or Argentina, Turkey, Uzbekistan, or Chile . . . we'd know what came next.

Tanks on the streets of Westminster, Tony Blair seeking a country willing to accept him as an exile.

France, probably.

But Dannatt is Britain's top soldier, so that country's political establishment has virtually ground to a halt, with mouth agape. The serving head of the British army has told the world's media that the policy he has been appointed to execute in Iraq is not only not working but is inherently doomed and will only cost more lives.

As if the point needed to be underscored further, Dannatt's biggest cheers came from anti-war campaigners. The Stop The War Coalition invited him to speak at its next rally.

It is difficult to think of even a remote parallel. The first that sprang to my mind was the Ulster Mutiny, or the Curragh Incident if you prefer.

It happened in July 1914, when the government of Herbert Asquith introduced the third home rule bill, which would have set up a Dublin parliament. Unionists promptly started buying rifles and ammunition from Germany and formed the Ulster Volunteers. Orders came from London for the British army in Ireland to prepare to move against the unionists. The local commander gave his officers . . . many of them unionists . . .

the choice to resign rather than enforce the will of the civilian government. Some 57 of 70 officers threatened to do just that. Brigadier General Henry Wilson, born in Longford and serving high up in the war office, gave his tacit support to the mutiny.

London's civilians backed down, cancelling out one potential future for Ireland and opening the way for the Rising.

Not for nothing is the increasingly clear futility and frustration of the botched occupation of Iraq so often compared to Ireland, particularly in the British press.

So it wasn't entirely surprising to find this intriguing paragraph in a profile of Richard Dannatt that ran in Friday's Daily Telegraph: "Sir Richard is said to be a quiet, considered, brave, intelligent and focused man whose life was said to be singularly affected after a near fatal incident at the hands of the IRA while serving in the Green Howards in Northern Ireland."

Official biographies of Dannatt and other press coverage do not reveal the nature of that incident, but certainly the Green Howards suffered casualties serving in the North. As it happens, Dannatt also commanded the British army barracks in Germany that suffered an IRA attack in 1996.

I suspect that we may learn a lot more about this soldier and how he came to decide to speak out in this way at this time. Perhaps Dannatt's Northern Ireland experience is something akin to the reflections of senior American officers who served in Vietnam . . . a lesson that should have better informed current policy. Certainly the dilemma was faced by Colin Powell as US secretary of state . . . whether to publicly support a policy that, privately, the former US top soldier's formative years in Vietnam taught him would end in tears. Powell saw his duty as remaining in office and remaining supportive until leaving that office.

Dannatt has made the opposite, and far more radical, choice.

The drama of the last couple of days will fade, but once the shock wears off, the historians will be examining the long-term effects of Dannatt's remarks. The general may only be saying out loud what the vast majority of people in Britain think about Iraq, but in western democracies, serving soldiers are meant to keep their mouths as well as their guns confined to barracks until given orders by the elected civilian leadership.

More than likely Dannatt's public remarks will be spun and massaged back into line.

That would be a mistake, no more than was appeasing unionist officers in 1914. The only proper way for a soldier to challenge policy in a democracy is to resign his commission and run for office.