Every other day, I read about an American or British soldier who was killed in Afghanistan, then I read in the press in both countries, with the soldier's body returning to a bereaved mother, wife or children, that the soldier was a ‘hero'. Those youths are not heroes, but victims. Their killer is not the Taliban, the Iraqi resistance or the terrorists alone, but also the U.S. administration and the British government, and equally so the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and the Labour and current Coalition governments. To date, about 4500 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq, along with 180 British soldiers, while around 1900 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, along with 415 British soldiers. All those are victims, not heroes. Why did the U.S. administration send its army and the armies of other collaborators to Iraq? The premises for the war had been falsified, but even if they were true, did Saddam Hussein really pose any threat of any kind to the U.S. and Britain? Definitely not. The reasons were first and foremost the neo-imperial calculations of the United States, and the policy of blind subservience to the U.S., which was the only policy of the government of Tony Blair. Having once been the colonial master of the America, Blair turned Britain into an American colony. Heroism is the worst profession in the world. A hero is remembered for a day or two but is soon forgotten, and all that is left after that is the sorrow of his close relatives and their long suffering. The U.S. and UK governments not only committed crimes against Afghanistan and Iraq, but also wasted the lives of their two countries' youths. Perhaps we can also add to the victims who departed from our world the disabled survivors whose youth was taken away from them forever. Here, I recall reading a report in the popular London paper The Sun entitled “Bravest and the Braves, UK war heroes honoured by Native American Indians at Grand Canyon". I would have bypassed the story were it not for the large picture placed under the headline, showing a native American welcoming the British ‘heroes', who were a group of disabled people being pushed on wheelchairs – probably by their brothers or wives, which means that not only were the lives of the soldiers destroyed, but also those of their brothers or wives, having themselves become permanent escorts for their disabled kin. Two days ago, the London papers carried the news of the death of a British soldier from the First Battalion. Tomorrow or thereafter, we will no doubt see a picture of him surrounded by a family whose life has been destroyed along with his, always with the word ‘hero' close at hand, when the man was no doubt a victim of a crime perpetrated by his government against him. In America, the imperial gang, represented by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, allied itself with the neoconservatives who have an Israeli agenda, to send America's youths to their deaths. And in Britain, the Labour government supported the American war crime with alacrity. Then instead of Tony Blair being tried, he left unscathed and was given other roles, making money and amassing real estate in the process. Meanwhile, George W. Bush said that he would leave the White House with his head held high, when he was supposed to leave it with his head having been cut off from his body, since capital punishment continues to be in force in many U.S. states. Today, there is a Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition government in London, with British soldiers still deployed in Afghanistan, and I am yet to hear a logical reason for this. How many times have we read in recent months, news about American or British soldiers having been killed at the hands of Afghan soldiers who are supposed to be their allies against the terrorists – while these Afghan soldiers in reality consider the American and British soldiers to be their enemies before the Taliban and all other terrorists? Instead of going to Moscow to talk about Syria, why does the British Foreign Secretary William Hague not go to Kabul, as did the French President Francois Hollande, and declare that British troops will be withdrawn from there before the end of this year? The dead youths from America and Britain are not heroes, but victims. They will only be truly honoured when those who put them in harm's way, and lied to us every day to this very day, shall be prosecuted. [email protected]
