A Gray Elegy to Wootton Bassett! War Feeds on Sentimentality
Abstract
Harken ye, mindful of th’unhonoured Dead,
Ye thoughtless who to armoured Might do bow,
Cheering for hapless youth whose Blood is shed,
The price of Innocence’s debt you owe.
Ye who exalt the brave and their “Success”
And young men’s broken Bodies celebrate,
Though God and nation ne’er conspired to bless
A dream of glory become lifeless Fate.
© Dr M D Magee, Contents Updated:
Gray Elegy
While our own soldiers are being killed daily in Afghanistan for no good reason at all, the “O what a sentimental war crowd” lines up regularly at a small town in Wiltshire called Wootton Bassett to greet the return of their coffins, quite unaware, it seems, that they are being used as propaganda by our increasingly militaristic governments, and like minded media moguls.
The sentimental crowd weeps for our fallen heroes, thereby giving succour to the pointless war effort, when these men are not heroes, however brave they are. They are being conned into giving their lives fighting mainly innocent poor people thousands of miles away from us, whose prime interest is in defending their own patch of land—their own country—just as we would if jack booted foreign marines trampled into our kitchens. This distant “enemy” of ours mysteriously changes for no discernable reason, but the whims of the US government, who must have an external enemy to distract the US population from the scams of their bankers and industrialists.
The initial enemy was supposedly Al Qaida led by Osama bin Laden based in Afghanistan, so we went in there. Then the talking turnip, G W Bush, supported by the mindless grin, T Blair, decided it was Saddam Hussein, based in Iraq, so we went in their too. Saddam was caught, but the Iraqis did not stop fighting, so the Iraqis in general became the enemy. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan there was no sign of Osama bin Laden and his elite group of bandits, so the Taliban, a set of Moslem fanatics, content until then to be supplied by the US to take Afghanistan from the Russians and set up a purely local Islamic theocracy, became the enemy. Now the Afghans in general are proxies for the Taliban who are proving too hard to defeat at all easily. So mainly innocent Afghans are being murdered by our heroes! Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden has been forgotten.
These insane phony wars go on, promoted by the false sentimentality of dupes who cannot see beyond the handerchiefs dabbing their eyes—see that, by their sentimentality, they are encouraging aimless or unemployed young Britons to seek to be heroes. We lose about one British soldier a day in these foreign fields, but we do not know how many Afghans are being murdered by these “heroes” because we are not allowed to know. Estimates are about 1000 a month—men women and children! And they are dying in their own villages and their own fields.
Who has right on their side? Stop giving our immoral governments free propaganda. Bring the troops home—alive—now!
