Do those who exult over new Middle East war know what they're doing?

Several people I used to know have gone out of their minds. One of them is the formerly elegant author Douglas Murray, who this week launches into a triumphal jingoistic frenzy in the Spectator magazine. He exults in war, death and injury in a way I think he will one day regret.

His tirade reminds me of President George W. Bush’s proclamation of ‘mission accomplished’ from the deck of a US Navy aircraft carrier in May 2003. The worst US President of modern times – in a stiff competition – exulted (untruly): ‘In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.’

The President wore a military flying suit for the occasion. It looked good on him. But like so many war enthusiasts, he had somehow missed his own opportunity to take part in combat.

Rather than joining many of his generation in the jungles of Vietnam, he had instead defended Texas against Oklahoma in the Air National Guard, the air force reserves.

Also in May 2003, as President Bush posed for pictures, I was in Baghdad, discovering in detail just what a mess the Western invasion of Iraq had been.

Chaos was already evident. Electric power constantly failed, law was absent, and the residents had begun to defend their homes with Kalashnikovs. I wrote, as I looked out on the dark, dangerous city and listened to the chatter of gunfire: ‘Did we know what we were doing when we started this? Do we know now? As the power fails for the tenth time since I began writing this report, I rather doubt it.’

Well, I was right and Mr Bush was wrong. The Iraq war was one of the greatest political and military mistakes of modern history, and ended up by increasing the power of Iran, the opposite of what Washington wanted.

Do those who now exult over the new perils in the Middle East know what they are doing?

I first visited Israel in 1986 in the back of Margaret Thatcher’s plane. Today’s warriors should note that she was pretty cool towards the then leader of the Likud party, Yitzhak Shamir – the forerunner of Benjamin Netanyahu.

I have been many times since. I have also visited Gaza, Iran, Egypt and Jordan. And I often get the impression that the more ignorant you are about the Near East, the more passionate you get.

I enjoy teasing journalists who are either fiercely pro- or fiercely anti-Israel, by checking how much they know about it. I’m sure many of them think that Ben Gurion (Israel’s first premier) is a mountain in Scotland.

The art of foreign policy is recognising the limits of your own power – and by doing so learning to place limits on the power of others.

And the first question to ask if you send your troops off on an invasion or launch your bombs into someone else’s territory is: ‘How does this end?’

The BBC has cancelled an interview with Al ‘Boris’ Johnson after the reporter accidentally sent him her briefing notes. All the more time for Mr Johnson to debate with me about Ukraine. He can have my briefing notes, if he wants them.

Crime’s nothing to be celebrated 

It used to be a pretty standard rule in TV drama and the cinema that crime did not pay. Quite right. Crime is evil and hurts its victims. So why does ITV think it justified to run a costly, flashy and admiring drama about a real crook, Joan Hannington, played by Sophie Turner?

Are we supposed to admire someone who is allegedly so fond of her daughter that she has her fostered and then moronically steals a flashy car to go and visit her?

I was also nauseated by the way in which her first major victim, a diamond dealer she robbed by swallowing his goods, is portrayed as a creepy lecher. Even if this is true, which I doubt, it doesn’t lessen the crime. I turned it off.

As my delayed and stifling train crept into Didcot station, I noticed the name of NHS founder Aneurin Bevan was emblazoned on the engine, left. Well, OK. 

Bevan was a great man, though many of his Leftist admirers try to forget that he befriended Tory press baron Lord Beaverbrook and ended up supporting the atom bomb. 

But the display of the NHS logo next to his name was too much. This is political partisanship on public property.

 Letby conviction is shakier than ever

The strange case against Lucy Letby is looking shakier than ever. After a devastating Radio 4 programme last week, Lucy Letby: The Killer Questions, the chief prosecution expert witness, Dewi Evans, changed his mind about how Ms Letby supposedly killed one of her victims.

This followed the discovery that Ms Letby was not even at the hospital where the baby died at the time an apparently damning X-ray was taken.

He no longer believes air was forced into the baby’s stomach, but that Ms Letby somehow injected air into the baby’s bloodstream.

As with all the other charges against her, there is no actual proof that this took place, just speculation. This comes on top of the demolition of supposed statistical evidence against Ms Letby, the revelation that tests used to convict her of insulin poisoning were seriously inadequate, and the prosecution’s admission that door-swipe evidence was the opposite of the truth.

Ms Letby has now been in prison with no hope of release for 502 days.

Tory hopefuls can’t grasp what matters 

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PETER HITCHENS: Are we heading for Death on Demand to please BBC Leftists?

I lost the will to live during the speeches given by the contenders for the Tory leadership. It’s not just that I don’t want any of them to win. I don’t even want any of them to lose.

Is there nobody in that party who understands that few people look back on the 1980s – when so many decent jobs were lost for good – with affection? Nor do they yearn for more privatisation, as sewage rushes down rivers and into the sea, and expensive trains conk out.

They want proper family life, with a parent at home, to be within the reach of all. They

want orderly schools that teach knowledge rather than chaotic sinks of propaganda. They want flourishing industry. They want police who patrol the streets on foot, not distant bureaucracy that snoops on their opinions.

Everything else flows from these few things. It’s easy. But they can’t see it. Until they can, they’re done for.