Sunday, May 26, 2013
For
Queen and Country
A soldier dies in London, hacked to pieces
by two extremists. It is horrific. It is in broad daylight. The killers display
a crazed imperturbability to the hand held cameras of ordinary passers-by. A
woman bravely accosts them. Police arrive and shoot and injure them before they
themselves are attacked. The media circus follows. The soldier’s family are put
on camera in their desperate grief. Every news broadcast takes the viewer to
the growing mounds of flowers and tributes. Politicians talk of terror. Low-tech
attacks like these cannot be prevented. We are all in danger. We should be
afraid. Now the Home Secretary wants to reintroduce a snoopers’ charter which
will enable everyone to be watched, followed, have his or her privacy
undermined. The dead man fought for Queen and country in one of the most
unpopular wars imaginable. Britain is in Afghanistan supporting its corrupt
government. Britain is in Iraq where the toppling of a tyrant has led to
vicious tribal war and the disintegration of its society because Britain and
its allies did nothing about ensuring peaceful transition after the dictator
died, having first supplied it with arms like most countries in the war torn
Middle East. The death of the soldier helps the government. Cameron talks about
the country being stronger for the murder, united against terrorism. He can
project himself as the resolute leader. Still the media roll the images. The
dead soldier’s town. The priest at his memorial service talking about the local
lad who fought for Queen and country and who died on the streets outside his
barracks. The poor man suffered his death in the worst circumstances imaginable
but it was never going to be a personal tragedy. It was going to become
something else, a cynical opportunity to raise a population’s defiance, an
opportunity to divert their thoughts from the dead soldier’s fellow men and
women who are being killed overseas every day in wars that could never be won
and where the civilians' obscene death toll continually mounts. An opportunity for
manipulation. An opportunity to rewrite history, gloss it over, emphasise what
a democratic country Britain is and how just, therefore, must be its overseas
campaigns. An opportunity to get people onside. To induce support for the military. To deflect focus away from the political establishment.
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