The war of invasion in Afghanistan is being sustained on two things: the imbecilic argument that it is preventing terrorism in the UK, and on a feast of cod patriotism. Real deaths on the battlefield are not noble; they involve the smells of blood, sweat, shit and piss, and a lot of fear and tears. But this nation cultivated its Spartan myth for generations, and we mentally convert each terrible waste of young life into a tableau of the death of Nelson.
Or this, one of the most popular paintings of the Victorian era; the Last Stand at Gandamak, showing the sad end of the first British army to foolishly invade Afghanistan.
The ritual of Gordon Brown reading out the names of the latest British soldiers to die, is a key part of the patriotic hokum that sustains this dreadful war. But after MPs came back from their incredibly long holiday, it backfired spectacularly on Brown today as he read the names of the 37 young men who died in the hills of Afghanistan while the MPs spent months swigging Pinot Grigio in the hills of Tuscany.
So now we are sending an extra 500 men. That will finally kill off the fierce historic resistance of the Afghans to foreign occupation, then. How many more body bags are we sending?
“…this nation…” –? That will be England, will it Craig?
It’s true that far too many of people of my nation, and of yours, and of the other nations of The Isles, have volunteered themselves to be part of the English empire’s crimes over recent centuries.
But it’s several bridges too far to go along with the London establishment’s ridiculous pretence that all the ancient peoples of Britain — and presumably the divided people of the occupied six counties of north-eastern Eire too — are “one nation”, in some logic-defying way.
Give us a couple of drinks, and get us into an unbuttoned frame of mind, and very few of the population of The Isles has any doubt — or even any coyness — about which of the collection of nations here they do actually belong to.
An ethnic-minority buddy of mine, born and brought up in England in a proudly Caribbean-African family always insists to me the he’s “British, but not English.” But O is in a minority position. Most of us, especially the whitefaces, have no such complexities with which to wrestle. We KNOW to which of the several nations of the island of Britain we belong, usually before we’re ten years old. And the knowledge doesn’t go away.
So screw the ‘unitary state’ and its mendacious pretence of a unitary nation. Cymru Rhydd am byth! And respect and friendly neighbourliness to all the nations of The Isles — including the English, natch.
Hwyl, RhG