Home By Christmas

‘Prime Minister Tony Blair today promised soldiers of the Black Watch they would be home for Christmas after their Iraq tour of duty – with ministers tomorrow poised to agree a US request for them to replace American troops.’

We’ve heard this one before haven’t we Tony? Didn’t Lord Kitchener once promise that the (1914) war would be over by Christmas? And didn’t that war drag on for another 4 years and cost millions of lives?

I don’t expect that this ‘war’ will cost millions of lives but it will cost lives and it will drag on. One doesn’t even have to be some sort of political or military expert to know that. War today isn’t the same sort of chess game it was in 1914 or even 1939 with massive armies facing each other across the battlefield. This ‘war’ is carried out in the streets and back lanes of towns and cities. It’s carried out in buses and public places across the World as the Americans now know to their cost. You should know this Tony after all those years at ‘war’ with the IRA. And where once the bulk of the casualties were military now the bulk of the casualties are the very citizens, men women and children of said towns and cities. War used to be a spectator sport, with civilians even visiting battlefields to watch the bloody show. Now they are on centre stage. In the spotlight - targets.

Now forgive me for being cynical and getting onto, what readers may consider a popular theme in this blog, anti-Americanism. I have outlined earlier that I am not against Americans per se but have a healthy cynicism about the American philosophy concerning the rest of the world.

So let’s get this straight Tony. The British Government are sending in British Soldiers (a Scottish regiment to be exact) to replace Americans in some of the most dangerous places in Iraq? Just before an American election when perhaps, the body count (1,107) of young American soldiers is maybe getting just a little bit politically sensitive?( Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan are absent from public Pentagon casualty reports commonly cited by newspapers, according to military data reviewed by United Press International. ) Yep I get it. Your election is just a little bit farther away and of course you’ve promised us they’ll be home for Christmas – just like Lord Kitchener did all those years ago. That’ll be alright then.

Like the song says the average age of the soldiers in Iraq is probably about n n n nineteen. These are kids, our sons and daughters and we place upon their shoulders this terrible responsibility. I hugely admire the British Army (of which I was briefly a member) it is a professional volunteer army. But I don’t want them killed on some dusty road in Iraq for the sake of some misguided American Foreign Policy, a jerkoff President and blind retribution for 9/11.

Let’s get them home now. Let Bush sort his own problems out and face his own electorate and let the American people judge what is happening in Iraq in their name. Let’s not provide Bush with a smokescreen made up of the pyres of our dead warriors.

A very Merry Xmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over, if you want it
War is over now
John Lennon.