During the Iraq war I was puzzled when some commentators condemned the invasion as a second ‘Crusade’. I thought it was just a piece of invective harking back to the days of Richard the Lionheart. I now realise it was a fitting comparison.

The Crusades were about exporting Christian ‘morality’ to the Muslim world – with the sword.

The invasion of Muslim Iraq was a ‘moral’ crusade to ‘free a country’ and ‘spread democracy’ – with the sword. It was justified in the name of ‘liberal interventionism’ as if it was a moral task that we were obliged to do. Another ‘Crusade’.

Things haven’t changed. Consider the kind of mantra you hear from the likes of Boris Johnson and Kier Starmer.....‘The West acts not out of self-interest but out of principle.....out of a sense of duty to defend democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. The West liberates—it does not conquer. The West defends—it does not provoke. The West stands on the side of morality’

The record shows this to be hogwash. If we really believed in all this, would ‘the west’ stand by and allow children to be slaughtered in Gaza?

Interventions are rarely about high moral principles. In almost all cases they are about self -interest and realpolitik.

All governments must believe that what they are doing is morally right. Justifications are rooted in conventional culture. Propaganda would be ineffective if it didn’t start by resonating with beliefs so deeply entrenched that they are taken for granted. Politicians like Blair and Starmer know this and ruthlessly exploit it.

‘The west’ is still trapped in a mythology of cultural superiority. For most people it is not even conscious. It is bred into us as part of our culture. But with instant communications around the planet cultural differences scream out. The sense of superiority is beginning to be challenged.

To an increasing number of people around the world ‘Liberal’ interventionism looks like a con-trick to justify and whitewash foreign intervention and label those who resist as ‘terrorists’.

I am proud of Britain for its Victorian engineering. Our ancestors really did lead the world in this and much else. When they set out to colonise others, they did so with missionary zeal and a feeling of superiority. However, that ‘superiority’ led to the imposition of a lot of garbage that went far beyond the gift of engineering. Settler colonialists conquer and impose their culture – and eradicate any obstacles in the way.

In Israel, which considers itself to be part of ‘the west’, the hard-line settler-colonial Zionists now running the country really believe that they are ethnically superior to the indigenous people and have a right to replace them even if it means exterminating them.

If we really believe in human rights and morality, why doesn’t the Government send the British army into Gaza to protect its children instead of condemning those of us who denounce what’s going on as ‘terrorists’?