Video: Robin Cook's Resignation Speech over the Iraq War

hear hear

I said the same thing about Vietnam.

Funny you should mention it, I thought about that a bit earlier, thinking that this kind of lesson unfortunately only tends to last about one generation.

That's why I'm just hoping my generation learned this lesson, I know it's too much to expect the country to have learned it permanently but I don't want to see that kind of bullshit work in the next 20 years.

Agreed.

People are making a far bigger stink to prevent universal healthcare than pointless war, perhaps we deserve our decline.

Actually, come to think of it Vietnam's lessons may well persist for many generations. That was a turning point when America learned a key lesson about war weariness and during this Iraq war many things (like the purchasing of private satellite time, the embedded reporters etc) can be directly traced to the American military learning that lesson.

Maybe the paranoid charge to war in Iraq might teach some similar lessons that last beyond just one generation.

Vietnam seems to have taught its greatest lessons to the makers of wars. Anyway, the present situation has us opting out of an Iran war, so far.

It certainly can seem that way, but remember that they had to learn these lessons because of the shift in American attitudes towards war. With the more cynical American public they had to learn public relations to wage war. The fundamental shift changed American culture in very deep ways, especially in respect to how government and authority is viewed.

If the wagers of war had to learn PR it's because the people became more critical and learned to challenge their government more readily.

That war, I have read somewhere, inspired many of the weapons we came to use in the years that followed. A mixed blessing.

Robin Cook was the only one of our parliamentarians who came out of that with any credit.

And even he was a bit slow.

Putting party before country, and before conscience, is such a disgraceful, cowardly act.

Well done, Robin.