What decides us into military action? What makes us send our planes and our young men into battle? In the old days when we really were a world power it might have been justified. Since the bombing of the twin towers in New York the USA and us have joined forces to bring retribution to various parts of the world and Iraq was left in economic ruin. We sell them our arms and our building companies make good the worst of the ruin and then the whole process is repeated over and over.
This morning we had a bigger than usual congregation in church. One man wanted to talk afterwards. He is the chaplain at one of the military bases in Devon.
"Please pray! " his voice voice shook with emotion." Another batch of our marines have gone out this week to Afghanistan . And some have come back. They are in a mess." he said.
In the last year there have been eleven divorces amongst the men there because the young men who went out to fight are not the same men who
come home, who find living with their wives and children difficult now.
He says we won't be bombing Libya for long because all the planes are needed for Afghanistan.
Why are we behaving like this? Why have we become the police force of the world? Quite apart from the actual cost of missiles there is another cost...much more serious to the lives of the men, women and children involved.
If we, France and America kill more people than Gaddafi has surely we are not justified. We all want to see an end to his regime. But is the cost just too great for this small island?
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2 comments:
"But is the cost too great for this small island"? you ask.
In my opinion yes it is, not just the cost of funding the 'exercise', nor even just the cost in terms of lost lives - on both sides - but the cost to our national and international moral integrity.
Make no mistake, I am not really a pacifist, hurt me and I'll hurt you in return, but, and it is a big but, I would never be the first one to fire a shot.
We are NOT under threat, no matter what politicians and the media would have us believe. We do not have the right to strike first. We do not have the moral high-ground.
Jean,
The comments here about the problems with service people returning from operations, suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are becoming more and more evident.
In Kent, between July 2010 and February 2011, Kent Police arrested 345 Service or Ex-Service personnel for a variety of offences. 60% of which were for violence related offences. This study is to be rolled out across all UK police forces to try to get some idea of the size of the problem.
I know from my own experience that I had to deal with a number of casualties, one of which was a fatal one. Some of those supporting bereaved families were dealing with 4 or 5 at a time. Only belatedly did the services appreciate that if you did not care for the carers, then something will give. It did and resulted in additional casualties due to this issue.
The reality is that mental health resources for both serving and ex-service personnel are finite, and very thin on the ground. Ex-Service charities such as Combat Stress, SSAFA and the NHS are picking up the bill for years of neglect of this important aspect, which will impact for years to come. Just thinking of the millions who came back from both World Wars with Shell Shock, and received no treatment at all. My father was one such case, which we now know, all of these years after his death, when we recovered medical records from post-war.
I thought of becoming a Charity case worker, but other things, including the demands of potential ministry took over from it. But there is a real need as more and more servicemen suffer trauma, which might only emerge years later.
Having spent 4 decades in Uniform, I can see the sense in not going to war, but we need to be prepared to defend ourselves - but I believe that we need to be told the truth and the evidence for the need to go to war. The Pre-War slogan, born of veterans of WW1 of Jaw, Jaw, not war, war seems to ring ever more true these days.
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