What is the difference between Slobodan Milosevic’s killing of Kosovans, and Bush and Blair’s killing of Iraqis? Anyone who supports the invasion of Iraq supports the genocide of a hundred thousand Iraqis.
David Milliband says it’s “time to move on” from the invasion of Iraq. “While Iraq was a source of division in the past, it doesn’t need to be a source of division in the future.” Milliband insists on trivialising the invasion of Iraq, by treating it as a matter for disagreement between politicians, rather than a massacre of innocent Iraqis.
It is worth reading a website describing itself as the biography of Slobodan Milosevic. This presents him as a hero of Serbia, elected President of the Republic in 1990, by the first free multi-party elections since the Second World War.
March 11th 2006 Milosevic, on trial for war crimes at The Hague, died of a heart attack, before a verdict had been reached. To more or less everyone in the West he was acknowledged as a war criminal, who had committed genocide in Kosovo. To many Serbians, and, possibly, Russians, he was a hero of the Serbian people.
His death was thought to be suspicious. Some believed he had been poisoned, or had taken poison himself. Whatever the truth of this, it is accepted that he was refused permission to travel to Moscow for treatment which might well have kept him alive.
Milosevic is named a war criminal by the West for invading Kosovo and killing many innocent civilians. He would claim he did this to defend Serbia.
What is the difference between him and Messrs Bush and Blair, who also claimed they were defending their respective countries, and used this as an excuse for killing many innocent civilians during their invasion and occupation of Iraq?
David Milliband, by refusing to say the Iraq invasion was wrong, and by referring to it merely as something which caused controversy in the Labour party, trivialises what many thousands of people in the world regard as a war crime.
David Cameron on June 23rd, 2006, interviewed by Jonathan Ross, said he supported the Iraq invasion. Cameron was elected MP in 2001 as an obvious Tory high-flyer, and was a member of the Shadow Cabinet from 2003 to 2005 when he was elected Tory leader.
Since the Tories supported the invasion of Iraq, Cameron, like Milliband, apparently prides himself on voting for an action which has resulted in about 100,000 people being killed.
Suppose the Muslim block of countries were as dominant in the world now as they were during the Middle Ages. Suppose the International Court of Justice was at Mecca, not The Hague. If that was the case, Bush and Blair might well have been on trial there along with Milosevic.
What possible defence is there for supporting the Iraq invasion?
Iraq “doesn’t need to be a source of division in the future” says David Milliband. It will continue to be a source of division until the British government – after all with a Deputy Prime Minister whose party opposed the invasion – repudiates wholeheartedly, with reparations, what was not only a stupid decision, but also an immoral and illegal one.
The British Government needs to perform an act of repentance
--
Showing posts with label Tony Blair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tony Blair. Show all posts
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
Monday, 26 April 2010
Iraq War Justifications & David Milliband
“You’ve punished us enough about Iraq” pleaded David Milliband in an interview in The Guardian on Saturday April 24th, 2010.
Tony Blair declared he was practising an Ethical Foreign Policy.
David Milliband was already a junior minister in Blair’s government by 2002, having been Head of the Prime Minister‘s Policy Unit from 1997 – 2001, before becoming an MP. We can therefore presume that David Milliband, owing his rapid promotions to Tony Blair, was also an enthusiast for his leader’s Ethical Foreign Policy.
How Tony Blair loved talking about Ethical Foreign Policy, and how we applauded the way he tirelessly fought as George W.Bush’s assistant in righting the world’s wrongs. How right David Milliband is to plead for forgiveness as a junior minister in a British government responsible for killing a few Iraqis, and possibly a British soldier or two, over the last decade. A few accidents like that should not stop us admiring the nobly Ethical Foreign Policy of Labour governments since 1997.
How we applauded Blair for the order he gave the Parachute Regiment to drop into Bulawayo and stop Mugabe’s soldiers massacring innocent Ndebele civilians because they supported Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change.
How we applauded Blair when he sent an ultimatum to Hu Jintao to withdraw from Tibet, and when the ultimatum was ignored, launched a Cruise missile on Beijing.
Well … an Ethical Foreign Policy ... adapted to the needs of the oil and motor industries.
An Ethical Foreign Policy which justified invading Iraq illegally, against the majority of the United Nations, as a result of which invasion Iraq is in ruins, and many thousands of Iraqis have been killed, not to mention the British soldiers.
Iraq under Saddam was a terrible place of evil repression and wanton murder. But then so is the Sudan. So is Burma / Myanmar.
So is Tibet.
So is Palestine.
George W. Bush deemed himself the noble emperor of the world, crushing petty dictatorships with his beneficent tanks and bombers.
So why only Iraq? Why not the Sudan, Burma / Myanmar, Tibet, and Palestine?
The United States could not afford the expense of all those invasions. Iraq has nearly bankrupted the richest nation on the planet, let alone the poor British camp-followers.
Ethical Foreign Policy will not rescue dying Matabele. Zimbabwe has no oil fields. Ethical Foreign Policy gushes ethics when following its dictates leads to gushing oil wells.
--
Tony Blair declared he was practising an Ethical Foreign Policy.
David Milliband was already a junior minister in Blair’s government by 2002, having been Head of the Prime Minister‘s Policy Unit from 1997 – 2001, before becoming an MP. We can therefore presume that David Milliband, owing his rapid promotions to Tony Blair, was also an enthusiast for his leader’s Ethical Foreign Policy.
How Tony Blair loved talking about Ethical Foreign Policy, and how we applauded the way he tirelessly fought as George W.Bush’s assistant in righting the world’s wrongs. How right David Milliband is to plead for forgiveness as a junior minister in a British government responsible for killing a few Iraqis, and possibly a British soldier or two, over the last decade. A few accidents like that should not stop us admiring the nobly Ethical Foreign Policy of Labour governments since 1997.
How we applauded Blair for the order he gave the Parachute Regiment to drop into Bulawayo and stop Mugabe’s soldiers massacring innocent Ndebele civilians because they supported Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change.
How we applauded Blair when he sent an ultimatum to Hu Jintao to withdraw from Tibet, and when the ultimatum was ignored, launched a Cruise missile on Beijing.
Well … an Ethical Foreign Policy ... adapted to the needs of the oil and motor industries.
An Ethical Foreign Policy which justified invading Iraq illegally, against the majority of the United Nations, as a result of which invasion Iraq is in ruins, and many thousands of Iraqis have been killed, not to mention the British soldiers.
Iraq under Saddam was a terrible place of evil repression and wanton murder. But then so is the Sudan. So is Burma / Myanmar.
So is Tibet.
So is Palestine.
George W. Bush deemed himself the noble emperor of the world, crushing petty dictatorships with his beneficent tanks and bombers.
So why only Iraq? Why not the Sudan, Burma / Myanmar, Tibet, and Palestine?
The United States could not afford the expense of all those invasions. Iraq has nearly bankrupted the richest nation on the planet, let alone the poor British camp-followers.
Ethical Foreign Policy will not rescue dying Matabele. Zimbabwe has no oil fields. Ethical Foreign Policy gushes ethics when following its dictates leads to gushing oil wells.
--
Friday, 29 January 2010
Behold the head of a traitor!
A cold January day. The deposed King Blair, stripped of his royal robes, wearing only simple breeches and a white shirt with the collar open, is marched by a squad of soldiers bearing pikes and muskets, to the scaffold on Tower Hill. The executioner, dressed all in black, his face masked except for the eye slits, waits motionless, the enormous axe at his side. Blair kneels at the block. The traditional drum roll. The axe descends.
“Behold the head of a traitor.”
The camera’s time code flickers between January 1642 and January 2010.
Let it flicker a bit more. A more appropriate execution scene. It is 1789. Le Roi Tony, condemned by the people of Paris, is being driven by tumbril to execution, while Queen Cheri Antoinette nibbles at cake sandwiches helplessly. The tumbril approaches. Suddenly, the crowd is pushed aside; an unutterably hideous washerwoman, using her stinking laundry baskets like clubs, shoves her way to the guillotine. As Le Roi mounts the platform, the washerwoman draws a rapier, and disposes of the entire guard with a few fancy thrusts and ripostes. For, of course, once we see a hideous washerwoman anywhere near Madame Guillotine, we know it is that master of disguise and accent, Sir Percy Blakeney Bush, turning his aristocratic drawl into perfect Parisian gutter argot. Robespierre raises his impotent hands in horror, as Sir Percy Bush whips up the horses, and the tumbrel, with the King on board, gallops unscathed through the entire French Republican army, and another Carry On film shoot hears the call “Wrap.”
Today will be a farce. We all know Blair knew the invasion of Iraq was illegal. But Blair has escaped the scaffold, and will live out his life of shame, struggling in penury, forced to depend on pathetic hand-outs of $20,000 dollars a minute on the American lecture circuit.
Blair acted like an absolute monarch. Cromwell and co attempted to abolish absolute monarchy for ever. Absolutism popped up again, once the British Prime Minister established his right to act like a monarch and declare war.
In 2003 Parliament was incapable of checking Blair. Parliament is no longer a suitable defence of our rights as citizens to say whether our fellow citizens should die in foreign field.
Let the lesson of Britain’s illegal invasion of, and ultimate disgraced retreat from, the ravaged country of Iraq be written into our non-existent constitution. The right to declare war must be exercised by referendum of the entire citizen body. No other person or organisation should be allowed to usurp that right of ours.
“Behold the head of a traitor.”
The camera’s time code flickers between January 1642 and January 2010.
Let it flicker a bit more. A more appropriate execution scene. It is 1789. Le Roi Tony, condemned by the people of Paris, is being driven by tumbril to execution, while Queen Cheri Antoinette nibbles at cake sandwiches helplessly. The tumbril approaches. Suddenly, the crowd is pushed aside; an unutterably hideous washerwoman, using her stinking laundry baskets like clubs, shoves her way to the guillotine. As Le Roi mounts the platform, the washerwoman draws a rapier, and disposes of the entire guard with a few fancy thrusts and ripostes. For, of course, once we see a hideous washerwoman anywhere near Madame Guillotine, we know it is that master of disguise and accent, Sir Percy Blakeney Bush, turning his aristocratic drawl into perfect Parisian gutter argot. Robespierre raises his impotent hands in horror, as Sir Percy Bush whips up the horses, and the tumbrel, with the King on board, gallops unscathed through the entire French Republican army, and another Carry On film shoot hears the call “Wrap.”
Today will be a farce. We all know Blair knew the invasion of Iraq was illegal. But Blair has escaped the scaffold, and will live out his life of shame, struggling in penury, forced to depend on pathetic hand-outs of $20,000 dollars a minute on the American lecture circuit.
Blair acted like an absolute monarch. Cromwell and co attempted to abolish absolute monarchy for ever. Absolutism popped up again, once the British Prime Minister established his right to act like a monarch and declare war.
In 2003 Parliament was incapable of checking Blair. Parliament is no longer a suitable defence of our rights as citizens to say whether our fellow citizens should die in foreign field.
Let the lesson of Britain’s illegal invasion of, and ultimate disgraced retreat from, the ravaged country of Iraq be written into our non-existent constitution. The right to declare war must be exercised by referendum of the entire citizen body. No other person or organisation should be allowed to usurp that right of ours.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
