Keighley MP Kris Hopkins, a former soldier, speaking in yesterday’s Commons debate about the horrors of war and his contempt for the media and the armchair generals who wallow in the glory:
A friend of mine, following the first Gulf war, showed me pictures he took of the convoy attempting to escape back up to Iraq. One of the pictures was a charred, black head and a desperate hand – black and maimed – trying to leave the vehicle.
There is nothing glorious in war, there is nothing romantic about it. I would say to some members of media who have portrayed some form of entertainment about what is going on and what has gone on in previous wars – it is is just not right. I am afraid that human beings need to commit brutal, savage attacks on each other to win wars.
I feel uncomfortable about going to war. It is not a simple choice. It is a really difficult choice to contemplate.
This morning, when I was coming to work, I listened to a phone-in on BBC television. It asked a question about whether we should kill Gaddafi. People were phoning in. It was almost like a gladiatorial, thumbs-up or thumbs-down about what the populace thought. I’ve got to say I was fairly disgusted about this form of entertainment about the killing of another human, however disgusting he is.
Sadly our media, many of our politicians and a decent chunk of our population now treat war like some form of computer game. I am no pacifist, there are times when war is just, but the carefree attitude we have towards war is sickening.
The post on “Masters of War” is brilliant Bob; never thought I’d see or hear aTory M.P. come out with such sensible comments about war(are the times a changing, I doubt it somehow). The media and armchair generals are throthing at the mouth, knowing quite well they or members of their families will never suffer from their advocacy of war, or their blood lust. Other than the early days of Gadaffi’s putsch, and overthrow of the monarchy and anti-imperialist stance, I’ve never been a supporter of Gadaffi’s revolution, too much idiosyncrasy and cult of the personality(revolutions always fail when they are military based or just organised by narrow elitist cliques). The disunity among N.A.T.O. members makes me wonder about the motives of Cameron and Sarkozy; they have never been particularly concerned about U.N. resolutions on the Palestinians, Tunisians, Egyptians human rights until these countries were on the verge of revolution. Again, Camerons hypocritical concern for Lybian freedom fighters does’nt run to concern for Yemeni, Bahreini or Qatari protestors/freedom fighters( hope it’s not because gets diarrhoea over the thought of upsetting the Saudi Royal Family). The cynic in me thinks that this is a chance for Cameron to look like the concerned champion of the poor oppressed Lybian people on the international scene, while diverting attention away from his domestic problems, if he was so concerned about ethics, principles, human rights, etc, he would’nt be a Tory M.P. never mind P.M. Also it could be a gamble to gain control of Lybia’s oil and natural gas; with the Tories its never principle, ethics, or human rights(sadly Labour, new or old these days, also) they are the political representatives the City and big business, so their whole purpose is the protection of investments and wealth plus power politics Finally Bob, while I only intended this to be a shortish comment( I’ll get round to it one day), lets not forget that when Osbourne is ready to produce a budget that will consolidate the most vicous attack on living standards since Nigel Lawson, and maybe even further back, they can find 100′s of millions of £s for just a few days military action; and they’d better hope that it is only a few days or we’ll be in for an even bigger round of cuts and attacks on living standards.
Difficult to argue with most of that. Strange how when those poor bloody African farmers were being slaughtered in their tens of thousands by the janjaweed on behalf of the Sudanese government no-one thought of a bit of humanitarian intervention.
look at what is happening in Bahrain, people being attacked in hospitals
I support Libya because we have the power to protect but where should you intervene and not ?
go into Bahrain to protect them and the consequences with Saudi are far too horrible to predict