I have written 3 responses to your post Heloplt, and scrapped them because at this time I do not want to cause personal offence. I should say now that many of my family have served in the Royal Navy and the British Army, and I have lost a friend to terrorist activity in NI, so yes, I know first hand in excruciating detail what it is like to lose someone close in such circumstances.
My wife is not subject to my "psyops" as you put it. She has a mind and opinions of her own, and we often disagree. We have different reasons for reaching a similar conclusion about what response is or is not appropriate, and I would not claim to agree with everything she believes. However, we are agreed that an attack for an attack's sake is not the way forward, but for very different reasons.
As for making sacrifices for others, believe me I have made many. I do not have to justify my commission in any way as i signed on the dotted line and serve at the pleasure of Her Majesty. That is not to say I would agree with everything that I have been asked to do, but I have done it non-the-less. I am prepared to stand and be counted, however I advocate reason and restraint in responding to last week's atrocity, I am not prepared to be hawkish at this time. I am dissapointed that Despoerado feels the way he does, but that is a matter for him and he is entitled to his views as I am to mine.
I do find it disapointing that you should think that I, a British serviceman, should wish to pass the burden of responsibility of defending society onto others, especially as it is our forces that bear the brunt of peacekeeping operations in the Balkans which America has shyed away from, as well as Northern Ireland which has not seen a single US serviceman in a UN or other helmet patrolling the streets. I wonder how many US servicemen and women have patrolled the streets of their own nation while having petrol bombs and any other home made explosive thrown at them? I wonder how many other US servicemen have come under attack from both sides of a religious devide in their own country. My point with respect is this Heloplt, we the British have had 30 years to become accustomed to terrorist acts on our home soil and we have come to appreciate that an all out attack does nothing to resolve the situation. If anything it produces martyrs and steels resolve, rather like last week's attack has done on the people of NY. You have to be more intelligent in your response to the situation than just retaliating with military power. You will just create martyrs.
What I think the US fails to understand is that Arabic culture is based on folk law. OBL fulfils a prophetic role almost and a folk law has built up around him. He inspires young moslems who feel disenfranchised with the west having deserted them and opressing them after using them to fight their own ideological war with Russia in Afghanistan. They have turned their tribal and fudal society onto the next enemy to be defeated. With the lack of a real, identifiable target country, that fudality has been focussed too on an ideology. That ideology is the purity of Islam and it's place in Arabic society. The disenfranchised moslem sees the west as its opressor, especially in the middle east. Both America and Britain carved out a piece of Palestine and handed it over to the Jews in 1948 to create the state of Israel and Israel has terrorised moslems living in the West Bank ever since. We have starved innocent Iraqis to death in order to remove a leader we dislike from power by usineg sanctions, and we have done this unsuccessfully. So-called Chrisitans have ethnically cleansed moslems from Bosnia-Hertzogovina and all of it with political backing from the west in one form or another.
If the US fails to acknowledge that the Arab world has different values to the West, and if it tries to impose western values on it, then it is doomed to more retaliatory strikes.
Dubya's choice of words has also been vitriolically inappropriate. To describe the "war on terrorism" as a Crusade was at best unwise. It invokes a Christian Vs Moslem ethic, and as many moslems were appalled by last weeks events as Christians. The choice of Infinate Justice as the code name for the operation is as offensive to Arabs as it is ironic to me, as the proposed reaction is far from just.
I would be happier to support any action if the response were measured. If it fulfilled Aquinas' criteria for Jus a Bello, or jusitce of war, I would not have my reservations. Yes, America was attacked. Depending on your point of view, it could be argued that the US provoked this attack. I do not subscribe to that view for a moment. If it were proved beyond reasonable doubt that OBL was behind the atrocity, if action was proportionate, if action was defined, if it had a measured purpose and stated aim, if it did not expose innocent people to danger of collateral damage, if it was lawful in international terms, if it was limited in terms of limits of exploitation, then I would have fewer objections. Bush is talking about a sustained and limitless attack against an undefined target. His words indicate a desire for a wide remit without limits, and that worries me. I do not think that the correct approach is a carpet bombing of Afghanistan which achieves nothing but needless loss of life. Two wrongs do not make a right, no matter how angry the US people may be, or how violated they feel.
If we are to talk about evil, we need to understand what that entails. We are gifted with free will. We can choose to do what we wish with that free will. We may choose to enhance life, and give life, or take it in varying degrees of atrocity. We cannot condemn the taking of innocent life as evil, and the take innocent life in return and say that that is good simply because we are replying to what we percieve as evil. If it can be guaranteed that we will not target innocent people, which Bush has so far not done, then we must guard against action. We must, therefore, measure our response.
The we have to think about the implications of any action. If we drag Pakistan into a civil war with the damned if you do, damned if you don't diplomacy that Bush has used against them, and if the government falls to extremists we hand nuclear weapons to the Taliban, expose Kashmir to danger and are likely to spark a war between Pakistan and India, which is equally unstable. As it is agitators from the JUI Islamic Party are subsidising the purchase of rifles to fight the "infidels". In London yesterday militants moslems were baying for blood. one commented to a reported that moslems loved death as much as we loved life and wants to send his 2 daughters to a military training camp to fight the Americans. There are times when because of the implications to others we have no choice but to accept restraint. If the US attacks Afghanistan then the rest of the world will suffer in greater numbers than it did with the losees in the WTC. As a Briton I seek justice for the 500 or so British lives lost, not purely vengence. Finally we must ask the question, what would attacks solve? I would argue not much.
Finally, Blair. If he is so committed to waging war on terrorism, then why has he let bombers, snipers, and murderers out of prison and into the government of NI? I cannot take his resolve seriously when he panders to terrorists at home and talks tough to terrorists thousands of miles away. Perhaps he should concentrate his efforts at getting our own problems sorted out first and foremost.