I've not been involved in Labour (as an activist or going to meetings) since the Iraq War. I don't know who Hillary Benn was talking about, but I was never anti-war, I support what we are doing in Afghanistan and what happened in Sierra Leone and in Serbia.

The difference with Iraq was that it was an invasion, an illegal invasion to topple another country's government. In my mind the parallel is not for example, the liberation of France in 1944, it is the invasion of Poland in 1939. It's that serious to me. I'm not saying that Blair or Bush are Nazis, I'm saying it was a purely agressive (not defensive), aquisitional and illegal war.

I must be one of the few people who actually belived the weapons inspectors at the time, I didn't think Iraq had those weapons. But we know now that what they were doing was irrelavant. Bush decided years before to invade Iraq, and Blair decided to stand with Bush (in the British national interest). The facts-on-the-ground were either irrelevant or could be made up (dodgy dossiers).

I feel it is still important today because I keep hearing Labour leaders saying that we are in an internationalist party. I joined an internationalist party back in 1994 and internationalism, I feel, is part of my (black) British identity. The aftermath of the war, which was indeed predicted, and then made certain by the uselessness of American lassez-faire imperialism, confirms my belief in internationalist multi-lateralism and working within the UN.

I do not support or side with the suicide bombers, but I do understand a little of how some of them must feel. I visited the Cabinet War Rooms a few years ago and I saw, for the first time in my life a map depicting the planned Nazi invasion of Britain. Seeing those little Nazi formations over southern England sent me into a sort of quiet red mist. I started shaking a little and felt sick in my stomach. I'm quite mild mannered, and I'd never felt like that before. Thinking about it later, I realised that I wasn't thinking about Nazi policies; the rage was at the idea of foreigners taking over my country. The Iraq war was specifically the USA invading Iraq. If it had been the UN, it wouldn't have been so 'foreign'. The nature of a war, I feel makes a big difference to the reaction of those you think you are liberating, and you cannot say that Saddam would still be in power today if we had stuck with the UN route.

So, for me, the reason I can't let Iraq disappear from my head, is that the princple of multi-lateralism seems to be in dispute. It is not whether we should withdraw all the troops tout-de-suite, but that we should not in principle go on illegal war adventures. We should only 'war-war' with international legitimacy. I'm thinking specifically of Iran, where I can see the same thing happening all over again.