Resistance

John Mortimer in The Mail on Sunday, on 2 Oct(for someone with any liberal or progressive pretentions, to write in the Mail loses all credibility to my mind, but let that pass) on the incident with the heckler at the Labour conference, Blair's disregard for the 'golden thread' etc.

One point, though, struck me in particular: in his youth, Mortimer says, we applauded the resistance in France which murdered German oficers and threw bombs into cafes frequented by Nazi sympathizers. On the second category, there may have been some incidents, but not anything like the sustained attacks on civilians that we have seen in Iraq. On the first category, I don't think the word 'murder' is appropriate: we have to accept that British soldiers in Iraq or Israeli soldiers in the occupied territories are 'fair game', though it's hard not to apply the word to the killing of the 6 Military Police in al-Amara.