As the bodies are prepared for burial the war of words as to who is to blame for the outrage in Nice is underway. Fresh from calling for a ban on guns in America after Dallas, the liberals are now calling for a ban on lorries in Europe. Okay they are not. No-one ever accused the liberal left of being consistent in its prejudices or thought processes. But if you wander around the Internet you can see more or less everyone gets blamed somewhere.
At this point I'd just remind you of the words of two former Prime Minsters and I start with the war criminal Tony Blair. He insisted that we had to invade Iraq to make Britain a safer place. He persuaded other countries to join in this folly. In ousting Saddam Hussein we helped create a vacuum of power which was the breeding ground for ISIS. In meddling where we had no right to meddle in Muslim country after Muslim country, we gave credence to the words of those trying to persuade young Muslims in the West that the Western powers just did not like Moslems. Heck, why are Britain and the US not invading a regime everyone hates which is not Islamic such as that in Zimbabwe? Why indeed - we have not been at all consistent in which illegal wars we decide to start.
Far from making us all safer, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan (and under Dodgy Dave our involvement in regime change in Libya) has made we in the West far less safe.
I do not say that Tony Blair has Nice blood on his hands. That would be extrapolating far too much and, anyway, his hands are already covered in Iraq associated blood. But I do say that the lies told by Blair back in 2003 were monstrous.
Cameron, the heir to Blair, claimed that his meddling in Libya would make us safer. It has clearly not. He learned nothing from his mentor's blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cameron's insistence that the few ageing Spitfire's that the RAF has contributed to bombing ISIS in Syria would make us safer is also a palpable lie. The French have been bombing Syria too and it has not made France safer just more of a target.
Our joint efforts in Syria have made little impact, in part because we in the West continue to support other forces there in the FSA who are affiliated to Al Qaeda. Loyalties out there can change as they did on Afghanistan twenty years ago. An Islamist terrorist can be your pal one day but he may not always be your pal, he will always be an Islamist terrorist. Case study: Osama Bin Laden. It is Russia that is dealing with ISIS in Syria and also the heroic Kurds, when they are not being bombed by Turkey, the friend of Britain and France.
We, the people of Britain and France, have been lied to on a serial basis by our leaders that our meddlings in Syria make us any way safer. But Cameron went one step further as he insisted that leaving the EU would make us less safe. That is the EU which allows freedom of movement across the continent and the EU with its human rights laws which stopped the man who lead the ISIS attack on Istanbul airport being deported from Austria. That EU. There was no evidence at all for Cameron's lies about Brexit. Maybe folks in France heard his claims and thought they were safer as there was no chance of Frexit. I doubt it. They must have known Cameron was just another lying politician.
Amid the many things we contemplate in the wake of Nice consider the legacy of Blair and Cameron, two PMs who told the most appalling lies to us all; two men whose actions have made us all far less safe and two rich men who will forever enjoy lavish security arrangements paid for by you and me the taxpayer so that they, personally, will not suffer the consequences of their actions. That will be for the little people only.