Qualified for the job

"Die Süddeutsche Zeitung", is the morning read these days and it normally comes with a cup of coffee and a "butter brezel". Anyway, munching, supping and reading, I noticed from an article on the front page that Catherine Ashton will have to go through the ordeal of a questions and answers session with members of the European Parliament to see if she is competent to do the job of representing the EU's foreign policy.

Now, I was thinking this is not actually a bad idea, or rather it would be a good idea if it were to be applied to all politicians and here we are all moaning about Catherine not having the experience and forgetting that no politicians have the experience for a particular job until they actually do it. Or did Angela Merkel actually know how to "run" a country before she actually began to "run" it, did Guido Westerwelle actually have hands on experience in his job as German Foreign Minister, and Milliband, Brown, Sarkozy and, yes, Obama etc.etc.? Of course, they didn't and that is the point; none of them can actually do the job we would like them to do but then that is not why they have the job. No, they are all there to prop up a wee system, to go along with policy decisions that have been decided well in advance.

Let's take Bob Ainsworth, the British Defence Secretary, as an example. Now, no doubt, MPs feel hard done by when they compare their "paltry" salaries with those commanded by the captains of industry, so what better way to boost their renumeration than by stealing from the public and when it came to stealing public money Bob was right up there with the best of them. Of course, twats like Bob are only theoretically accountable to the public and real accountability is to that wee system I have mentioned above where the decisions have already been made for them.

So, why do we need the likes of Bob? Well, we, as in you and I, don't need them but then it is not about us. Bob is quite simply one of those mediocrities who has been choosen to give credibility to the machiavellien "Realpolitik" that is pursued by the real rulers of the world. Anyway, there he was telling the 'New Statesman', "We are in Afghanistan because the Afghan security forces are not able to tackle al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups on their own." Now, if there were some truth in this statement we might be able to forget the fact that not only has Bob been pocketing public money, but his own Ministry has also failed to provide young British soldiers with the necessary support and equipment. However, the "we are in Afghanistan to tackle terrorists" nonsense just does not wash. 

The troops are there to support the geopolitical interests of corporate America and the so-called "international community" and it would appear that that so-called community is quite happy with Hamid Karzai, the man in the nice shawls, a corrupt hypocrite, a liar and a thief. Yes, he is the sort of guy that politicians in the the West can identify with and this despite news from the 'Guardian' today that Afghanistan's chief prosecutor has challenged him by threatening to prosecute two corrupt cabinet members who have ministerial immunity from prosectution unless the Karzai strips them of it. Of course, that is not going to happen and the said ministers can sleep sound in their bed. After all, the last thing that they want in Washington and Kabul is any sort of honesty being brought into the equation for who knows what will happen when we start bringing thieves and liars to justice and we might find a lot of "qualified and experienced" politicians losing their jobs, at the very least, and not only in Afghanistan.