Better said by another

I had a rant recently about the Islam4UK's proposal to hold a march through Wootton Bassett to draw attention to the many Muslim dead in the current Afghanistan adventure. I tried to say something about how this small Wiltshire village has become a symbol of something, but didn't say it very well. As always, The Heresiarch says it far better, and far more succinctly, than I can:

But what is really inspired is his choice of venue. Wootton Bassett is the town that in the absence of any clear explanation of what we are doing in Afghanistan, has become not merely the scene of tribute but, in an odd way, the mission's whole justification. What began as the quiet and spontaneous reaction of locals has now become strangely ritualised and increasingly official. The town now seems both the focus and the locus of that attenuated thing we're supposed to call Britishness, where the military covenant, elsewhere a hollow joke, becomes almost sacral.

Add a comment about what sort of national leadership vacuum has precipitated the Wootton Bassett phenomenon (I can't remember anything like it), and you've got the whole thing.

Well worth a read, this man.