Watching the ‘leaders’ debate’ on TV this week, I was struck by four yawning gaps in the agenda. Worse, they were the things I most care about. One, Britain is at war, and nobody in the programme seemed to be talking about that except for a question about army equipment – reasonable enough to ask if soldiers have the right equipment to stay alive, but ducking the bigger question of whether British occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan is justified. Two, the world’s leaders miserably failed to get a decent treaty to restrict climate change in Copenhagen, and did anyone on the programme care or even mention it ? Three, nothing about the erosion of civil liberties during the ‘war on terror’ or the steady crumbling of democracy under New Labour. Four, there are almost two and a half million unemployed in the UK and nobody seemed to care about them. I’ll say more about each of these issues in the next few days, but let’s start with number one, Blair’s wars.
In Afghanistan, around 7000 to 9000 civilians have been killed by NATO forces. President Karzai has repeatedly complained of the cruel and indiscriminate nature of these military operations. Several military commanders have questioned whether the ‘mission’ serves any real purpose. Its original target, Bin Laden, may not even be in Afghanistan any more. Did anyone in the leaders’ debate show any signs they really cared about what our country is doing to Afghans ?
In Iraq, civilian casualties due to the occupation run to dozens of thousands; the economy and infrastructure has been wrecked, civil society torn apart and a legacy of disease, poverty and mental trauma will haunt the country for decades. It’s a sure sign of the poverty of democracy in this country that the Blair government carried on with its aggression after a million or was it two million of us came onto the streets to tell them NO.
And whilst potential future prime ministers bicker interminably about a small rise in National Insurance, these wars are STILL costing the UK taxpayer billions of pounds a year.
Blair always denied that 7/7 had anything to do with his foreign policy. All the evidence was to the contrary. A society that engages in this sort of aggression and destruction degrades itself, its reputation and whatever capacity it had to unite around democratic values. There are some striking parallels between British militarism under Blair and American militarism in Vietnam, and who better to comment on that than Martin Luther King. Here are some extracts from a speech he gave in 1967:-
They must see Americans as strange liberators. ….They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one “Vietcong”-inflicted injury. …
We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. ….We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?
I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken…This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:
“Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.”
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. . .
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.”…. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
The Green Party manifesto is pretty strong on getting out of Afghanistan, leaving NATO, and downsizing military budgets. As well as putting forward an international perspective on fair trade, more aid and cancellation of poor countries’ debt. So if that’s what you want, don’t say there’s nobody sensible to vote for. Give us a chance.
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