Home page Tyranny as policy ".... If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep....." Note the sequence of events. John Reid emphasises the importance of security and the trade-off between security and freedom on the one hand. Tony Blair calls attention to the declarations of the head of MI5 that several potential terror cells are being monitored in the United Kingdom. They may represent a potential threat. These are forerunners to yet further attempts to cut back on the individual freedom of the people of Britain in the name of the war on terror. This raising of the profile of potential threats is being used to brain wash the electorate into supporting New Labour's failed policies. Even George Brown has now made the mistake of aligning himself with a generational fight against terrorism. What is not being admitted is that the current dimension of any terrorist threat is directly proportional to the combined failures in foreign policy related to Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. It is here where more government attention needs to be focused. In essence we are passing through a similar phase to that which took us into the murderous Iraqi affair. However, rather than have Tony Blair sign a blatantly amateur propaganda document which he passed off as an intelligence dossier, this time things have been more carefully handled. The head of MI5 has separately made a statement on the terrorist threat following John Reid's statement that the threat is significant and therefore security is a core policy issue. Only then has Tony Blair swung into action to justify ID Cards using the head of MI5's statements as justification. Unfortunately the information released by the head of MI5 is essentially non-information in that the distribution and social circumstances/profiles of the target populations within the United Kingdom would suggest a potential number of active terrorist cells of between 25 and 100. Stating that they are tracking 30 does not contribute anything to the debate. She also added that her service and others were contending with some 200 groupings involving some 1,600 individuals, which again does not convey much meaning. Therefore the purpose of this statement could have had no other purpose than to raise the profile of the issue in the public mind; it is just another spin tactic. As always however this was not a good idea. The release of any such information by the head of MI5, whether what she stated is true or not, only alerts any militant group coordinators to tighten up and reorganize cells to make them less easy to monitor externally. This would apply to those which so far remain undetected. This would make future detection even more difficult. The best tactic for intelligence services is not to give out any information at all or play dumb. Tyranny As long as New Labour does not address the ongoing arbitrary killing of innocent civilians in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan and Palestine, they remain part of a tyrannical system. The arbitrary nature of this system can be seen in the open admission that the military do not keep records of civilian casulaties. On the other hand they somehow miraculously generate statistics on the number of terrorists they have killed; clearly they do not in fact know how many "terrorists" they have killed. This leads on to obvious conclusion that the government has never had any idea of the effectiveness of their military campaigns. If the military had been effective and had only been killing armed combatants and sparing civilians the campaigns would have taken a different and possibly a negotiable route. However, with so much killing of innocent families the whole affair has descended into an incurable mess because allegiences to any "liberation force" have been completely destroyed. This is why the objective military position is that the presence of our troops in Iraq is making things worse. Domestic tyranny In order to sustain the support of the British public of the government's "position" in Iraq, the government has sought tyrannical means, leveled against the people of Britain. It is as if by trying to regain the spirit of post-9/11 the government can convince the people of Britain that terrorism exists somehow as an isolated phenomenon and has no relationship to its almost completely incompetent foreign policy. George Bush's response to 9/11 which gave rise to the increased absolute levels of world insecurity was just plain Jingoism. That is George Bush considered it to be his right to inflict military force on people who live in countries whose leadership, so-called, he considered to represent a threat to America's interests. The other aspect to Jingoism is an attempt to force onto others values and systems which the antagonist feels are superior to those upheld by the people in the country under attack. So the after-thought to the exposure that Saddam Hussein's regime had no weapons of mass destruction was that the USA and Tony Blair were on a campaign to spread freedom and democracy. It is remarkable that the scurrilous remarks by politicians concerning Islam as being a primitive religion because it is trying to spread its word by the sword since this is exactly the approach of the USA and Tony Blair who are saying they are spreading freedom and democracy through a policy which includes the murder of innocents. If Bush and Blair were so concerned with the wellbeing of the people of Iraq the modes of engagement of the military forces would be such as to minimise the killing of non-combatants and this would be supported by a requirement that civilian deaths be recorded. It would seem that democracy and freedom is only for those who survive the murderous onslaught; until the fighting stops anyone is dispensible. To some degree one might sense there is some logic in religious fanatics killing "non-believers" just as the early institutional Christian church did. But with the rise of secularism and concepts of freedom based upon equality, it is completely unacceptable that the military forces of two secular states, the USA and UK, are embarked upon what has become a quasi-fanatical and completely failed attempt to spread democracy and freedom through murder. The end simply cannot justify this means. Sacrifice Families on both sides in any war lose loved ones. The death of someone in the military is considered to be a sacrifice in the name of the cause of the war and of country. Politicians have always focused attention on this aspect of military casualties. There is a twist in the propaganda surrounding military campaigns which however needs to be highlighted. Mothers and fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters and children often hope the war will be won since this might lessen the likelihood that their loved one will be lost. This would apply no matter the reason for war. Politicians should not confuse this support for the troops as an automatic support for government policy. This has never been more true than today. It needs to be remembered that the families supporting Britain's efforts at Trafalgar were rallying in support of sailors who were forced (pressed) into service and many were fighting against their free will. On HMS Victory, for example, a marine with a musket was stationed on the Quarter Deck when the ship was in port, with instructions to shoot any sailor attempting to leave the ship. Ends and means If our freedom, or that of others, be secured by means which rob many of their freedom then the end cannot justfy the means and in this case a war against tyranny becomes itself an even worse tyranny. This is the situation we face today. Party politicians in their blinkered party policy boxes spend much time ignoring the specific wishes of constituents. Constituencies are made up of people all of whom are from a family. An yet, no politician who is wise and who understands the instincts and relationships which exist within families charged with concern and love for one another, should opt for war lightly. If there was ever any likelihood that families in Britain were at any risk from Iraq then any first step should have been a defensive action instead of a large scale offensive action. But Iraq never represented a threat to the people of Britain and yet shabby propaganda dossiers sought to convince Parliament that it did. Right from the beginning, the end has never justfied the means, there was no threat to the population; it was all lies. And so the deaths of civlians and even our military have been largely caused by a Prime Minister's foible, a parochial individual who is in reality out of his depth but commanding far more power than his intellect is able to manage safely. In a dizzy show of arrogance he continues this theatre and now seeks to drag the British population further onto his stage by trying to convince them that losing our freedom in the name of security is a better option than New Labour terminating their murderous foreign ventures. Remembrance On the other hand there are wars where the balance of events, as always created as a result of poor leadership, caused most to consider the very survival of the country to be at stake such as in the two Great Wars. Even here however, lower level leadership was so bad in some cases that officer cruelty to men, in the First World War, lead to munities, many never recorded, where the officers died from bullets fired by their own men. The political and military codes of the day would not accept that many in war end up not being able to continue either for psychological or ethical reasons and many such people were executed by our own military forces as traitors. These were shameful, shabby and unforgivable events. Reflection on those wars admits sacrifice in the name of some higher ideal and for country. This is something grieving families hold dear so that their loved ones be considered to have died, to have sacrified their lives, so that we might be free. In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. Lieutenant Colonel John McCrea of Canada Surgeon and author of the poem In Flanders fields ..