Before the Iraq War, we stood under a banner of “Not in My Name” in the two giant demonstrations in London against it. This YouTube video from WikiLeaks shows the video footage from a US helicopter gunship in Baghdad in 2007. The US soldiers believe that a group of men have weapons, including AK47′s and an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade launcher). They open fire, killing most of the men, leaving only one alive, but injured. In fact the men were all civilians, gathered around a Reuters photographer and his driver. The weapons were cameras. A van comes to try and help the injured Reuters driver and the soldiers open fire again, killing those trying to help. Two children in the van are injured.

It is an extremely graphic and disturbing video.

Before seeing the video, I wanted to give the soldiers the benefit of the doubt and appreciate that the realities of war sometime mean that there are situations close to the limit of what is acceptable. I thought it might be one of the situations in war that are appalling, but unavoidable.

Having forced myself to watch the entire video, I feel fairly confident in saying the US soldiers displayed appalling judgement. Those innocent men were killed unnecessarily, very likely unlawfully.

All wars are brutal and the media age is bringing that brutality home to us. We should not dismiss the brutality, just because it has always been that way. Instead it should be a wake up call to ensure that we only engage in wars if absolutely necessary.

Many civilians have been killed as a result of the war in Iraq, both by our own troops, in our name, by suicide bombers and as a result of a collapse into lawlessness. Some estimates put the civilian casualties in Iraq at 600,000. I am not sure I believe that figure, but it is clear that tens, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children have lost their lives as a result of this war conducted in our name.

This was should never have happened, the public never supported it. It went ahead, because Labour and the Tories supported it. Because they did not have the integrity to properly scrutinise the legality and justification for the war.

Iraq still matters in the 2010 election, not just because we sent our soldiers to war under-equipped and under-paid, nor because legal advice was manipulated or ignored. Iraq still matters because we have a wholly undemocratic system that cannot hold a government to account. It matters because in the UK, there is little to stop an illegal war being conducted in our name, or civilians being murdered in our name.

And that will not change whilst either Labour or the Conservatives are still in power, because they will not lift a finger to provide real democracy in this country. For that reason, Iraq will matter not just in this election, but in every election, until we are able to say what is done in our name.

A few days after the Haiti earthquake, aid supplies began to arrive at the Port-au-Prince airport. Reports emerged that supplies were not being distributed amongst concerns over security, with UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon calling for extra troops to be sent to the country. Reports also emerged of looting and lawlessness amongst the population and major concerns were raised about the ability to distribute food in those circumstances.

However, an alternative view was taken by Andy Kershaw, in The Independent, where he wrote an excellent article “Stop treating these people like savages”.

It soon became clear that priorities had become warped in the country, when a 15 year old girl was shot dead through the head for stealing pictures.

The BBC, whose Matt Frei had initially reported major security fears, drawing criticism, then published its own piece “Misguided fears test Haitians’ patience”. It was clear that the Haitian population were getting desperate, and a major misunderstanding was brewing, with potentially disastrous consequences.

I was particularly frustrated to read this quote from one charity worker, in another article on the BBC New website, “What is delaying Haiti’s aid?”

John O’Shea of Irish charity Goal told the Guardian newspaper he could not allow aid workers to move into Haiti from the Dominican Republican because he had “no guarantee that the people driving them are not going to be macheted to death on the way down”.

I found this comment extremely frustrating. On the one hand you have observers on the ground saying that the population was generally calm and dignified, but understandably getting impatient that aid wasn’t getting through. On the other you have an aid worker in another country worried that he was going to be “macheted to death”. The two positions seemed at fairly opposite extremes. I felt that John O’Shea’s attitude was grossly unfair and did a great disservice to the people of Haiti, and his choice of the words “macheted to death” hugely overplayed the likely risks aid workers faced.

From the same article on the BBC News website was the comment :

“If we distribute food all at once, some people will take more then they need and there is the risk of them selling food items, rather than it reaching the people that need it.”

So the response was to deny aid to all starving Haitians to prevent some people profiting from it. If food was being sold, at least it is getting through to hungry people. The concerns over looting got so heated that Haitian police employed a shoot-to-kill policy for a 15 year old girl stealing paintings. These people were desperate for food after 4 or 5 days with no relief. To me, it felt as if property rights were more important than feeding starving people.

I have seen no reports of security issues once aid was distributed, and just a day after John O’Shea’s “machete” quote, Haitians were happily receiving aid.

To me it demonstrates a long held concern I have about our attitudes towards developing nations. The term “Developing Nation” only refers to its economic status. Not the population’s morality, education, scientific understanding, culture or literature. There is no reason to suppose that in the event of such a disaster the population would descend into base violence, or that law and order would break down. And reports indicated quite the opposite. As Andy Kershaw said, we need to “Stop treating these people like savages”.