14:30 Nov 12 2006
Times Read: 906
Today is Rememberance Sunday in the UK.
Pretty much the same as Veterans Day in the US.
It's a day where the military elite and the common soldier, can revel side by side in the pomp and circumstance of honouring the dead.
And this is not something which I criticise. For indeed, it is the only time that the Queen bow's in respect of anothers sacrifice for this small nation, once Great, Britain.
And what was it for?
The cause of freedom?
Perhaps we have enjoyed our liberalisms to such an extent in recent decades, that we have lost our understanding of war as a society.
Even the Falklands conflict, was a distant and short-lived affair. Before that, the Suez crisis was something largely ignored in the public mind.
Our government stayed out of Vietnam and prior, we had little inviolvement in Korea.
I think of Isreal and the middle easet, but again, these were battles in the time of sparse communication and public awareness. Coming at the time when the UN was but a new-born baby, there was little international legal framework within which countries had to abide, under threat of prosecution by their peers.
And even now, the UN is largely irrelevant, due in part to the continued use of the Security Council veto rights. Enjoyed by the US in it's crusade to provide legal cover for Isreals continued subjigation of the Palestinian people.
I argue continuosly with people who state that Isreal is not an apartheid state, but I say it is, as defined in the same manner as South Africa.
The downtrodden live in slums under daily threat and genuine fear of death and destruction of their homes, with little or no political base upon which to prosecute their tormentors.
And what might you ask, has the US and UK to do with this state of affairs, surely it is not our problem, we are not responsible for the bloodshed which the Arabs and Jews inflict upon one another?
And this is the common misnomer of the 'Middle East Situation'- that we are free of blame, that we are not bound morally to solve this crisis.
For we, the UK, dictated to the Arabian nation that the Jewish diaspora would have a home there. That over the decades, we have supplied all that was neccessary for this to be achieved- legal, financial and military means.
And today, the US supplies the political cover which allows for the continuation fo military action by a professionally trained army against civilian insurgents (see civilians with guns).
How?
Through UN veto and military grants and aid loans.
Isreal is the single largest recipient of military aid from the US o the planet.
Without the actions of the US and UK governments, there would be no state of Isreal. There would never be any Iraq war. Without the dictatorial and imperialistic interference in the affairs of others, none of this would have come to pass.
So, we, as the people responsible for voting for our governments and their policies, are also responsible for these crimes.
On this day of mourning our war dead, I ask who mourns the dead from our wars, in Iraq, Afganistan and the host of other nations which the European colonial powers have systematically destroyed, or allowed to be destroyed thorugh our support or apathetic inactivity?
We deny the memorial of those we kill because of 'victors justice'. Always the enemy is evil. Always they are out to do the same to us as we did to them. But is this really the truth, or simply a fabrication of propoganda?
Where is the freedom of speech against these crimes, when the US can unilaterally deign to block a resolution against murder?
We live in dire times and none I know have the will to stand against the inequities of our so-called justice.
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