Black Smoke
How ironic that Hertfordshire now resembles Baghdad with a great heavy pall of black smoke hanging over our heads, the fumes of burning fuel oil and the crump of explosions through the night. Our own experience from one inferno makes the front pages for a week, our brave fire crews, our poor Children, their schools closed for two days, fuel supplies temporarily interrupted and our holiday flights out of the Country jeopardized by the fuel shortage. Poison clouds over London scream the Standards' headlines.
Really- how bad is it? How would you like that smell to pervade your city for years on end, how would you like the constant fear of explosives, the crump of gunfire every night, the black clouds of smoke from unstemmed oil-fires, the knowledge that all of this was not from an accident but from the belligerent acts of thousands of hallucinating David's seeking to strike at a more belligerent and less dignified Goliath (sorry Goliath and his poodle Tony) armed to the teeth and backed by a rampant crusading religious right (with a moronic understanding of faith and the wider world) giving some sort of moral credibility to the economic self interest of Georges dad and his mates.
The Chinese have revered the art of war, men through the generations and throughout history have defended their actions through god, economics, political dogma and even human nature.
The very fact of destruction on a large scale is fascinating and frightening and the closer we come to it the more we learn that it should be avoided. It brings unnecessary pain and suffering and achieves nothing good. Ever. The cost of our little bonfire in Hertfordshire in economic terms is a drop in the ocean. The cost environmentally (if you believe the climate change warriors) will be catastrophic. The human cost is actually nothing.
Compare this to the human cost of a war in Iraq, a generation of Iraqis brought up under Saddam and now "rescued" by the west to a future of even more uncertain waste and carnage.
Was the war wrong- I don't know about that, if war can ever be right, but the execution of the peace, driven by oil greed and US attempts to dictate the future of a people economically and politically has been a disaster.
Who should take responsibility for this- the US and the UK certainly, the UN also has a responsibility. The actions of the French and Germans (seeking short term Euro-centric diplomatic gains at the expense of a third party nation), Russians and others has also thwarted a proper solution to the extent that a political solution now looks impossible.
The black clouds in Hertfordshire simply serve as a reminder of what is to come.
Really- how bad is it? How would you like that smell to pervade your city for years on end, how would you like the constant fear of explosives, the crump of gunfire every night, the black clouds of smoke from unstemmed oil-fires, the knowledge that all of this was not from an accident but from the belligerent acts of thousands of hallucinating David's seeking to strike at a more belligerent and less dignified Goliath (sorry Goliath and his poodle Tony) armed to the teeth and backed by a rampant crusading religious right (with a moronic understanding of faith and the wider world) giving some sort of moral credibility to the economic self interest of Georges dad and his mates.
The Chinese have revered the art of war, men through the generations and throughout history have defended their actions through god, economics, political dogma and even human nature.
The very fact of destruction on a large scale is fascinating and frightening and the closer we come to it the more we learn that it should be avoided. It brings unnecessary pain and suffering and achieves nothing good. Ever. The cost of our little bonfire in Hertfordshire in economic terms is a drop in the ocean. The cost environmentally (if you believe the climate change warriors) will be catastrophic. The human cost is actually nothing.
Compare this to the human cost of a war in Iraq, a generation of Iraqis brought up under Saddam and now "rescued" by the west to a future of even more uncertain waste and carnage.
Was the war wrong- I don't know about that, if war can ever be right, but the execution of the peace, driven by oil greed and US attempts to dictate the future of a people economically and politically has been a disaster.
Who should take responsibility for this- the US and the UK certainly, the UN also has a responsibility. The actions of the French and Germans (seeking short term Euro-centric diplomatic gains at the expense of a third party nation), Russians and others has also thwarted a proper solution to the extent that a political solution now looks impossible.
The black clouds in Hertfordshire simply serve as a reminder of what is to come.
posted by Toomuchgrief at 9:19 AM
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