The way not to do things

So, almost inevitably it came to pass. Despite the second biggest rebellion of the Blair government, with 95 MPs breaking party ranks, Trident will be renewed. Giving the lie to Margaret Beckett's assertion that no decision had been taken, and Des Browne's statement that it is purely for deterrence, it was revealed one day before the vote that new missiles are being prepared for the UK that will enhance war-fighting capabilities. No doubt they will be called 'smart' nuclear missiles, the way smart (in reality still dumb) bombs create massive collateral damage even if they hit their target (which is not always). Blair was spoiling for a tussle on this. Some say he was taking a hit in his dying days to save Gordon Brown from it (when will they be opening the Comedy Store). In reality, he has wrecked the Labour Party and maybe wrecked the Union. Alex Salmon will exploit this to the hilt to win independence for Scotland (where most of the nuclear submarine facilities are). Well done, Tony. The Tories will leap with glee at savaging Labour's divisions at the next election. But to say that the rebellion is a sign of the 'unreconstructed left' rearing its head again is as batty as voting for Trident renewal. The only unreconstructed minds in the Chamber were the ones voting for a new nuclear system, fighting the last war, not the 'current' one. And one can hardly call the aristocratic Tory MP Michael Ancram a member of the unreconstructed left.
The government held out the carrot that this vote was to renew the submarine fleet capable of carrying the nuclear missiles and that the real vote on the warhead will take place in 2012. But what's the point of building expensively furnished cruise missile carriers and expensively renting the missile from the Americans if you're not going to put a nuclear warhead on top of it. Far cheaper options exist for non-nuclear missiles, but the whole system will be so interwoven into the defence budget that the likely Conservative government in 2012 will say that a nuclear warhead might as well be put on top, after all the cost. This government stinks. Robin Cook (who would have opposed this) tried to run an 'ethical' foreign policy and took the flak when Blair kicked into the long grass and made him the spokesmen for government actions. Margaret Beckett is no such intellectual and would have nodded sagely like the last dodo alive to the arguments of Blair and Brown. Such a cipher she is for the government she might as well pen something Beckettian like Waiting For Gordo (with the same punchline as Sam Beckett's play). The Blair government may have followed in the footsteps of its Labour government predecessors since World War II, but they were operating in a Cold War environment with a visible, easily targeted, rational, coherent entity as an opponent. That is not the case today. But its no use arguing with madmen.
Talking of madmen, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has admitted to being the mastermind of al-Qaeda operations puportedly 'from a-z' if the released transcipts are accurate. The US administration will trumpet this as a victory for operating Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay (where KSM was tried) in curbing terrorism. But if what KSM says is true, then Osama bin Laden is innocent and we should call off the hunt. Of course, KSM was not tried under habeas corpus, the bedrock of western law for more than 300 years, but an unconstitutional military court (the last English king to try and subvert habeas corpus was James II and he was kicked out of the country, but then this is today's USA and associated territories). I, however, don't think that KSM was being entirely truthful in his 'confession'. It reminds me of the Nuremburg Trials 1945-6 where Hermann Goering knew he was going to face the noose. As War Criminal No. 1 (since all the other prominent Nazis were dead), he knew he was going to go down in infamy and such a pompous man wanted the biggest posthumous reputation possible, hence as he could not be a saint, he made himself out to be as notorious as possible. He claimed responsibility for all the acts of the Nazis, saying the rest of the Third Reich hierarchy was beholden to him and that Hitler was just a figurehead for Goering's deeds. He also declared he was innocent since all the acts were committed under laws passed by the Nazi regime and that to impose retrospective justice was illegal. He lost because the argument did not boil down to a legal persuasion, but a moral one. His conviction was inevitable. As was that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He could either stay anonymously in 'Gitmo', maybe for the rest of his life or announce himself as the true archenemy of America and claim ever loyal devotion from tens of thousands of Islamic fanatics. Guantanamo Bay's detention centre is a failure. His incredible claims should have been destroyed in a proper court of law. The hunt for bin Laden will go on, but the USA just lost a bit more credibility with the Pakistanis sheltering him (if that were attainable). If they ever capture bin Laden, he may argue he is innocent (in a proper court of law, the US Supreme Court striking down these military courts as they have done before). Notwithstanding the prejudices of an American jury, the USA may embarrassingly be forced to let him go. It is just another failure from the administration of the man who would be tyrant. But what hope for a Glorious Revolution in January 2009?