Week 38 2013

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Thoughts on an anniversary

            I am typing these words on the twelfth Anniversary of the ‘9/11’ terrorist attack on the ‘Twin Towers’ of New York, a terrorist attack that was one of the pretexts for the invasion of Iraq and the reason for the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan. I consulted ‘Google’ to check my memories of the event (I remember that when we first switched on the tv during the afternoon of 11^th September 2001 my wife and I imagined we were watching a preview of a sci.fi. disaster movie!)

            I did learn from Google that the CIA had published the names and nationalities of nineteen terrorists who had played leading roles in the outrage.  They were all members of Al Qaeda  To my surprise I found that fifteen of them were from Saudi-Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt and one from Lebanon.  There was not a single terrorist from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Syria.   Yet those are supposed to be the ‘rogue states’ that harbour and encourage terrorists and must be brought to heel by the ‘free world’, while Saudi-Arabia and the U.A.E. are trusted allies.

 Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E are the main supporters and suppliers of arms to the rebel forces trying to topple the present Assad government in Syria.  They are now expressing their anger and dismay at the fact that the USA has at least postponed its  punitive missile attacks on the Syrian government while it pursues the possibility of that government handing over its store of chemical weapons to the ‘international community’. Prominent among those rebel forces in Syria is Al Qaeda, the organisation that undoubtedly was responsible for 9/11.  We, the Americans and the French are currently giving them moral support and helping to supply them with all their needs short of actual weaponry!

            The British and American governments are said to have ‘compelling evidence’ that the Assad government was responsible for the chemical attack that undoubtedly killed a very large number of Syrian civilians a fortnight ago.  We haven’t yet  been allowed to see that ‘compelling evidence’.  Is it, I wonder, as irrefutable as the evidence for Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction that lured us into the invasion of Iraq?

 Intelligence Services are made up of fallible humans, with human strengths and human weaknesses. They receive and analyse scores of often-contradictory reports daily.  It would be surprising if they didn’t emphasise the importance of evidence that their political paymasters want to hear, and minimise or discard that which they don’t.  Evidence from Saudi Arabia is very likely to be biased against the Assad Government. Assad is the wrong sort of Muslim! So, I fear is evidence from Mossad, Israel’s secret service.   We know that Israel doesn’t like the present Syrian government, if only because of its ties of friendship with Iran.  We also know that Mossad is utterly ruthless in defence of what it considers to be Israel’s interests.  It has carried out assassinations, kidnappings and forgery (of British Passports, for example, to make it possible for assassins to get closer to their target).   I do not think that, if they considered it to be in Israel’s interest, they’d have any problem with bearing false witness.

            I hope that the current initiative for peace does succeed.  I wonder if the prayers of millions of people world-wide inspired by the Pope’s appeal to all  humanity have been heard – and answered.  I think that armed interference by foreigners like ourselves on behalf of either side can only add to the death and destruction.

            What is needed is for all foreign fighters, on both sides, to go back to their homelands.  Then, free of foreign interference, for the Syrians on both side of the conflict to lay down their arms and get on with the task of rebuilding their lives and their shattered country.   I am quite sure that they would receive generous help in doing so from well-wishing, peace-loving, folk world-wide. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers…..’

Pots and Kettles!

            I am sometimes embarrassed by the patronising ‘holier than thou’ attitude of our top politicians and those of the USA with regard to the sins of other governments. We don’t mistreat prisoners of war, bomb harmless civilians, threaten others with nuclear weapons and so on – and on.   All fine – until we are stopped in our tracks by allegations of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers, the torture and killing of terrorist suspects during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya and, going back a little, the blanket fire raids on civilian centres like Dresden in World War II.  Going back even further it comes as something of a shock to learn that it was  neither Hitler nor Stalin but we Brits. who invented Concentration Camps.  The very first of these was built by the British for the confinement of Boer Families during the South African War

         When we hear politicians on both sides of the Atlantic threatening dire consequences if this, that or the other regime manages to acquire a nuclear weapon, it is worth remembering that the only country that has ever used these dreadful weapons to kill fellow human beings (men, women and children 'in one red burial blent') was the USA when, with full British approval, they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945!  

.      I am amazed that the Americans have the gall to lecture others on the wickedness of Chemical Weapons when there are something like half a million Vietnamese children with serious physical or mental defects as a result of the use by the USA of Agent Orange as a defoliant during the Vietnam War. About three million were affected altogether.

       The reason why some 20 million gallons of  herbicides and defoliants were poured onto the forests of Vietnam was not primarily to kill or maim little children but to get rid of the trees and bushes that provided cover for the Vietcong – but kill and maim the  innocent they certainly did.  It was, at the very best, recklessly irresponsible.  In 2010 a joint U.S.A /Vietnam Commission recommended .that the U.S. should pay $300 million in compensation for the victims and towards the repair of the ecosystem. To date the USA has paid nothing.

Then, of course, there was the use of Napalm, a particularly unpleasant chemical weapon – a burning gel that adheres to the body or clothes of its victims causing intense agony and death.  One of the most striking news pictures of that dreadful war was of the little nine year old girl who had torn off her burning clothing and was running naked with other refugees from a Vietnamese village concealed by smoke and consumed by flame..   A South Vietnam Air Force plane had committed  that particular war crime – but their US allies had supplied the Napalm, and had used it themselves often enough in Vietnam..

That naked and terrified little girl, although badly burnt, survived and currently lives in Canada.   Here is a message that she sends to all humankind.  If only we all heeded it!

‘Forgiveness made me free from hatred. I still have many scars on my body and severe pain most days but my heart is cleansed. Napalm is very powerful, but faith, forgiveness, and love are much more powerful. We would not have war at all if everyone could learn how to live with true love, hope, and forgiveness. If that little girl in the picture can do it, ask yourself: Can you?’ 

Well, can you?

Clacton Quakers

The interior, Clacton Quaker Meeting House

     Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a Quaker (a member of the Religious Society of Friends).  My wife Heather and I joined the Quakers in Ipswich in 1948 and became members of Clacton-on-Sea  Quaker Meeting in 1955 when we moved to this area.   We celebrated and gave thanks for our silver, ruby, golden and diamond wedding anniversaries in the Clacton Quaker Meeting House, and the Meeting House was full when we gave thanks for Heather's life at a Memorial Meeting for Worship there on 30th July 2006.

Our golden wedding celebration 1996

       I still try to get to our Sunday morning Quaker Meeting for Worship every week.

       We Clacton Quakers now have our own web site.  If you'd like to know more about the faith that inspires me to write 'Tendring Topics....on line' each week, click onto www.quaker.org.uk (that's the official national Quaker website) but if you'd like to know more about the Quaker Meeting of which I have been a member for over half a century click onto www.clactonquakers.org.