IT is an oddly repetitious consequence of public exposure that when Island leaders rise to deliver orations at set-piece occasions, they stand on the threshold of a trap-door of misunderstanding and derision.

The risk increases if they chance to stray into the mire of international politics. Eighteen months ago, when the former Bailiff chanced to use his Liberation address to berate the international press for despoiling the Island’s reputation as a caring, open society, he was criticised for misappropriating the mood of the occasion.

Now the Lieutenant-Governor finds himself accused of overstepping his local remit during his Remembrance Day message when, in honouring the fortitude of loyal troops fighting in Afghanistan, he appeared to endorse the political aims of pursuing the conflict.

There are two arguments here. First there is the question of whether it is appropriate for figureheads to express opinions on contentious issues. Then there is the question of whether, as individuals (albeit of a small, insular community), they should be accorded the privilege to express opinions publicly (on behalf of that community) when inevitably there will be a substantial body of opinion opposed to their views.

It’s a question, I suppose, of how we interpret the freedoms of speech and expression our forefathers have fought bitter wars to preserve.

At the time of national remembrance when the nation pauses to pay its respects for its noble dead, it is quite understandable to decouple the emotional from the political – that is, the debt of gratitude owed by the living to those who have paid the ultimate price on its behalf, from the often torrid political intrigues and balances which have put them in the firing line. Politics is, after all, a blanket term for all manner of shenanigans. And when called to account, politicians will always cite the good of the country and its ultimate security to justify policies which many of its citizens might abhor.

Of course we are awash with theories over the motives for the latest conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan which have claimed the lives of British service personnel – the more so because the casualties are occurring in a foreign field far from the direct personal experience of the home nation.

For so long, the campaign in Afghanistan was a media war, remote, with plenty of sun and sand. The ‘theatre’ (as battlegrounds are now curiously referred to) sounded unreal, resembling the name of a proprietary brand of mayonnaise! For a time, it became a forgotten war. When battalions returned from duty, their parades were ignored in the streets.

But then casualties began to mount and tears were shed increasingly by bereaved relatives whom more and more people knew. The sheer human price for an ill-explained conflict began to strike home; inevitably, the ‘What’s going on?’ turned into a negative ‘Why?’

The influences that determine the flow of public opinion are often very hard to fathom. But it has become increasingly apparent that the justification for the continued sacrifice of the nation’s bravest is becoming one of the hardest tasks facing political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, where human life is prized above all political expediency.

So what swung the tide? Could it have been the reports that British lives were being endangered by the lack of appropriate equipment? Was it the hint that a guerrilla war can never be won by a conventional army, however great its fire-power?

Could it have been the relentless accounts of an incumbent regime riddled with corruption, a transparently flawed election process, blatant human rights violations, particularly as regards the status of women? Or was it the rush to the microphone by home-based sceptics disputing the connections between terrorist groups in the region and targets on British soil?

Whatever the process, the government finds itself with a challenging ‘hearts and minds’ campaign to be won, though it rests confident in the luxury that those under orders have upheld, and will continue to uphold, the best traditions of the armed services and the country to which they have pledged their allegiance.

So when the nation pays its respects, it is unrealistic to allow scepticism of the cause to decry the efforts of the individuals in the front line. In our reaction to speeches by those appointed or elected to public office, who would dismiss the need to restate forcibly our dedication to those who fight and die on our behalf?

Whatever we might think of the policies and those making them, in the end, we have the final sanction to dismiss and overturn them. By contrast, for Queen and country, those who voluntarily enlist are under orders to defend us.

At the same time, let’s not allow the annual pomp and ritual to outweigh the genuine outpouring of support and sympathy. In honouring their sacrifice, we owe it to them to remember why they were called upon to lay down their lives, and to concentrate contemporary minds on avoiding the horrors which are the last resort of the desperate.

Nor should we condone the attempts to smear the genuine critics of flawed policies in a jingoistic haze of blind patriotism. Every poppy that fell on the bowed heads in the Albert Hall represented the extinguished life of an individual given in service, who may have had their own views of why they were called upon to fight but were prepared to support their comrades regardless.

The spilling of blood, whether by the hands of murderous fanatics, vengeful vigilante individuals or states, has no justification. The readiness to stand up to terrorism and injustice, even with the knowledge that the ‘job’ may involve the supreme price, is the ultimate test of freedom.