Nothing much to talk about today. The big thing seems to be this Iran oil tanker issue. However, I have literally no idea what's going on there. So I'll remain agnostic. My general rule is that I don't support things I don't understand, especially if it's an act of war. So I'm just sceptically observing at the moment.
It's a bit of a cliche but the Iraq war really shaped my worldview. I actually supported the war in Iraq at the time. I remember being at college doing a music course during the run-up to it. I spent part of that time arguing with other long-haired students that the war was a "lesser evil". It would've been much easier to just go along with everyone else and say "yeah, war bad, man", but I just didn't believe that the British government, the government of a democratic country, would lie about something so serious. So it felt like the responsible position to take. I remember seeing them pull the Saddam statue down live on TV and thinking "yey! democracy!".
So, when it began to dawn on me over the following months and years that I'd believed things that weren't true, and supported a war that was a big bloody mess, I had a lot of humble pie to eat. It's a good job Twitter wasn't really a thing back then, because reading back some of those opinions would've been brutal.
Of course, you don't want to swing from the one extreme of believing everything to the other extreme of believing nothing. Perhaps the US and allies are right this time. However, my bar for evidence is high now. Some vague footage on TV isn't going to swing it for me.
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