Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but
according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage —
torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations,
imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of
civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is
committed by ‘our’ side.“ George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism
- This week has seen a number of events designed to honour British servicemen and war veterans. As part of these events, we are exhorted to „Support Our Troops“ and are reminded of their courage and the sacrifice they continue to make. We are informed of how they are „busy working around the world, promoting peace, delivering aid, tackling drug smugglers and providing security and fighting terrorism.“
- It all sounds jolly inspiring, doesn't it? Sadly, this rather trite assessment of the role of the British armed forces conflicts painfully with images of death and destruction beamed into UK homes over the past ten years. The on-going 'War on Terror' has seen Britain firmly supporting the foreign policy of the United States with or without the approval of the UN, including the invasion and occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq.
The invasion of Iraq was particularly unpopular. When Tony Blair
asked parliament to vote in favour of it, a massive popular outcry
culminated in as many as two million men and women marching through London to express their opposition in February 2003.
In the face of this resistance, the UK government tried to convince
the general public and the Members of Parliament that Iraq had
'weapons of mass destruction' (WMDs) capable of being launched
against the UK in '45 minutes'. This was in spite of the UN inspectors' reports which had led then US Secretary of State Colin Powell to
state only two years earlier that:
Many felt the proposed attack would be
in violation of the same international law and the UN Charter which
the Iraqi dictator was accused of breaching, a view later espoused by
many legal experts, as well as former UN Chief Weapons
Inspector Hans Blix The then UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, stated that the the
invasion of Iraq was „not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal.“
.
Despite failing to secure a resolution
from the UN backing their proposed military intervention, in a
wonderful victory for democracy and the rule of law, the invasion
went ahead.
After the initial rush of an easy
victory over Saddam Hussein's forces and an apparent welcome from his
oppressed population, soon the people of the UK were faced with daily
news reports of resistance to the occupying forces, mounting
casualties, civilian deaths and even
the involvement of British servicemen in torture and abuse of
suspected enemy combatants.
To the surprise of almost no-one, the claims about WMDs proved false and the justifications
for the conflict wore increasingly thin. Soon it became apparent
that a decision to invade Iraq had been taken in Washington and
agreed by London first, then the faulty intelligence on WMDs had been used to justify the decision.
In the face of this torrent of bad news
and the fact that it was becoming harder to deny that the government
had lied to the people, the remaining popular support for the wars and the
men fighting them dwindled. Alarmed, the government announced a
number of intiatives to boost morale in the armed forces and to
promote public support for the troops and the unpopular campaigns in
which they were engaged. Government initiatives included home-coming
parades, permission for off-duty servicemen to wear their uniforms in public, and the
institution of Veterans Day, now renamed Armed Forces Day.
This year, as
well as the usual parades, fly-pasts and displays of military
equipment, Armed Forces Day included veterans of
the Iraq and Afghanistan wars carrying the Olympic torch on several
legs of its relay journey around the UK. It is common
knowledge that the Olympic torch relay was introduced at the Berlin games of 1936. The Nazis wanted to link their games to their ancient
Greek predecessors in a way which also highlighted the connection in
their racial theory between the 'Aryan' race and Ancient Greece.
The use of a flaming torch also sat well with their penchant for
torchlit parades. Media coverage
of the relay was carefully controlled by the Minister for Propaganda,
Josef Goebbels.
So successful
was this innovation that, minus any mention of Aryan racial superiority, it has been retained by subsequent
organisers of the Olympic Games.. This year, the London 2012 organisers tell us that: "8,000 inspirational people will carry the Olympic Flame as it journeys
across the UK... inspiring millions of people watching in their community, in
the UK and worldwide." What could be more inspiring than war veterans overcoming their injuries to carry this symbol of.... of what? Peace and unity through sport? The Olympic Truce, perhaps?
Tradition has it that in 776 BC King Iphitos
of Elis was told by the Oracle at Delphi to stage the Olympic Games
every 4 years so as to break the cycle of civil war between the Greek
city states. The modern games incorporated this idea into its charter and in
2000 the International Olympic Committee established the
International Olympic Truce Foundation with the goal of reviving the
ancient tradition of the Olympic Truce. Last October Lord Coe tabled a motion signed by all 193 UN member states that called on nations to promote peace, development and
reconciliation in trouble-torn regions.
How can the use of the Olympic torch relay to publicise a military PR exercise be during an ongoing war "promote peace, development and
reconciliation in trouble-torn regions"? Such cynical propaganda use of the torch relay to encourage support for
Britain's armed forces, and by extention their deployment, may be something of which Josef Goebbels might approve,
but it makes a mockery the ethos of the games and flies in the face
of the pledge Britain made to honour the Olympic Truce.
- All of this follows hot on the heels of the unveiling of a monument in London's Green Park to Bomber Command on the 28th of June. The World War II RAF bomber crews suffered a casualty rate of more than 50%, reflected in the 55,573 who died in action. Despite their undoubted courage, unlike the men of Fighter Command, the crews of Bomber Command received no campaign medal at end of World War II. Only now, some 67 years later, has their sacrifice been recognised with an official monument. Anyone unfamiliar with the case might well ask why.
- The answer is deeply controversial. Bomber Command were tasked with
an unsettling mission: area-bombing, the indiscriminate bombing of
vast areas including the deliberate targetting of civilians. The
aim was to break the morale of the German people, destroy their
support for the Nazi war machine and thus to bring the war to as
speedy a close as possible. If it were successful, the lives of
tens of thousands of Allied troops would be saved.
Was this a price worth paying? The consensus of opinion amongst Allied commanders and heads of government was that it was. However, after the 1945 firebombing of Dresden in raids which killed at least 25,000 civilians, Churchill described area-bombing as „mere acts of terror and wanton destruction“.
In language eerily reminiscent of that used by Winston Churchill, the Nuremberg Principles list „wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages“ as a war crime.
Speaking of a similar attack on Tokyo, Robert McNamara, (US Secretary of Defense 1961-68) who served with the USAAF in its Office of Statistical Control, later said:
“We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children. LeMay[Gen. Curtis E. LeMay of the Army’s Air Forces] said ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ And I think he’s right. He — and I’d say I — were behaving as war criminals.”
Armed Forces Day and the cynical use of the Olympic torch relay amount to gimmicks designed to distract from harsh realities of what the British armed forces actually do. We are invited to celebrate and honour the sacrifice and the courage of our servicemen and women, but not to ask why. The government lied to the people of Great Britain and manipulated and misled the media to convince parliament to approve the military actions they had already promised their US allies. Britain justifies her actions against other countries by accusing them of violating the same international laws she herself completely disregards when they are contrary to British strategic interests.
Following the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, life for ordinary Iraqis and Afghans is not demonstrably better, with regular reports of the use of torture by the Iraqi security forces and ongoing violence. Even while the UK celebrated Armed Forces Day, fifteen civilians were dying violently in Iraq. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, opium production is through the roof, women are resorting to self-immolation to avoid rape and forced marriage and civilians bombed out of their homes starve in refugee camps. Terror attacks against the US and allied nations have increased and Pakistan has been destabilised increasing the likelihood that nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of the Taliban, or worse still a global-Jihadi group like al-Qaida should they return to Afghanistan. Is this what British soldiers died and go on dying for?- While the image of Lance-Bombardier Ben Parkinson, a man of undoubted courage and strength of character, carrying the Olympic torch would elicit the sympathy of the most hard-hearted observer, surely it should make us all ask why this man was sent to Afghanistan and how many more will follow in his footsteps. Do you, reading this, feel you know the answers to these questions? Do you believe that his sacrifice has made your life safer? Do we not owe him a debt, and is that debt not the obligation to ask these questions of our government, to demand an end to the killing? Should we take the stance of charities like 'Help for Heroes' who raise money for rehabilitation centres for veterans, but refuse to angage with any critical consideration of the circumstances which led to their injuries, or should we back the likes of 'Iraq Veterans Against the War' who combine campaigns for support for veterans with demands for justice for civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and are heavily critical of the war itself? What is so special about Britain's strategic interests, as opposed to almost every other country, that requires military intervention? What prize has all this bloodshed won? Are Britain's strategic interests even your interests?
So, I ask whether we should unconditionally support our armed forces. Every Briton wants to be proud of our country, our community and the role we play in it. We long to be able to believe our government when it claims to foster peace, justice and democracy. If military operations are necessary, we want to see them executed within international law. The evidence is clear that none of these things are true. The Nuremberg Principles declared that the „planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties“ constitute crimes against peace, and yet our armed forces did exactly that when ordered to do so by the government. On top of the military casualties, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been tortured, abused and murdered as a result, their homes destroyed and families ripped apart.
I claim that supporting the armed forces unconditionally makes the chances of them being deployed into action more likely, especially in legally and morally ambiguous circumstances. As a result, leaving aside the implications for enemy combatants and civilians in the theatre of conflict, more British servicemen will be killed or suffer physical and mental injury.
Let me explain what I mean: Somebody might take the point of view that military servicemen do not have have a choice in how they are deployed, they must simply do their job in a professional manner. Therefore, even if we are opposed to their deployment, once it has been enacted we should give them our full support and try to make sure they have the equipment they need to do the job and are properly looked after if they are injured or when they retire. This is the point of view of 'Help for Heroes', if I understand it correctly.
The problem is, whoever we are fighting against is entitled to take exactly the same position. It says, once we are committed to war, forget who's right and who's wrong ('leave politics out of it'), we will fight it to the bitter end. You can see this thinking at work in the killing fields of the WWI, for example. In any case, following superior orders - otherwise known as the Nuremberg Defence - does not absolve anyone of responsibility for their actions, philosophically or legally.
I have talked about how the Allies tried to bring WWII to a quicker successful conclusion by breaking the support of the German people for the war. It is very difficult for even a totalitarian government to conduct a war without popular support. Another example would be the anti-Vietnam War movement in the US which forced the government to conclude an unwinnable war which had cost millions of lives and left Southeast Asia devastated, with effects of which are still felt to this day. Wouldn't it be in the best interests of the people who serve in the armed forces for the public to oppose their deployment even when they are engaged in action in order to make sure the government ends it as soon as possible and thinks twice before doing it again?- Albert
Einstein famously said: „Nothing will end war
unless the people themselves refuse
to go to war“.
Bomber Command targeted civilians during World War II because they
knew that the Wehrmacht couldn't fight if the people weren't behind
them. Without popular support, the Nazi regime could not have
carried out its horrific crimes to the extent it did. It was those
who took the decisions to attack neighbouring countries and to
perpetrate atrocities that bore the chief responsibility in Nazi
Germany, just as the politicians who ordered the Iraq invasion are
accountable for it. However, the Nuremberg Trials established that
following orders does not absolve a person of responsibility for
their actions. Military service means surrendering much of one's
personal freedom, but every serviceman and woman has the right to
conscientious objection, even if the armed forces have been criticised for failing to inform recruits of this. Everyone who
has joined up in the past eight years has
done so knowing that they may be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Armed Forces Day and Help for Heroes tells them they are heroes for doing this.
There can be little doubt that the Iraq War violated international law and many questions have been asked about the conflict in Afghanistan also. If the aim of these expeditions was to improve UK security, protect human rights and to improve the living conditions of ordinary Afghans and Iraqis, then they have failed on all fronts. Instead the authority of international law and the United Nations have been undermined and we have been left with humanitarian disasters. If we support the armed forces under these circumstances, what would it take to make us say „enough is enough“?
