In Service

O.K. call me behind the times but I was recently clearing out the magazine draw and I came across a Big Issue that contains something that I would like to take issue with (if you will pardon the pun).

The thing that bugged me was Noel Hoey's letter in the September 2-8 issue of the Big Issue.  There again I correct myself, it wasn't the whole of the letter, just the last to paragraphs that I objected to.

The main body of the letter, which tackled the issues of the 'single point of view' that is becoming mainstream in our newscasts (are we surprised when most of them are owned by one person) and the fact that forty per cent (40%) of the newspapers output is used up by fashion addicts and royal gossip.

Now I am not adverse to knowing that Will and Kate's little un made it into the world healthy, good on both Mother and child as far as I'm concerned, but I don't need an update about it every single week.  And as for the fashion columns, what planet are they on?  People are having to decide between heating and eating, we don't have the money for those fads.

I also heartily agreed with Noel Hoey's summary of the US and UK politicians who sit there in judgement of the 'Arab Spring':

"without seeking to impart a big slice of the fact - that a large part of the blame for the Middle East turmoil lies squarely at the doors of our UK and Us politicians, who put in place and funded the dictators in Iran, Iraq and Egypt and turned a blind eye to their atrocities."

The other thing that they have tried their best to sweep under the rug of history is the fact that the UK is directly responsible for the shape of the modern Middle East.  The British Empire and Common Wealth stuck it's big nose into the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, sending troops to Egypt and Turkey and bringing about the fall of one of the longest lasting Empires of history.  The UK then had a direct hand in divided up the land of the Ottoman Empire and setting out the boundary lines of the modern countries.

We did it in Africa and we did it in the Middle East and guess what?  It hasn't brought lasting peace in either place.

So for the most part I thoroughly agree with Noel's view of the world.  However, I dislike his comments about:

"we feel browbeaten if we dare to question the hypocrisy of the wars we are engaged in and the fact that every returning soldier must be named a hero, fearing we might be hospitalised if we dare question the moral right of the jingoistic charity Help for Heroes, which demands we all pay homage to injured or fallen soldiers, ignoring the countless dead and injured victims left behind in these war torn countries."

For one thing, just about every soldier in Her Majesties Armed Forces did not want to go to war in either Afghanistan or Iraq, especially Iraq.  However, they were told that they either went or were dishonourably discharged.  If you are dishonourably discharged from the Armed Services your chance of getting a job any where else are slim to nothing, in the most part nothing.  So getting dishonourably discharged is passing a sentence of poverty and destitution on your family.  When you are facing that you have to obey orders because how are you going to explain to your children that you have just destroyed their chances of growing up normally?

Or, if they want to, going into work for the police force because if you have a parent who has been dishonourably discharged from the Armed Services you can't join the police force.  It is illegal to join the police force if one of your parents has a criminal record and a dishonourable discharge counts as a criminal record in the eyes of the police.

For another, Help for Heroes only exists because if it didn't then those soldiers who have come home leaving half of themselves on the sand of the desert would have no help at all.  After all there is one young man who had his leg blown off by a landmine and his local Council refused to give him a blue badge for disabled parking because "his condition might improve".  Oh really?  Just how, exactly is 'his condition' going to improve, may I ask?

Also, if Noel Hoey had read 'It's All About Treo' by Dave Heyhoe, he would understand that, particularly in Afghanistan, the Armed Forces were not just removing landmines from areas of military activity.  They were also removing them from civilian areas to try and protect those civilians from the Taliban.

So question the hypocrisy of the politics that has embroiled our country in these illegal wars by all means, but leave the men and women who are being blown up on the front line out of it; at least until you've listen to 'Letters Home from the Garden of Stone', sung by Everlast, written by an unnamed soldier in his last letter home to his family before his death.