Don’t you know there’s a war on?
Were it not for the constant media attention, one could very easily forget that Britain is currently engaged in not one but two wars, on a different continent and motivated indirectly (at best) by our self-preservation. We haven’t had any serious terrorist threat since 7/7, and the perpetrators of those were homegrown.
Yes, some of those reading this know people who know people who went to Iraq or Afghanistan. A few of you might even know people who died there. Very few indeed will have themselves been to these places. Almost none will themselves have died there. For the rest of us, however, the fact remains that unlike most of the wars in the past, the propagation of these wars have had next to no impact on our day to day lives.
My grandfather can remember being rationed several years after the end of the Second World War; the only possible reason for rationing these days is childhood obesity. He used to carry out exercises at school involving air raids and bomb shelters; most of us roll our eyes at having to do a fire drill. In certain countries, such as Israel, the threats they face are such that every eligible young man is conscripted into the army for three years; teenagers from our shores are more likely to find themselves playing football with orphans in Malawi before going to university.
The happy fact of the matter is that if we hadn’t been told almost none of us would know that this war was even going on. No sacrifices have been asked of us. All of the soldiers fighting in these wars (on our side at least) are brave men and women who are there of their own accord, having joined the army voluntarily. We are lucky to be living in an age and a nation in which this is the case.
P.S. Before anyone mentions it, yes, it is disgraceful that there are troops without adequate equipment. What do you want me to do about it?
Yes, it is crazy. I know when it all started it was on daily news everyday, (even on dutch news channels). But now after a couple of years nobody shows interest. Sometimes you will still see a column about why it’s bad to send troops to Afghanistan, or if there needs to be made a choice if they should pull back troops. But the last time I heard something about the war on the street is a long time ago. People see it but nobody discusses it anymore. It’s sad, there’s people risking there lives there and we just don’t notice anything. Really this whole world is weird, while we are enjoying, video’s, movies, sweets and food other people are starving, Lets face it most of us are already whining about Twitter.com being off line for 30 min. People are starving. It’s just sad
Alex
Boris Johnson had a good piece about a woman at a public pool who ranted against a part of the pool being set aside for physiotherapy for soldiers wounded in Iraq/Afghanistan. Worse, Johnson wrote, she got her way. Among her more spurious claims was that she had paid to use the pool, unlike the soldiers. She’s able to swim freely because those soldiers were defending her freedoms. When the state tries to protect the citizens from burden-sharing, this is what happens. It would be all the more ironic if the pool were funded by Lee Jasper’s grants through the LDA - but we don’t know that.