Saturday, July 09, 2005
Roll out the Barrel - of lies
London was bombed. The leaders of important countries reacted with all the predictable platitudes they could think of and then some. Outrage! Condemnation! They bristled with self-righteousness.
Blair talked about cowardly acts against innocent civilians. Appropriate words for a time like this. Imagine if he had told the truth.
Imagine if he had faced the people with the words... "I'm sorry, I unleashed this on you. Bush and I plotted and planned, lied and weasled and attacked an unarmed country under false pretences. For weeks we rained bombs on its cities, we'll never know the true figures of how many people we slaughtered. We'll never tell you of the children blown to pieces, and young men and women who lost limbs and lives, or the old people snuffed four our greed and gain. We'll not let you know that what were once functional cities were pushed back into the dark ages by our brave pilots who delivered their deadly cargo with ease because in the months before our cowardly, unlawful and heinous attack on this country, we had been clever enough to take out its air defence systems.
We won't talk about the misery forced on the civilians through our barbaric policy of sanctions, in which human rights activists says, at least 1.5 million (yes, MILLION) people died, and the rest lived a miserable existence where their once beautiful and functioning cities had no running water or electricity and living each day became a gamble.
We won't tell you how, when these beaten people had the audacity to fight back we called them insurgents, went from house to house like Nazi storm troopers taking away "suspects" and imprisoning them in camps with no trial, where torture and humiliation were the order of the day. And when that didn't work, called in airstrikes on cities sealed to prevent anyone - yes even women and children - from leaving.
And when we were caught out in our lies we sold our people the idea that we did this for the best. We were bringing that elusive but wonderful gift of democracy to the Middle East, where the people would be able to choose their own leaders.
When people choose their leaders they must take on some of the responsibility for their leaders' actions.
So are the British innocent after all? They elected Blair. They did nothing while Bush invaded and occupied the whitehouse. They need to accept some of the responsiblity for taking their country to war.
War is a two sided affair. Not that our leaders would like to believe that. They seldom pick on countries that can fight back. But now when the people have fought back they should at least call it what it is. Not a cowardly act against innocents. But retribution for cowardly acts against innocents.
Blair talked about cowardly acts against innocent civilians. Appropriate words for a time like this. Imagine if he had told the truth.
Imagine if he had faced the people with the words... "I'm sorry, I unleashed this on you. Bush and I plotted and planned, lied and weasled and attacked an unarmed country under false pretences. For weeks we rained bombs on its cities, we'll never know the true figures of how many people we slaughtered. We'll never tell you of the children blown to pieces, and young men and women who lost limbs and lives, or the old people snuffed four our greed and gain. We'll not let you know that what were once functional cities were pushed back into the dark ages by our brave pilots who delivered their deadly cargo with ease because in the months before our cowardly, unlawful and heinous attack on this country, we had been clever enough to take out its air defence systems.
We won't talk about the misery forced on the civilians through our barbaric policy of sanctions, in which human rights activists says, at least 1.5 million (yes, MILLION) people died, and the rest lived a miserable existence where their once beautiful and functioning cities had no running water or electricity and living each day became a gamble.
We won't tell you how, when these beaten people had the audacity to fight back we called them insurgents, went from house to house like Nazi storm troopers taking away "suspects" and imprisoning them in camps with no trial, where torture and humiliation were the order of the day. And when that didn't work, called in airstrikes on cities sealed to prevent anyone - yes even women and children - from leaving.
And when we were caught out in our lies we sold our people the idea that we did this for the best. We were bringing that elusive but wonderful gift of democracy to the Middle East, where the people would be able to choose their own leaders.
When people choose their leaders they must take on some of the responsibility for their leaders' actions.
So are the British innocent after all? They elected Blair. They did nothing while Bush invaded and occupied the whitehouse. They need to accept some of the responsiblity for taking their country to war.
War is a two sided affair. Not that our leaders would like to believe that. They seldom pick on countries that can fight back. But now when the people have fought back they should at least call it what it is. Not a cowardly act against innocents. But retribution for cowardly acts against innocents.
# posted by Inkonkoni @ 7:46 AM 
