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Campaign to get troops faces on stamps
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7282552.stm
I hate this war, we shouldn't be there and undoubtedly some of our more meatheadedly inclined military brethren have committed some terrible acts for which they should face the greatest consequence.
BUt I'm not posting this for any of those reasons - I would like our commemorations to remember what I am going to call UNreal people. What I mean by this is a paradox in what we would ordinarily call real people - that is those with no real status or standing above the ordinary.
Now I am arguing, that in an age where we are given more to see in terms of information technologies like tv and internet, but we see familiar images, faces of politicians and boogie men, and the majority are faceless, in the background - yet they (on both sides) pay the utmost price for this political and ideological procession we see on our screens. They are made UNreal people.
This is why I will be supporting this campaign, because I think that whatever your political or ideological leanings, we should perhaps take time to remember the individual stories, the biographies, the real people behind the carousel of explosions and proclamations at that constantly bombard us in the west.
This would be an ideal way to pause and reflect on those people, that they have individual and unique lives and that this should not be forgotten.
(NOTE: and I know this is something of a preserve of the military and I know and can think of many different types of people and occupations that would deserve at least the same treatment as service personnel. But we can't fix the world in one go, and my argument is simply that this would be better than having another Nelson-like chracter immortalized)
OH - and there should be some sort of collection to help the fund for mental health treatment for ex-service personnel to pay for more facilities and therapists.
I hate this war, we shouldn't be there and undoubtedly some of our more meatheadedly inclined military brethren have committed some terrible acts for which they should face the greatest consequence.
BUt I'm not posting this for any of those reasons - I would like our commemorations to remember what I am going to call UNreal people. What I mean by this is a paradox in what we would ordinarily call real people - that is those with no real status or standing above the ordinary.
Now I am arguing, that in an age where we are given more to see in terms of information technologies like tv and internet, but we see familiar images, faces of politicians and boogie men, and the majority are faceless, in the background - yet they (on both sides) pay the utmost price for this political and ideological procession we see on our screens. They are made UNreal people.
This is why I will be supporting this campaign, because I think that whatever your political or ideological leanings, we should perhaps take time to remember the individual stories, the biographies, the real people behind the carousel of explosions and proclamations at that constantly bombard us in the west.
This would be an ideal way to pause and reflect on those people, that they have individual and unique lives and that this should not be forgotten.
(NOTE: and I know this is something of a preserve of the military and I know and can think of many different types of people and occupations that would deserve at least the same treatment as service personnel. But we can't fix the world in one go, and my argument is simply that this would be better than having another Nelson-like chracter immortalized)
OH - and there should be some sort of collection to help the fund for mental health treatment for ex-service personnel to pay for more facilities and therapists.
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Comments
There is already a collection. We call is taxation.
However, your general point of support is one I agree with.
I would rather have stamps with Gandhi, Mandela... People like that on stamps.
Whilst they're notable people around the world, not really about Britain are they?
So what?
I'd rather have Yoko Ono's tit picture on a stamp than a squaddie.
And there is a statue of Gandhi in London...
Plus the UK is multicultural.
You've got a point. My point was that the stamps tended to have a British theme, whether it's landmarks or queens or whatever.
I'm not too fussed, it's just a stamp isn't it?
i agree with your point about better support for ex-service personnel, but i don't see how that would be achieved by putting them on stamps.
Thats not the point, the point is that taxation is inadequate so I am suggesting special measures to help get them help quick. Obviously taxation should cover it like so many other things but I'm thinking people rather than ideals here.
Yes Yes absolutely. My view with that would be that all the news of graphic injury should be broadcast - after 10pm all news should be uncensored and show us the unmitigated horror of life in Baghdad.
Yes quite, how about Buster the 100 year old London worker, Bertrand Russell...Matt Le Tissier?
What does that show? That a undemocratic minority are intent on forcing out US and UK troops are taking Iraq back to the dark ages? Do you think we should have got camera men into the jails when Saddam was in power? Would that have made people want to invade?
It would give the people what the news is supposed to do; show a realistic depiction of combat that non-combatants don't get; it also shows an implicit flaw in your argument. If the news is supposed to inform so that a democratic citizenry can make decisions based upon it, then if you are against putting everything on show for adult voters to make decisions then you are undermining our democratic involvement in the foreign affairs of our democratic country. You either want people to be actively participating or you don't - one of those options is democracy.
Oh, and the undemocratic minority?@! The millions in the streets?! And how dare you tell us that we liberated Iraq from the Dark ages; Saddam was a brutal dictator, and evil bastard and I'm not sad that he's gone BUT the kind of perfectly predictable (see Bush I after GW1) instability and hell that rained down on the Iraqi people afterwards, the insecurity, the flight of skilled citizens, disease, kidnapping murder.
We were flat out LIED TO about the reasons for war and anyone who observes and believes in empirical evidence will conclude this - I will not unquestioningly support the UK military if I believe that they are putting our citizens in danger for ulterior motives.
We didn't perpetrate it, but we unleashed it, and whats more both us and the Americans knew this would happen.
Would we have got a camera into Iraq before hand? Well we were all told for years about how evil the regime was by Bush and Blair (and also by more reputable sources like AP and Amnesty and the UN) so I guess the answer is yes. However the point is that we as a nation have done something, and voting participating citizenry have both the democratic right and obligation to know the true consequences of our actions.
My whole reasons for starting this post were that there are human beings, fellow citizens being lied to about why they are there, under supplied when they are there, and forgotten about when they leave the service. I don't care about all that queen, god and country military metaphysical stuff - that rhetortic has been used to get tommy up in front of the guns for centuries ("I hate that drum's discordant sound") - I am concerned for fellow citizens who are putting themselves in harms way for a reason, and I have a duty to them as a citizen. I don't owe the queen or her god a thing.
I was ambivalent about the war - Blair getting all sanctimonious in an armchair is almost as nauseating as Galloway getting all teary eyed about what a decent chap Saddam was. But we're in and the best thing now is to stay the course, not for the Iraqis to be given a chance at freedom from the Baathists and Islamicists, but because if we cut and run every tin-pot dictator and terrorist organisation will know that our policies can be changed by violence.
(As an aside, I don't think we were lied too. At least not deliberately, nothing I have seen has suggested anything but that Bush and Blair believed there were WMDs. Perhaps they should have caveated that belief more, but they didn't just make it up. That was the best guess intelligence not only from the UK and US, but those against such as France)
Actually I think the two go hand in hand - we don't see as citizens the consequences of war. It was all too real for previous generations, but what we get is embedded narrations. A bomb goes off, shots are fired, screaming - its all the sound and visual effects department of a human tragedy that is not presented in context. The proper reaction to horrific situations is that people be horrified - although following on from that of course we need an informative context to prevent it from happening, or in other words 'oh my god thats horrible - why is this happening and what can we do to stop it'.
Thats fair enough, but evidence I have seen tends to contradict that. If I get time, although I can't make any promises, I'll try to give an indication of where you find it, but off the top of my head, here goes.
The jist is that this invasion was documented, publicly stated policy of the neo-conservatives since the end of GW1. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz; they were all stating publicly that Iraq had WMDs before any evidence was put forward, and no convincing evidence has yet emerged. This would not be so bad if Rumsfeld had not his history with the notorious 'Team B' CIA programme involving the discredited historian Richard Pipes, self-appointed expert on the 'Soviet Mindset'. see here and also see 'BBC-2003: The power of nightmares'.
Rumsfeld has a track record of involvement with black propaganda programmes, and also with was a distant disciple (With Wolfowitz and Cheney) of the neo-conservative philosopher Leo Strauss - who believed that American society required the construction of a monstrous 'other' in order to maintain social cohesion.
Successive CIA workers have come out to criticise the manipulation of intelligence by the Americans. They were already massing forces in the area even before the passing of UN resolution 1441. Secondly, getting rid of Saddam and installing an entirely democratic Iraqi regime os logically absurd from the view of American foreign policy. Here's why;
Say Iraq becomes truly democractic, so the Shia become the majority represented group (as they form the majority population); they have every reason to have greater relations with the big Shia neighbor, Iran. Iran is at present busily building up an East Asian energy security grid with China and Russia and India on the sidelines. So the outcome of a genuinely democratic Iraq (one of the key stated aims for war) is for the Americans a complete logical absurdity - its does them no favours whatsoever.
This is off the top of my head as I say but just from a logical point of it didn't make sense in the context of how it was sold - add to that the background of the people who were involved and the only possible conclusion is that we were intentionally deceived and lied to.
(ps: like I said before i'm happy to provide further evidence for this but you might have to wait a bit for it!)
Yes, people have an emotional reaction - but policy needs to be based on intellectual ones. Apart from the risk that people will not watch the news, the arguments about what's going on will be replaced by the need to get this out of our living rooms - whatever the actual cost.
all that really says is that many in the US government were keen to get rid of Saddam. It doesn't say they made up information. To use a historical analogy Hitler wanted to act against the communists, it doesn't mean he started the Reichstag fire, just that he took opportunity of it.
The 9/11 attacks and evidence that Saddam had WMDs presented those who wanted to get rid of Saddam with an opportunity to do so. They took it. And of course the US was massing troops before 1441 - they didn't expect Saddam to comply (he was never going to compensate Kuwait for example) - but again this isn't evidence they knew he didn't have WMDs. In fact you can also read that massing in another way - it was putting pressure on Saddam and showing him that the US wasn't joking (though I suspect it was the first reason).
There's lots of conspiracy theories, and yes, like many Governments the US ignored the caveats in intelligence. However, there is no smoking gun that they lied.
You seem to assume that an democratic Iraq would ally with Iran. I'm not convinced. a democratic Iraq would not be a purely Shia state - it would have to work within the context of having large Sunni and Kurdish minorities. These together with moderate Shia's would probably prevent any hardline Shia party taking power.
Also the Iraqi's are Arabs, the Iranians Persians (albeit in both cases with substantial minorities). The historical dislike between Arabs and Persians is as strong (probably more so) in one direction than any support between co-religionists.
if Iran thought a democratic Iraq would ally with them, they'd be doing all in their power to stabilise the situation. They're not - they recognise that it's in the best interests to have a undemocratic hardline Shia party in power - given the unlikelihood of that happening they're next best option is a destabilised Iraq, which is neither a military threat or one which can show the benefits of secular democracy to the Iranian masses.
In 2001 Bahar and Kugel published 'The Reichstag Fire - How history is constructed' which puts the blame for that fire and subsequent misinformation firmly at the door of the SA and the Nazis. A short synopsis can be found here.
But returning to the main point;
The key issue here is not that the flaws in intelligence occurred and were allowed to occur because of a pre-defined policy to invade Iraq, and I shall present evidence for the two points in order.
1) On 6 March 2004 George Bush established a stated policy criterion for the invasion of Iraq, quote "a single question: has the Iraqi regime fully and unconditionally disarmed as required by UN resolution 1441, has it or not?". That was the supposed pretext for an armed attack, but in the same conference when he was asked if compliance with 1441 would prevent an invasion, Bush turned and said "when it comes to our defence we don't need anyones permission".
Therefore we can clearly see that at no point was the US clearly committed to a peaceful resolution in compliance with 1441.
2) If you look at the US senate's own investigation into the intelligence process that led to the Iraq invasion, you see unambiguously a clear commitment to make great assumptions and leaps based upon vague accusations that had little or no empirical evidence. (see here for a summary of this).
If you look at the involvement of Team B during the Cold War in actively and verifiably fabrcating claims about Soviet intentions and weapons development (where literally everything they wrote was a standup lie and has proven to be so) can we not see a pattern of the same people ending up in startling similar circumstances with startlingly similar outcomes.
(nb: The last point has a thing to do with a 1980s publication called 'The Terror Network' and its basis upon CIA black propaganda. I've only put a bit in here because I appreciate this is a long post, so please ask if you want me to verify/back this up).
Well quite, it would most likely tear itself asunder among the competing groups, as appears to be happening at the moment; once the security forces leave the pot will boil over again. It is an induced country with no historical cohesion.
My point is that (and I accept i didn't make this clear before hand) the Shia would have a great political presence - they would have interest in joining up with Iran - Iran would have an interest in the Shia majority and its possible control over energy reserves - countries already in the East Asian energy grid would also have interests in this therefore.
Any kind of major Shia political power bloc is bad news for the US; but still yes, in a democratic Iraq the Shia would be holding alot of the power if not all.
I'm not going to go into all your points, because a) we've had the discussion on Iraq and intelligence so often before and it's not going anywhere and b) it's distracting from the original post - which I agree with.
But I am going to answer this one - in that you don't seem to actually answer my post and seem to infer I'm saying something I'm not (I apologise if your not saying that, but that's the way I read it).
However, the fact that both Iraq and Iran have Shia majority's doesn't mean that they will join up. As I said there is also the Persian vs Arab and that is as important (if not more so) than them both being Shia. Historically the two groups have not gone on at well.
Also the majority of Shia in Iraq don't seem to have any wish to accept Iran's fundamentalist position on the religion. These moderates, together with the Kurds and Sunni would outvote any hardline Shia who want an alliance with Iran.
In fact, Iran has much to fear from a democratic, stable state next door. When you can look across the border and see democracy in action it's more tempting to demand greater freedom at home.
well that's the million dollar question flash, when is that ever gonna happen?
In the historical context, if threatened I think that a Shia power bloc is extremely likely. I think that the present situation makes it more likely, and further that present concerns make it more likely that certain historical contexts will be temporarily forgotten in the face of more pressing/parochial concerns.
OK, but you'll forgive me if we agree to disagree then.