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Blood and poppies This weekend saw much commemoration of the Battle of the Somme. It is ninety years since the artillery fell silent, that first whistle blew and, bayonets fixed, the men went over the top. I can’t deny that military action holds a fascination for me. I would be surprised if any man of my generation has not wondered whether he had it in him to do what his grandfather and, twenty-five years later, his father did. Some of our sons are answering that question for us today. This weekend also saw the latest deaths of British servicemen fighting the War on Terror - in a fire-fight at Sangin in Afghanistan. Take some time to read this account of an otherwise unreported firefight that took place at the precise same moment. Forty-eight soldiers of C Company of the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment - with an attachment of airborne troops from the Royal Irish Rangers – fought off a very determined “bunch of Afghans in rubber sandals.” Excitement aside, the account made me wonder whether the lightly-equipped, friendship-toting British Army has any utility in Helmand. If it isn’t there to occupy the area in the conventional, lock-down sense, and if it can’t possibly win the goodwill of the people, what is its mission? The Times’ correspondent, Christina Lamb, doesn’t venture much on the matter, but gives us this:-
Of course, the operation in Helmand is not at all concerned with poppy cultivation. It studiously avoids all such inflamatory considerations. It is a peacekeeping initiative under NATO control (NATO having taken over strategic coordination of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in the summer of 2003). NATO’s brief is to facilitate the Afghan government’s “ownership of and, eventually, full control and responsibility for” the country. So, is order imposed from Kabul an objective which the villagers of Helmand would welcome, surviving as they are principally off the narcotics trade? We would be living in a very strange logical universe if it was. In a sense wider than just utility, then, I find myself brought back to Christina Lamb’s existential bastardisation, “Why were we there?” On what basis does NATO, an agent of the elevated and far-distant “international community”, justify its intervention? And does it lend any real moral legitimacy? Normally one might begin looking for a quick and easy answer by following the chain of command back to the White House. In this case, however, it’s no help since the President claims to receive the Word directly from Someone Even More Important than himself (clue: it’s not Paul Wolfowitz). However, let us presume that at the outset, back in October 2001, he did not require his Creator to weigh the Taliban government and Osama bin Laden and find them wanting. He had 295 million Americans for that. Ousting the Taliban and finding bin Laden certainly appeared to be the proportional response to the 9/11 attacks that justice demanded, a fact recognised in the coalition of countries - eighteen of them – that offered one or another level of support. But here we are getting on for five years later. The coalition is a distant memory and, in a general sense, attack is turning ineluctably to defence – not militarily so much as in the political objective of entrenching the Kabul government. The righteous, very American “let’s go get him” spirit has, by degrees, transmogrified into “let’s win hearts and minds”, and is by further degrees turning via “No, we’re here for the long run” towards “let’s get the hell out of here”. In Afghanistan, the fears of the invader are always of Afghanistan itself. Will its impossible terrain, its impossible people simply swallow Western efforts at democratisation and liberalisation like the relentless desert sand? Will it swallow the Karzai administration, or his successor’s? Will nothing survive … nothing change. More than likely, save that the “international community” (aka American neoconnery) will have been exposed as poor students of history and of human nature who committed the cardinal sin of all ideologists: they interpreted the facts in 2001 so as to contain their own conclusions and suit their own ambitions. One searches for a moral basis for neoconservative adventurism in vain. Neocons abstract a false universal value from liberal democracy and keep their true interests away from public scrutiny. They don’t send their own sons to fight in their cause, either. It’s not very gentlemanly. So if Afghan tribesmen themselves cleave ferociously to their own ways and resist Western democratisation who are they, the neocons, to condemn them? What if, after their famed universal values are falsified, all that is left of the grand plan for a democratic Afghanistan is military coercion? What just cause attaches to that? NATO’s reification of “ownership”? But this is ahistorical, the very converse of just cause. The tribesmen of Helmand have never been anything but ferociously autonomous. Kabul has never had “ownership” – and much less “control” - of the Afghan countryside. The very idea is an absurd, self-serving invention, like so much else that has come out of the post-Trotskyite American “right”. Ultimately, for it to have even a partial moral soundness NATO’s intervention must be able to trace its roots clearly back to America’s post-9/11 righteousness. Only that could still legitimise. But one word, Iraq, cuts the ground away completely, and demonstrates the limits of inchoate public feeling in a modern democracy. And here’s five more to demonstrate what cynicism abounds when those limits are not just exceeded but are, as they have been, abused: The Office of Special Plans, described by Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the Pentagon until her retirement, as:- “A subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress.” In any case, as America’s sense of righteousness stumbles on under the weight of Guantanamo, Saddam’s missing WMDs and Abu Ghraib, moral legitimacy for NATO in Afghanistan cannot be a matter of American interest alone. Change from without that does not elicit the consent of the Afghan tribes is morally - and, of course, practically - unsustainable. As Christina Lamb found, there is less evidence by the day that that consent will ever be forthcoming. She seeks a fix through the agencies of security and investment:-
In conclusion I would like to remind readers that we have been here before, forty years ago. Here’s a curiously similar point made in an assessment by Harold P.Ford of CIA attitudes back in the days of LBJ:-
The whole of that Ford essay is worth reading, particularly the passage about the VC’s exploitation of Vietnamese nationalism and this, in conclusion:-
Just so. Let us remember what the denizens of that “highly politicized, sometimes chaotic process” are asking our servicemen to do. They ask them to fight not in our name but in the name of liberal democracy even unto death. They ask them to “help” villagers who do not welcome them but, instead, help the Taliban. It is, as I have tried to show, a false request with little if any basis in morality. The whole premise on which British servicemen are fighting in Afghanistan, since it is does not serve any stated British interest and since no overarching, moral cause applies, is false . Let us honour our boys’ courage and professionalism, huge amounts of which shine through Christina Lamb’s report from Zumbelay. But ninety years ago profligacy with soldiers’ lives became a national issue and, although we will never see the like of that again, its echo can still be heard in the valleys and among the poppies of southern Afghanistan. Comments:2
Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 03 Jul 2006 14:40 | # The evidence is, Martin, that invading Afghanistan is always problematic in the extreme, if not a plain mistake. But, really, doing so in pursuit of a Western model of liberal democracy is Jewish duplicity and intellectual crassness, nothing more. Today there is no international terrorist conspiracy. There is cultural Marxism at home. Read the blog. You are right that Islam is not our enemy. It is an enemy of our enemy, but it is not our friend. Were we truly intellectually and politically sovereign instead of slavish we might find the means to defuse Islamic extremism with no cost to ourselves. As it is, our children holidaying in Bali die because we lack the perspicacity to be independent. 3
Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 03 Jul 2006 15:27 | # Alex, a culturally confident West would swat aggressive Islam like a fly - which honourable objective there is more than one way of attaining. Under the neocons, however, we are trying to bring Western liberalism to them while, at the same time, our elected representatives throw open our borders so their hordes may come and live with us. Cui Bono? 4
Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 03 Jul 2006 19:40 | # Alex, We British had and have no interest in Afghanistan. The Americans did, of course. But that interest was restricted to punishing the Taliban as severely and decapitating AQ. Instead, they did exactly what AQ was asking of them, and declared war for global liberalism. I suppose traditional options in Afghanistan were few, particularly following the assassination of Masood. But at any time in Western statecraft the Jewish fantasy of polluting the Umma with liberalism would have been condemned out of hand and its advocates deemed half-mad and dangerous. 5
Posted by Desmond Jones on Tue, 04 Jul 2006 04:03 | # If Islam really was a threat to the West, why did we undermine the Soviet presence in Afghanistan? The USSR dominated the Taliban after its incursion in 1980, until Reagan supplied them with US Stingers.
A Soviet victory in the Stan means the twin towers are still standing. The London bombers and those recently arrested in Toronto were/are largely Pakistanis. Mohammad Sidique Khan said,
The Cdn bombers, 12 of 17 were Pakistani/Bangladeshis [Pashtun} were motivated by claims that the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry were raping Afghani women. They are motivated by ethnicity, the torture of “my people” not an affront to their God. GW is correct. Islam is only a threat because Islam is here. They do not possess a heavy airlift capability to intervene against blasphemers and the dissolute. The threat is an ethnic threat. 6
Posted by JB on Tue, 04 Jul 2006 05:00 | # Alex Zeka:
who let the muzzies in ? That’s our real enemy. Religious nuts can hate us all they want for the right or the wrong reasons but as long as they and their disciples stay in their caves far away from our countries who cares ? 7
Posted by ben tillman on Tue, 04 Jul 2006 07:26 | #
Well said, James. 8
Posted by ben tillman on Tue, 04 Jul 2006 07:37 | #
Genetic omni-dominance? James, do you have anything to add? 9
Posted by Al Ross on Tue, 04 Jul 2006 09:21 | # The Ashkenazim, themselves a racially-hybrid group, are identified by their anti-Arab actions as the most virulent anti-Semites of all. 10
Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 04 Jul 2006 11:46 | # Alex, The attacks of 9/11 were not against the infidel West per se, but were intended to provoke it to make war on the territory of Islam - the point being that AQ seeks to radicalise the Umma so that it will sweep away the House of Saud and purify the sacred soil of Islam of all Western influences. The real challenge for America post-9/11 was how to respond to this intent. The neocons determined to protect that sweet little democracy in the ME by, ultimately, forcing liberalism on the Umma instead. Perry de Havilland got the idea in April 2004. It really is a war of civilisations: radical Islam spread by terror against corrupting liberalism spread by all the means we know and love. Our interest, as Europeans, is to disengage totally from Islam and its lands and from Israel. Naturally, the former includes disengaging Islamic populations from our lands. We can buy our oil from whoever emerges top-dog in the ME, and retain the military option if they get too uppity or they are threatened by another external force. 11
Posted by Desmond Jones on Tue, 04 Jul 2006 17:16 | # The Twin Towers attack killed British citizens. Moreover, it was in affect a declaration of war against the “corrupt”, “decadent” West, and that includes us. The first attack was in Feb. 1993. If the US had stopped Muslim immigration entirely, the Towers would be still standing.
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Posted by the other guy on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 13:55 | # Well Karlmagnus wants a world policeman. He cheers on the Brits as the lads to do the job. Maybe he should reflect on the fact that they may have stopped doing the job for a reason. Certainly the foolishness of the Somme was one of the reasons. Another was that the motive for empire is to privatize profits and socialize costs and when the natives get even a little sophisticated the costs of doing business get just a tad too high and the profits sink a bit. Charles the Great, I do not mean to be insulting, but I find your use of “we” suspect and having a hint of the chickenhawk about it. “We are not at war with “Islamofascism” we are at war with terrorism, and the sooner we start rounding up terrorist Irish and Venezuelans the better off the world will be.” I suspect that the actual rounding up will be done by grunts while you are poolside. Anyway, lets see, The IRA, Venezuela, Al Qaieda, the Farc, Hamas and hundreds of groups around the world. You have your work cut out for you. Better get cracking. The boys who died at the Somme were victims if drafted or fools if they enlisted, as was I when I enlisted in the Vietnam era army. 13
Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 17:22 | # Alex, The key, as I endeavoured to make clear in the post, was the American public’s righteous demand for justice. Actions consonant with that were acceptable, and Blair’s government enjoyed the support of our own people in contributing towards them. But when things tipped over into a moral crusade to bring about the modernisation of the Arab world - basically just liberal nation-building - it signalled that powerful men were operating an agenda not remotely of the people but of themselves. The dividing line between the two was crossed very early on. Iraq was spectacularly on the wrong side of it. But the presumption for a national government in Kabul with a legislative and security reach all over the country was also well on the wrong side. I honestly wouldn’t presume to say where the divide between justice and policy exploitation should have lain. Practicality had to be part of the equation - both in terms of whether the neocon plan to supplant liberal democracy in a medieval, theocratic non-state had any reality to it and whether Afghanistan, militarily just about the most difficult place to operate in the world, wasn’t always too tough a nut to crack. 14
Posted by Desmond Jones on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 17:30 | # Like the Mossad, after the Black September Massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics and the SAS action in Gibraltor in 1988, run the bastards to ground and assasinate them. 17
Posted by Matra on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 19:41 | # I saw TOG’s name in ‘Most Recent Comments’ and immediately assumed someone must have mentioned the Irish. Sure enough. TOG, chasing the IRA down and killing them was good enough for the Irish in the 1920s so why not for the British in the 70s and 80s? 18
Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 22:51 | # I did say that the assassination of Ahmed Shah Masoud complicated matters for the West, because no obvious fighting general amenable to the West remained to back (whenever possible backing a local to govern for you being the way the Raj was operated for a century and a half). If you are left with only a latterday Shuja then there’s never likely to be an exit because he will always need military support. Such it is with Karzai, and it is a dilemma that the over-confident and frankly careless neocons make a ten times worse by trying to extend Kabul’s “ownership” to the whole damned country. It cannot but end in tears. I don’t claim to have the answers to the riddle of Afghanistan. That would be absurd. But I do think much caution and far more modest objectives would have been a more workable way forward in 2001. 19
Posted by the other guy on Wed, 05 Jul 2006 23:14 | # Matra, What the Free State did in the 20s was criminal. What the Brit terror apparatus did in the 70s and 80s were war crimes. Got it? Scroob, Get a life, I’ve made my opinion of open borders known before. GW, This is not in defense of anything that was done. The IRA did attempt to warn, more than one can say of the British Army on Bloody Sunday. If you wish to trade atrocity for atrocity, count me out. I was merely letting Desmond Jones know, sometimes things don’t go all that well for his beloved state forces, despite the fact that they have all the resources. My guess is he, like Karlmagnus are not going to be anywhere near the action. 20
Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 06 Jul 2006 00:50 | # ToG, All I want from you is the recognition that all intentional civilian deaths, whether in NI, England or Dublin, absolutely disqualified recourse to the fig-leaf of “political violence”. They were murders. 21
Posted by Matra on Thu, 06 Jul 2006 02:40 | #
So only the IRA speak for the Irish people and not the Irish state.
London’s response to the IRA was tame. The IRA knew the British state lacked the will to take them on. No wonder Republicans welcomed the British troops in ‘69. They knew the state of Northern Ireland would have given no quarter had it not been blocked by English liberals.
Bloody Sunday was due to Republican agitation. The real crime of it was that London used it as an excuse to end devolution even though the troops involved weren’t under the Northern Ireland state’s control. But I know these are all mere details that don’t interest Irish-Americans like TOG. They have their myths to maintain.
Very few resources were used against the IRA. (As I’ve told you before the security forces were more successful against Protestants). The army obviously weren’t there to defeat them or they would’ve done so in short order. Their purpose from day one was to maintain as much order as possible whilst the politicians tried to force the NI majority into a face-saving surrender. On the few occasions, such as Gibraltar, when they did take out the trash your brave IRA heroes cried like girls to Amnesty International and every other left wing organisation in the UK. (BTW you need to update your talking points as they’ve been dealt with before. Are you imitating John Ray?)
Sort of like pseudo-New Englanders* who support killing Protestants in Ulster from the other side of the Atlantic. * A real New Englander is one whose ancestors built the region, not the Ellis Island hordes who showed up later. Indeed the real New England did not survive Ellis Island. Irish Catholics like TOG and his ancestors saw to that. 22
Posted by Matra on Thu, 06 Jul 2006 02:43 | #
Maybe he believes that if they give a very late (often useless) warning that makes it OK. 23
Posted by the other guy on Thu, 06 Jul 2006 04:16 | # “All I want from you is the recognition that all intentional civilian deaths, whether in NI, England or Dublin, absolutely disqualified recourse to the fig-leaf of “political violence”. They were murders.” Follow the logic all the way, GW. Dresden, Hiroshima, Iraq, Gaza. It is all murder even in war. If you really did believe this you would, however also admit there are causes and you would be for a British withdrawl from Ireland.
Actually, my first ancestor in this country came over and fought in the Continental Army so, I think I have some rights here. Certainly, he was a better man than those “real New Englanders” who fought in King Phillip’s war thinking they were going to easily steal the Indians’ land and got their asses kicked and had to enlist other Indians to eke out a victory. “Indeed the real New England did not survive Ellis Island. Irish Catholics like TOG and his ancestors saw to that.” It is an ill wind that blows no good. 24
Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 06 Jul 2006 09:16 | # ToG, I mean you no disrespect, indeed I reckon you would be a useful ally here in other ways, but on the subject of Irish terrorism I suspect that you know, really, that you are arguing from pure, ingrained bias. The equivalency you seek between WW2 Allied forces and the Provos does not exist. It’s such a tawdry assertion, so disregarding of the character and circumstances of the times, I wonder that you can raise it here with a straight face. But to deal with it anyway ... had the Republic, as a political entity representative of its people, declared war on its neighbour to the east in 1939, mustered its armies and marched them into battle, all the kinds of actions and events that characterise real war would have come to pass. War is what it is, and events of great import and suffering, often caused by mistaken judgement, occur. That is part of the tragedy of being human. But legality attends nonetheless. The murder and maiming of completely unknowing innocents by terrorists for their own private aims is, naturally, never granted the moral clothing of law, and never enjoys the imprimateur of the State or the Church or, save in very exceptional circumstances, domestic public opinion. I am at a bit of loss to know why such obvious things have to be said at this juncture in history, when the catastrophe of terrorism in Europe is finally coming to an end. But there we are. You do not want to accept that the Provos were poisonous, inexcusable murderers, and I suppose you see spreading the sin to just about everybody else as a way to save their reputation. It may work for you, but I think you are likely to be alone in that. 25
Posted by Desmond Jones on Thu, 06 Jul 2006 16:12 | # It is difficult to respect someone who demeans the sacrifice of others by projecting his own failings upon them. Certainly the loved ones, of those who volunteered and fell at the Somme, did not consider them fools. It is also interesting to note the contradiction. Those that serve and fall are fools and those that he ‘presumes’ did not serve are cowards. It smacks of psychosis. 26
Posted by Matra on Thu, 06 Jul 2006 19:33 | #
References to a “British withdrawal” have been used for decades by IRA apologists to make it sound like a conflict between Irish and English (most foreigners seeing British and English as synonyms). Of course, many ignorant Americans actually think the people of NI want to join the Republic but are being prevented from doing so by evil English imperialists! A “British withdrawal” really means the expulsion of one million Protestants who have been there for between three and four centuries. The IRA tactic of killing Protestant farmers and the sons who would inherit their land in Fermanagh, Tyrone, and Armagh was a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing that had nothing to do with the English. Even if they don’t call for “British withdrawal” the IRA through their violence are saying they don’t believe the Protestants should have a say on their own political future. The real cause of IRA violence was the refusal of some Republicans to accept election results in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. 27
Posted by the other guy on Thu, 06 Jul 2006 21:13 | # GW, I assure you I mean you no disrespect as well. Still, to accuse me of bias when your answer was, to say the least tendentious surprises me. Of course, I argue my points as best and as honestly as I can. I am sorry to say, in a sense I am appalled by yours. To condemn the IRA, an organization that in the last century did more to warn civilians than any other, while excusing the incineration of civilians at Dresden because “legality attends nonetheless” does you no credit. The appeal to legality holds water only if the law is just. Slavery had the sanction of law and of the church and still has the approval of the mosque. Well, if circumstances had been such that you had fallen into my hands “bound to service” it is gratifying to know you would have toiled at my bidding because legality attends. Moi, I would have lost no opportunity to assert my freedom and cause the demise of massa. For much of the Royal Navy’s history the lower ranks were procured via the press gang. I guess you would have cheerfully served ‘is Majesty because the law is the law. Pas moi. I would have contemplated the death of the officers and would have been justified no matter how horrible their end was. Each to his own, I guess. Like I said, your arguments are tendentious. You know the truth. Honor yourself and say it. England in Ireland is, was and always will be crime, just as a revenge bombing of civilians from on high is murder. 28
Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 06 Jul 2006 22:08 | # ToG, I am fairly certain that I know a deal more than you about the air war, having been a student of it most of my adult life and having researched aspects of it at documentary source. If you are going to build a case based on Dresden it isn’t simply enough to intone the word, as if the mere act of doing so carries certain, indisputable implications. You have to contextualise your meaning, so that the ways in which the event is distinguished from “bombing of civilians from on high” (and “revenge bombing”, to boot) - or not - is made clear. Are you claiming that only military targets were morally admissable? Are you aware of the RAF’s early history of daylight bombing in WW2? Are you aware of the technologies available for bombing of enemy targets in darkness? Moreover, are you aware of the inter-war development of military doctrine in respect of air power? It’s a big subject, ToG, and my experience is that most leftists, for example, who prattle on about Dresden and Hiroshima soon come unstuck on detail. There is, though, such a volume of prattlers that it doesn’t make much difference in the general scheme of things. The left, anyway, is not amenable to persuasion. We will not agree, either. For me terrorism is not difficult and filled with complexity, like the air war. In practise it is mostly blind racial hatred in pursuit of political self-justification, and in the greater historical context it is entirely unnecessary. I do not believe that the men, women and children required to quit this life by Baader-Meinhof or the Red Brigades or today’s Chechen terrorists or AQ or ETA or INLA or the Provos were sacrificed for anybody’s good ... anybody whatsoever. If I was an Irishman I would not wish such shame to pave my road to any freedom, real or illusory. 29
Posted by the other guy on Thu, 06 Jul 2006 22:50 | # “It is difficult to respect someone who demeans the sacrifice of others by projecting his own failings upon them. Certainly the loved ones, of those who volunteered and fell at the Somme, did not consider them fools. It is also interesting to note the contradiction. Those that serve and fall are fools and those that he ‘presumes’ did not serve are cowards. It smacks of psychosis.” Desmond, I mean no insult. As I said, I was a fool to have enlisted in the Viet Nam era army as that war was a fools errand. So was the so called Great War. The fate of the poor squaddies was tragic. I assure you all, I am not trying to bait you. Argue your case without resorting to silly psychoanalysis. 30
Posted by the other guy on Thu, 06 Jul 2006 22:54 | # “Yes it is, isn’t it. The fact remains, nevertheless, that some winds are that way—they are ill winds ... They blow no good, none whatsoever ... Speaking of which—has anything good blown out of Hyannisport lately? ... just wondering ... “ There is some point here, maybe? Probably not. 31
Posted by Desmond Jones on Fri, 07 Jul 2006 06:24 | # To condemn the IRA, an organization that in the last century did more to warn civilians than any other, while excusing the incineration of civilians at Dresden because “legality attends nonetheless” does you no credit. The assumption here is that targeting innocent civilians, under the Geneva Convention, is a war crime. The logic in this statement also suggests that criminality and immorality of IRA killing of innocents is somehow mitigated by the warning. It then follows, using that logic, that if Allied Bomber Command had forewarned the Germans that unless they surrendered unconditionally it meant the incineration of one of their cities and its citizens, it mitigates the immorality of the crime. It does not in either case. The logic here also does not address the issue of reciprocity in the Geneva Convention. The law was designed in large part to prevent retaliation. Casualties from the blitz in the UK totalled approximately 140,000. Using your logic, and the terms of the GC, the targeting of innocents in the UK through carpet-bombing is a war crime. Logically, the crime abrogates the right of protection for enemy innocents under the GC. Your logic argues this position. England in Ireland is a crime, therefore IRA killings of innocents are not criminal because the English presence in Ireland removes their right of protection. However, your assertion that England [or more accurately Irish Protestants] in Ireland is a crime is at best tendentious. The criminality of the German blitz is, however, obvious. The same logical fallacy is apparent in the rest of your argument. Slavery is immoral because it is founded on unjust law, and that then justifies Nat Turner murdering innocent white women and children to end an immoral construct. GW is correct. Your position is based on bias. It rests solely on criminalising the British presence in Ireland. It’s reductio ad absurdum. It criminalizes the English presence in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand [which you attempt to do with your references to King Philips’s War]. It criminalizes the English presence in England and more absurdly it criminalizes the Irish presence in Ireland. The Nordic presence in Ireland is as criminal as the English presence in Ireland. It’s ridiculous. 32
Posted by Matra on Sat, 08 Jul 2006 07:52 | #
England is not in Ireland. Protestants are in Ireland. How many times does that have to be explained before thick-headed Oirish “New Englanders” like TOG understand? Perhaps Englishmen should protest Wayne Rooney’s presence in England? Irish-Americans did as much as the Jews to destroy WASP America. Many of them live in areas besieged by non-whites. Yet still they cry about the presence of Protestants in the old country that most of them couldn’t find on a map. No wonder the USA can’t fight off the Third World invasion. With “allies” like the Ted Kennedy-voting Fenians who needs enemies? 33
Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 08 Jul 2006 09:19 | # Returning to the Helmand issue, the Guardian runs a lead item today on the slow dawning of realism among our betters in Westminster and Whitehall:-
Meanwhile, the official, trans-Atlantic worldview still obtains, to quote Prudence Glum:-
Brown is at one with The War Party. To him there is no sense in which we are invading another man’s home, and that man is never going to look upon us as friendly benefactors from far away. He will hate us. For our part, the security we seek in the dust of southern Afghanistan is to be found back home, the defence of which is simply something that, for the most part, neocons perceive as anti-semitic. 34
Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 08 Jul 2006 10:20 | # Furthermore, Matthew Parris writes in The Times:-
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Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 08 Jul 2006 10:32 | # In The Daily Mail Tory turncoat Max Hastings writes a long and bitter article about the situation.
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Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 08 Jul 2006 10:55 | # Max Hastings’ contemptuous words are those of a man who always knew he would be led into a quagmire. But that knowledge is seeping through the body politic, and the outlook for Blair will be intimately tied to the rising outrage at our impotence. “In Blair’s Britain,” writes Hastings, “we have had gesture education policy, gesture health policy, gesture justice policy. Now, in Afghanistan, the Prime Minister gives us gesture military strategy.” But that’s the point. Within a few weeks of taking up the reigns in Downing Street in 1997 Blair invited in Sir Peter Hall to discuss Arts funding. Hall had, all through the lean, monetaristic Thatcher years, been pressing for government intervention to support his beloved community of artistic Labour voters. Now, at last, he had the government he wanted, and the chance to influence it. He emerged from the meeting to be greeted by some broadsheet newshound, and delivered himself of this utterly unexpected pearl of wisdom:- “Surface is what you get with Blair.” That was the first public acknowledgement of the fatal lightness of Blairism. It will be its political epitaph, too. 37
Posted by tog on Sat, 08 Jul 2006 14:15 | # GW, C’mon. You know better than that. Your just being cute. To argue that just because you have some tech knowledge that I don’t does not really change anything. Brits have been crying about the crime of the Blitz forever even though Churchill started civilian bombing before the Luftwaffe (in Britain anyway, the LW had already terror bombed Poland and Rotterdam, which begs the question why, other than Goering, no Lufwaffe bigwigs stood in the dock. Could some embarassing evidence have come out). I have not said the IRA is perfect. Every force commits crimes and they are wrong. Britain’s in Ireland and elsewhere are of a magnitude that dwarfs anything the IRA ever did. 38
Posted by tog on Sat, 08 Jul 2006 14:17 | # “To condemn the IRA, an organization that in the last century did more to warn civilians than any other, while excusing the incineration of civilians at Dresden because “legality attends nonetheless” does you no credit. The assumption here is that targeting innocent civilians, under the Geneva Convention, is a war crime.” Desmond, look up non sequitur and don’t waste my time. 39
Posted by tog on Sat, 08 Jul 2006 14:23 | # “Irish-Americans did as much as the Jews to destroy WASP America” WASPAmerica has contracepted itself into oblivion. Gee, Matra, considering all this, don’t you think you should be doing some race saving yourself and finding an aryan babe and procreating instead of wasting your time here. I’d wish you luck, but I actually do have some sympathy for WASPs. 40
Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 08 Jul 2006 14:51 | # ToG, Doenitz and Raeder only received prison sentences, of course. It was the military and Party elite who went to the gallows. Rotterdam, btw, was wildly overblown. 30,000 victims were immediately claimed, something that the authorities might not have been terribly anxious to explain in 1945. I also take issue with you over your language concerning the Blitz. Londoners were stoic and courageous (as were the Germans under Allied bombing). And that stoicism and courage are interesting, because they are lacking in respect to large-scale terrorist outrages in times of peace. Can you guess why, my friend? It’s not just a question of the Provos and the others being “wrong”. That’s only your opinion now. The question is: why didn’t the ordinary Irish (and Irish-Americans) think the Provos were wrong at the time? Why didn’t they revolt against the slaughter of civilians in their name? Are you seriously telling me that Billy and the Black & Tans justify that? If so, what’s changed? Why are we at peace all of a sudden? I’ve been in an Irish pub in what is now Pakistani Bedford, and I’ve left when I saw the hat being passed around. So don’t tell me that the murder of innocents was not widely supported. I think the reason can only be ethnic hatred, specifically against the English. History, of which I agree there is far too much, was not the responsibility of Tim Parry and Jonathan Ball. 41
Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 09:52 | # Returning one last time to the subject of the post, today Peter Preston in the Guardian writes powerfully and in the same vein as the others:-
If it isn’t already, this will become the majority view very quickly. The neocons have no support now outside of the top echelons of New Labour and among Jewry. They have saddled us with sorrow that could last a decade, unless and until humility and realism rise to the top. 42
Posted by tog on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 14:36 | # “WASP America has contracepted itself into oblivion.” (—TOG) “Right, with a little help from an Irish-Catholic Dem Party Kennedy-wing voting block and an Irish-Catholic clergy”
Poor scroob, always, always it is Teddy the bogey man and the Irish Catholics. I wonder, does scroob wear the sash over the sheet or the sheet over the sash. If scroob is fuzzy on the protocol, I am sure Oirish hating Matra has the proper vesting down pat. It might interest scroob to know that there is a school of thought among some papists that there was an elite wasp plot to ethnically cleanse cities of ethnic papists by importing blacks. The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing by E. Michael Jones, Ph.D. I have not read it, just some reviews. Don’t know if the author makes his case, just want to show scroob there are other viewpoints. Oh, amongst Irish Catholics, except those wealthy enough to be indistinguishable from their WASP neighbors and living in wealthy suburbs like Weston or Wellesley, there is no support for Teddy. 43
Posted by tog on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 15:29 | # “Doenitz and Raeder only received prison sentences, of course. It was the military and Party elite who went to the gallows.” D & R were admirals. Before sub launched nukes there was a certain degree of difficulty in bombing civilian populations from Das Boot. Also, assigning Einsatzgruppen to subs might have been perceived by even the fuhrer as a waste of time. It was army officers (e.g. Keitel and Jodl) who went to the gallows. The French judge at Jodl trial protested the error of the sentence. The Luftwaffe had participated in mass murder but at a level dwarfed by the allies. GW, you are great for strawmen. I never impugned the courage of the English in the blitz. You know what my point is. So you left the pub when the hat was passed around. Did you leave because they were saying, we are passing the hat for the purpose of killing innocent civilians. It takes a lot of nerve to say that the purpose of the IRA campaign was the death of civilians. Like I said, you are being cute…. and dishonest. 44
Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 17:28 | # “Brits have been crying about the crime of the Blitz forever” was what you said, ToG. The men of the Luftwaffe were not mass murderers or even terrorfliegern. They were sons of Germany engaged in a total war, which was understood and which explains the stoicism of the British (and, correspondingly, the German) public. It is a great travesty to compare them to the race-haters of the Provos and the others. That’s your point, of course ... that the killers you supported are equivalent to the serving soldiers, or at least airmen, of WW2. In that event, every other terrorist outfit in recent memory is likewise just fine and dandy, and no different to any other serving soldier anywhere. It’s time to move on from this now, ToG. The Ireland you love is embarking on the same path of dissolution among the hordes of the Third World as the rest of the white world, and the patriots of the IRA support it on the grounds that oppression is the enemy. Well, do you agree with that? I think not, and I think we would both agree that Ireland is for the Irish - whilst I would additionally argue that Ulster is for Ulstermen. But I wouldn’t raise my hand at you in the process. 45
Posted by the other guy on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:08 | # ““Brits have been crying about the crime of the Blitz forever” was what you said, ToG.” Exactly, the point being the Blitz was crime, or so I always heard. If so, so was Dresden. As to race hate, that takes a nerve. If you have some evidence that the constant pervasive policy of the provos was the purposeful killing of non combatants, put up or shut up. Don’t give isolated little anecdotes either. I contend that the serving IRA man was better than the mercenaries that they faced who had all the apparatus of a modern army behind them and the hope of a pension at the end of the day and who engaged in their own atrocities.. Sure, Sinn Fein has a dumb immigration policy. No dumber than the so called conservative Republicans and probably not too much worse than your Tories, but so what. Happy to move on. I can get over England if you can get over Ireland. 46
Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:39 | # ToG, 1) Your point about the Blitz was that we’ve been “crying” about it. But we are proud of our national comportment during the Blitz. Was it a crime? Well, the victors said so. They wrote the history. Kesselring was sentenced to prison, Goering to hang as we know. Arthur Harris was offered no further employment, and quietly encouraged to settle elsewhere. Solly Zuckerman wrote the Overall Report, condemning Cherwell and Harris’ policy and lauding his own, frustrated communications plan. But there is precious little that is morally reliable in any of this. Moral absolutes in warfare (but not in terrorism) are often less reliable than one might wish, and a poor foundation for extramural interests - for your interest, for example, of absolving the IRA. 2) The Provo’s killers were not better than “the mercenaries that they faced” for the screamingly obvious reason that they did not face them. 3) If politics is, as it now seems, an alternative to civil violence rather than a upshot of it, why was anyone murdered by the IRA in the first place? Yet that early reliance upon a campaign of terror and death, that early decision to go out and kill, had to have its genesis in something. You think political frustration. I think racial hatred. It’s a bit like Zidane yesterday evening. He couldn’t have done what he did without a latent hatred inside him. Whatever Metarazzi said, it was only a trigger. Just so in Ireland. 47
Posted by Desmond Jones on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:09 | # Exactly, the point being the Blitz was crime, or so I always heard. If so, so was Dresden. Which also makes the IRA killing of innocents criminal. And how does that make
How does the IRA man hold the higher moral ground just because he does not get a pension? The implication, still unproven, is that the Protestant presence in Ireland is illegal. It makes the English the aggressor and thus the less moral. If that logic is followed, which is the same position put forth at Nuremberg, the initiator of aggressive war is the criminal, then Dresden is not a crime. tog wants it both ways. The most bewildering aspect of tog’s position is why it even matters to him. Supposedly his ancestor fought with the Continental Army. After more than two centuries in America, during which his people enjoyed the benefits of a society founded upon Anglo-Saxon values and institutions he still bares a seething unquenchable hatred of the English. What else can it be but racial/ethnic hatred? 48
Posted by tog on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 20:38 | # “Moral absolutes in warfare (but not in terrorism)” “No matter how you slice it, it’s still baloney” Al Smith If they ever have an Olympic event for cuteness, you and Jones will be on the dais for gold and silver. 49
Posted by Desmond Jones on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:19 | # “No matter how you slice it, it’s still baloney” That’s it. That’s the full extent of tog’s rejoinder. What else is to be said, except to accept him at his word. He is a fool after all. 50
Posted by the other guy on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:24 | # “He is a fool after all.” I would have been a fool had I answered you in detail. You make no honest point, but just repeat your tendentious crap. Ah yes, blogs. People do get carried away. The anonymity makes tough guys out of milquetoasts. Suffice it to say, you would be a lot more polite if you were facing me. i bet you don’t go around London debating the people you perceive as untermenschen and when they tire of you call them fools. 51
Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 23:32 | #
You and your brethren in the Republic might do well to go around Dublin debating them, ToG, because if you don’t it’ll be you—you and the Irish of Ireland—who’ll be the new Untermenschen, obliged to kowtow to a bunch of imported Maghreb Arab and Somali Negro Overlords and that in your own country to boot. It’s happening right now as we speak: it’s underway. I’d sincerely drop the English obsession, ToG, and start taking a lively interest in the plans Professor Ferdinand von What’sHisName has for spearheading the transformation of the Emerald Isle into a racially/ethnoculturally unrecognizable mish-mash of Chinamen mainly (it’s right there in black and white in the interview I linked the other day—go read it), together with generous helpings of Maghrebians and other Moslem Arabs, Subcons, African Negroes, Turks, and who knows, maybe Mexicans too if the good professor and his Tranzi friends can possibly wedge them in somehow on top of all the others. The plan calls for the Irish race and ethnoculture to be reduced to, what—a quarter of the population of the New & Improved Ireland? Something like that. And as you point out, Sinn Fein supports it. Not only supports it, but has let it be known, from what I understand, that they plan on looking with pretty stern disapproval at anyone who openly opposes it (“knee-capping” sound familiar to anyone here? ...). Yes, ToG, the wheel turns, the pendulum swings—maybe it’s time to “get over it” vis-à-vis ancient blood feuds with the English and start looking at what’s happening right under your own nose over in the Republic, which the Sinn Fein are preparing to help the Tranzis ram down the throats of Irishmen? Hey just a thought—you might want to consider it. Or are you too scared of being knee-capped to open your mouth? ... 52
Posted by Matra on Tue, 11 Jul 2006 01:44 | # TOG
Assuming “sheets” is a reference to the KKK TOG should post such comments at anti-white websites instead of one dedicated to our preservation. He also mentions E Michael Jones, author of the brilliant essay Mock Messiah: Jewish Humor and Cultiral Subversion (I can’t find a link at the moment). Jones argues that ethnic Catholics were victims of WASP and liberal Jewish urban planners. There may be some places were that happened but urban planning power follows political power. It was ethnic Catholics (especially the Irish) who voted in the Democratic politicians who were allied to urban blacks. Most of the big city mayors in places like Boston and Chicago were ethnic Catholics and Democrats. Voting in those who hang around Jesse Jackson tells me the urban Catholics weren’t too bothered about black violence and were content to share their party with black power advocates. TOG:
Last time (around January) you suggested that anyone who posts here can’t have a decent job. Once again you seem to think you know all about the private lives of MR posters. Perhaps when you post here you do so to the exclusion of everything else in life. Strange that I have no trouble juggling daily visits to MR with family, social and work life but you apparently do. TOG to Desmond Jones:
Maybe London, Ontario. Assuming that anyone who is against the IRA and not contemptuous of those who served in the British armed forces is English just shows how out of touch you are. As it happens the elected mayor of London (the English one) is a hard left IRA sympathiser. You and Red Ken would probably get along well. 53
Posted by Desmond Jones on Tue, 11 Jul 2006 05:37 | # Under different circumstances, it would be worth the beating to tell you to your face tog. It hurts when the shoes on the other foot doesn’t it. You’re quite happy to smear the brave boys who fell at the Somme, who are no longer here to defend themselves, with the moniker fool, but you don’t like it when the favour is returned. If you want to wallow in self-pity, that’s up to you, however, don’t come here expecting to defame the name of our ancestors and not have it spit back in your face. Take Fred’s advice. It’s no fools errand. 54
Posted by Nio Zilda on Tue, 11 Jul 2006 07:19 | # Sinn Fein’s support of mass third world immigration into Ireland is quite in keeping with its basically Jacobin ideological background - they are simply not ethno-nationalists. The history of English rule in Ireland is shameful, but, for crying out loud, the plantation of Ulster, which is essentially the issue at hand, took place almost exactly 400 years ago! Portraying the IRA/Sinn Fein campaign to incorporate into the Republic the whole of Northern Ireland as a defensive measure against English imperialism is simply loony. A campaign to pare off the western, Catholic-dominated areas would probably have been quite justified. On the other hand there is no justification whatsoever for the incorporation of the Protestant-dominated eastern third or so of N.I. into the Republic, & thus the imperialist aggressors in N.I are the Fenians, not the “Brits.” 55
Posted by tog on Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:04 | # “You’re quite happy to smear the brave boys who fell at the Somme” Maybe you should go back and read what I acutally wrote. “The boys who died at the Somme were victims if drafted or fools if they enlisted, as was I when I enlisted in the Vietnam era army.” So someone who points out his own error is hardly taking pleasure in pointing out the truth. I was not opining on their courage. So, my brave internet warriors, answer my questions. How did the Somme help advance the your agenda? Was not WWI a disaster for all Caucasians? If Germany had won WWI would the world have been better off, worse, the same? Certainly, Britain’s efforts to get the US into the war were eventually a disaster for the mommy country. But of course Britain always has to take the surrender no matter how stupidly it turns out. If the boys at the Somme had, en masse, told their officers, “No more stupid bayonet charges” England would be better off today. Post a comment:
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Posted by Karlmagnus on Mon, 03 Jul 2006 13:54 | #
It’s a facile assumption that you’ll never see slaughter on the scale of the Somme again, and wimping out of Iraq and Afghanistan increases the probability of our doing so. The world needs a good policeman, just as it did in the 19th Century, and Britain has the expertise and the capability to act as part of a useful Anglosphere policeman. We are not at war with “Islamofascism” we are at war with terrorism, and the sooner we start rounding up terrorist Irish and Venezuelans the better off the world will be. We won’t win them all, and we’ll take casualties trying, but we have to disrupt the international left wing terrorist conspiracy.
Iraq was probbaly a mistake (though we should have done it in 1991) not befriending Iran when we had the chance in 1997-2005 was almost certainly a mistake, but Afghanistan wasn’t a mistake—it’s just a pity the wimps didn’t clean out Tora Bora properly when they had the chance.
Allowing terrorism to grow unchecked is NOT an alternative—nukes in London and New York would be the inevitable end to that.