PERHAPS it was the effect of listening to the D-Day anniversary edition of Vera Lynn, songs dreaming of the end of war and hopes of a more sane world, that prompted my reaction.

The strains of We’ll Meet Again had died away and I had changed over from CD player to a news channel as I drove into Oxford.

Reports of the violence in Iraq were flooding in.

Women and children were being buried alive, beheading was the order of the day.

Children as young as nine were holding up severed heads in the name of their god.

It was sickening.

Equally sickening were the words of some female professor of history (I didn’t catch her name or location, I trust she was not from Oxford) who calmly said this sort of thing had happened throughout the ages.

It was only social media and mass media coverage that was now highlighting it. She seemed to be suggesting we should have to put up with it.

History, I always believed, was there to teach us a way to improve and change our ways.

It was not just a load of stuffy books for us to read. It had a message.

Are these attrocities simply to be logged as another event in history?

Have we learned nothing, either from abominable acts in ancient history or our more recent past?

Heaven knows I don’t want to see another global conflict, but in the absence of Allah smiting the guilty who claim they are doing his will, something will have to be done.

And for once it will have to be in the name of humanity, and not for financial interests or the dictates of a discredited US president or his UK lap dog.

Peter Unsworth, Hogg End, Chipping Warden, near Banbury

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