Dame Vera commits a heresy! Oh noes!

She’s most famous for “We’ll Meet Again”, as well as the translation of the German song in the video above. She’s 92 years old, and still clearly in possession of all her faculties–including an important and underestimated one called critical thinking. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dame Vera Lynn, singing a song you’ve never heard from the veteran wartime entertainer before:

Dame Vera Lynn has questioned Britain’s role in Afghanistan.

The 92-year-old is critical of the campaign which has cost the lives of 196 personnel, saying: ‘I don’t know what Afghanistan’s all about, I don’t know what we are doing there.’

Dame Vera, who entertained troops as far afield as Egypt, India and Burma during the Second World War, said: ‘At one time, our soldiers would fight for the country they came from to stop the enemy invading, but now they are involved in other countries’ problems.’

She was less than complimentary of the Government, which has been criticised for seeking to challenge the amount of compensation for wounded soldiers.

Dame Vera told The Times: ‘I don’t know why there should be a problem. I mean, they are out there fighting, helping other people.

‘They are our boys and they should be looked after. The money that is wasted on stupid things and then they quibble about this.’

That, my friends, is the heresy: Dame Vera supports the troops, but not the war. In an age when “Support the Troops” is often another way of saying “get behind the war, you unpatriotic wimp”, she is brave enough to challenge the conventional belief that the war in Afghanistan has anything to do with protecting the West’s “freedom”. And to utter what the younger and cockier of us seldom find the nerve to say when some raging wingnut is in our faces doing his best to shout us down.