TinyCybOrg

It’s your choice

terryblakey:

Yesterday I saw an extraordinary thing. It appears that the top rated video on YouTube is a simple 1 minute 55 second message from an Iraq veteran entitled Dear Mr Obama and it has attracted more than 11 million hits.

What I find disturbing about this is that here we have a young man who having been through the horrors of an Iraqi combat zone and seen first hand the consequences of Bush’s folly can still make statements like “When you call the Iraqi war a mistake you disrespect the service and sacrifice of everyone who has died promoting freedom… Because you do not understand or appreciate these principles Sir, I am supporting Senator John McCain for president.”

Please don’t get me wrong here. My criticism is not of the troops having to fight this war. I am an ex military man myself and having served for 9 years in the Royal Air Force I have a personal understanding of the mindset of servicemen and women. Granted we didn’t see active service in somewhere like Iraq, instead we had the likes of the IRA and Bader-Meinhoff’s Red Army Faction bringing the war to us, to our own streets and towns and cities. We didn’t need to go looking for a fight, the fight came to us, and all of this against the backdrop of the Cold War, where we had an enemy who could not only fight back but could offer total and unequivocal destruction of everything we held dear.

As I have pointed out in a previous blog, if the US is truly about bringing freedom by regime change then there are more deserving cases than Iraq. Zimbabwe for example has been brought to it’s knees by a vicious dictator who has murdered and pillaged a country which was once the breadbasket of Africa, but which is in the unfortunate position of having no oil reserves.

When I read the comments that follow the video I became even more depressed by the ignorance of the truth displayed by so many Americans. References to 9-11 and al-Qaida spring up everywhere. If anyone takes the time to stop listening to the rhetoric and take a look at the facts it becomes crystal clear that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was an enemy of al-Qaida and there exists no link anywhere between Iraq and 9-11, in fact it is a testament to the forces of propaganda and misinformation that so many Americans actually believe that there is a link between Iraq and 9-11. Even the so-called WMDs were lies told by the cloaked shadows of the security services simply to justify an invasion. Sure Saddam was a vicious, nasty little dictator who oppressed some sections of his own people but was he ever a threat to the security and stability of the USA? Not unless he cut off the oil. The world is full of equally vicious and nasty little dictators but unless they have huge oil reserves they can continue to sleep peacefully in their beds at night without having to wake up to find US troops knocking on the door next morning. Many people also seem to have forgotten that Saddam was armed by the US during his war with Iran. At that time he was considered to be a friend, and even stranger is the realization that he would have made an ally to the west in the fight against al-Qaida, after all we in the west have never been too squeamish about who we climb into bed with if the results are what we want.

That there are still servicemen who believe that the Iraq war is about “promoting freedom” is to my mind extremely worrying. Iraq has always been less about promoting freedom than protecting oil reserves. This young man makes the statement “…are the people of Iraq better off now than in 2002? You bet.” Well let me tell you, I live and work in the Middle East and that’s not the situation as I see it. What I see is a United States which once upon a time truly was a beacon of hope for freedom, now becoming hated and vilified, even among countries which would once have been considered friends, and in sinking to this position it has taken down with it those of us who still consider ourselves friends of the US. Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay will take a long time to forget. Rendition flights operated illegally and in defiance of the laws of your allies do not cement friendships. So called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ are simply a way of trying to make torture more palatable to a squeamish American public. It is these things and more for which America is now known, not as a light in a dark world.

Finally I would say that before anyone attacks me for being ‘anti-American’, nothing could be further from the truth. Although I am British I have an extended American family who are all very dear to me and who I wish to see living safe and secure lives. I am however anti-Bush. In my opinion he has brought shame and humiliation upon the American people. He is a weak man of limited intelligence who has been led by the nose by a group of sinister and powerful ‘interested parties’ who have made billions of dollars of war profit from the sacrifice of people like the young man who made the video that started me on this blog. I fear that a McCain/Palin presidency would just bring more of the same. America has to live in this world and the actions of American voters are being watched by over 6 Billion other people. In all my 54 years I don’t remember an election of such importance and the actions of the American voter this time around affect the rest of us too deeply to be ignored without comment.

Make the right decision, it will be on your conscience.