3rd December 2006

Your correspondent, Tim Maynard raises some thought provoking issues in his letter, (SNJ, 29th November) about the implications of modern warfare. He posed the question that if our political leaders had to lead from “the Front” would they be quite so keen to commit us to war. This issue has been pondered over, certainly since the First World War and probably long before that.  The question of course, in the present high tech wars, where the civilian poor bare the brunt of our dreadful military bravado and the defence industries are making a financial killing, is now fairly academic.

Our current political leaders , even if they were involved would be bombing from ten to twenty thousand feet and would see little of their actions and could easily detach their feelings from the carnage they had caused. Unlike my Uncle Will, who in the last years of his life often woke up screaming from nightmares, seeing the faces of the Germans in the 1914-18 war that he had bayoneted.

Mr Maynard, is correct, to an extent in lumping all political parties together. For it is estimated that the three main parties now share 75% of the same policies. Certainly, the Tories and Labour have an identical approach when it comes to Iraq and the replacement of Trident.

However when you look at the defence policies of the Greens, who have a high percentage of their membership coming from the peace movement they do see the necessity of “defending” the Country. That doesn’t however then translate into pre-emptive strikes on Countries, generally Muslim who have oil and don’t conform to our view of a world order!. Further if you care  to look at the manifestoes of the SNP and Plaid on defence you will see similar sentiments expressed as those by the Greens.


Tim in his conclusion says like Martin Luther do I “just have a dream ?”. I would say yes, and hold onto that dream, work it into a reality. As we still have a semblance of democracy, we could all start by withdrawing our voting support from political parties that perpetuated “State terrorism”. There is then a chance that we can break the chains of continuous warfare. Have no illusions though, peace takes a lot of courage but we also know that war takes lives.    
                           
John Marjoram