Comments for Common Endeavour

Comment on Spirit of inquiry by Cityunslicker

Cityunslicker — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:39:18 +0000

The importance of a final enquiry is to bind future Government's that they will not again lie about the reasons for a war, nor enter into one which they cannot really win in the long-term.

Iraq served little purpose, perhaps if democarcy thrives in 10 years I may say different, nbut for now I see only the human waste.

Comment on The Iraq inquiry should be conducted in secret by davecole.org » blog » Blog Archive » The Iraq inquiry should be conducted in secret

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:00:36 +0000

[...] post also appeared at Common Endeavour and in a shortened version at Liberal [...]

Comment on Spirit of inquiry by Dave Cole

Dave Cole — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:42:58 +0000

The purpose an inquiry into Iraq should serve is to analyse the preparation, execution and conclusion of the British military operation in Iraq.

Knowing what we know now, did we know enough to engage on the project; did we do enough to understand it; did we analyse it effectively; were all the different stages of implementation, including the on-the-job planning, adequately conducted; did we leave at an appropriate time and in an appropriate manner?

Of course, that leads to a certain amount of fine detail. For instance, were vehicles sufficiently armoured? That cannot be conducted wholly in public because - with respectful regard to the families od the dead - too much information on, say, how we jury-rigged protection for vehicles could place people in the field and unnecessarily greater risk in future.

It is not to come up with a grand, political narrative but to identify failures, show best practice and so on.

A question I would ask of the Stop the War Coalition is whether any inquiry could find a result other than TB being culpable of war crimes. If the answer is 'no', as I suspect it would be, it would cast a certain light on all their protestations.

xD.

Comment on The Iraq inquiry should be conducted in secret by Spirit of enquiry - Common Endeavour

Spirit of enquiry - Common Endeavour — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:40:44 +0000

[...] Following on from Dave's post: [...]

Comment on Join the debate on Debategraph by David Price

David Price — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:49:43 +0000

Brian -

Thanks for the feedback and for the very helpful clarification. I have had a second pass at reflecting the clarification on the map here:

http://debategraph.org/flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=19616

I suspect that there's further scope for refinement though; so please don't hesitate to suggest any further changes.

David

Comment on Are they our fault too ? by Dave Cole

Dave Cole — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:12:52 +0000

I'm not sure what the ideology of the third way is or was. Certainly, there are a couple of slim texts by Tony Giddens and others, but they generally say that Labour is no longer the party of Arthur Scargill and a little bit of privatisation isn't so bad.

While the first is true, that process had started under Kinnock and was nearly finished at John Smith's untimely death. There is an alternative short of Blairism but long of insanity. To do that, however, we need to acknowledge the mistakes we have made as a party in power - Iraq must be up there, as must be privatisation (viz. Metronet) and some of the failures of internal party workings. These are difficult to do in any case, and even more so when the party is damaged, the leadership shaky and with an election twelve months away.

xD.

Comment on Join the debate on Debategraph by Brian Barder

Brian Barder — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:23:22 +0000

Thanks for this, David. I have enjoyed chasing the balloons on your ingenious debate map. The only comment I would make on it concerns one of the reasons for believing that an early Tory election victory would be a disaster for the country because Tory policy on Europe “would destabilise the EU”. I think it’s more that Tory actions in Europe would severely damage Britain’s influence in the EU, and thereby also damage our ability to defend and promote our national interests in Europe (and our national interest includes a strong, united and internationally effective EU). If the Tories, once in office at Westminster, go ahead with their plan to desert the present mainstream centre-right group in the EP for a new rag-bag of right-wing weirdos and extremists — and they are clearly determined to do so — they will alienate their main potential allies (Merkel, Sarkozy, and others) and find it very difficult to assemble a consensus for their point of view. And if they pursue their absurd policy of trying to re-open and re-negotiate the Lisbon treaty when all the other EU governments approve of it, want to bring it into force and move on, they will achieve nothing except to ensure that no-one who carries any weight in the EU will take them seriously. I doubt if either of these follies would actually ‘destabilise’ the EU, as the debate map suggests, but they might well destabilise our role in Europe!

I suppose I would regard my points 2, 3 and 4 as the most compelling, and equally so.

Brian
http://www.barder.com/ephems/

Comment on Join the debate on Debategraph by David Price

David Price — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:35:35 +0000

Brian -

Many thanks for the suggestions; I have had a first pass at representing them on the map here (and please don't hesitate to suggest or make any further changes):

http://debategraph.org/flash/fv_indep.aspx?r=18241

Incidentally, which of the reasons do you find most compelling?

David