hussein before Mr Hussein did anything else nasty to people who probably still wouldn’t be us.
I’ll admit I may be over simplifying here, but that seemed to be the basic thrust of his defence of why beating up Mr Hussein was not only right but also legal. Now I’m not actually interested in if he was right or not, but I can’t help but think that sounds an awful lot like vigilantism, after all Mr Hussein already had an ASBO and had been told that if he was naughty again the UN would think about doing something else. But if this defence of Mr Blairs is accepted how does that mesh with people being told off for merely engaging in sabre rattling (well waving kitchen knives) at people that have also done nasty things to other people and will probably do so again and that are known for being nasty people. After all if our politicians are arguing that knowing someone is a wrong ‘un and will be naughty again is a perfectly fine reason for taking pre-emptive action against them before they’ve done a thing to you, surely the case for us taking action against wrong ‘uns closer to home must be much stronger?
(I know it’s one rule for them and another for us and that it doesn’t work that way – but the parallels are I feel rather interesting).
