Sunday, August 14, 2005

Who is the real enemy?

Listening to BBC Radio 4 this morning (wife had it set to come on as an alarm) a cosy chat show had the usual casual anti-American obsessed guests. One guy saying that the Abu Graib scandal was far worse than anything any Muslims had ever done blah blah. One guy was saying how despicable it was that the UK should be considering sending the terrorists home. He was basically saying that it was much worse to send them home and have them face possible torture than to have them kill thousands of people here. He even said that it didn't matter how many people might end up getting killed as a result because nothing, even the complete annihilation of the UK, could excuse a single 'violation' of human rights. Then I really thought I was in some parallel universe when they did an item on the British anti-war movement ..... no not the current one but the one in the 2nd WORLD WAR!!!!!! Yes, they were interviewing some old chaps who were proudly reminiscing about their heroism in being conscientious objectors. They was saying how the war achieved nothing other than unnecessary killing. The interviewer didn't attempt to challenge this view in any way - e.g. ask a simple question like how would you have fancied living under Hitler. However, at one point she did mention the concentration camps. The chaps response to this was that he felt that the stories about persecution of the Jews were simply pro-war propaganda until a friend of his who had liberated Belsen actually told him about it after the war. He kind of reluctantly agreed on this basis that some bad things had happened but nothing to warrent being involved in a war especially as it 'wasn't our duty to help the Jews'. Next thing I suppose the BBC will be rewriting history to inform today's generation how the nasty Americans and Brits brought almost total destruction to the world by unnecessarily waging war against Germans, against the wishes of a brave passifist majority.

Anyway back to the original theme. The obsessive anti-americanism that is now so embedded in the country. Look at this excellent article by Carol Gould.

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