For no particular reason, well none I am prepared to Blog about anyway, I am very fond of the quote by Winston Churchill when he said:
We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.
I was reminded of this when I read MadPriest's Blog a few minutes ago when he posted on the immorality of various things ranging from the Israeli incursion into Gaza (no mention of the missiles fired into Israel from Gaza though - in my humble opinion the two sides are as bad as each other and neither will ever get any sympathy from me) to the bombing of Dresden by the British in WWII (no mention of Coventry, London or Clydebank which were similarly attacked by the Nazis) and the killing of an innocent bystander by the police when arresting a criminal (is he talking about Jean Charles De Menezes? If so, I have no doubt that the police officers who killed him deserve a medal for their bravery, not prosecution, after all they had been told that the person they were expected to stop was a suicide bomber who might detonate his bomb any minute. Are you brave enough to get right up close to and make physical contact with such a person? No, I thought not. Neither am I. Now the matter of culpability of those who told them he was a terrorist, that's perhaps a different matter).
Various things about that post touched various nerves of mine. But then again, I am not in a good place at the moment.
The bottom line as far as I am concerned is that unless you're prepared to put yourself in the position of being in mortal danger to protect people you don't even know, unless you're like PC Lewis Fulton, a Strathclyde police officer (who coincidentally was on the same shift as I was, in the same police office where I used to work for Strathclyde Police in a previous life a fair number of years ago, albeit I was a year or so after him) who was stabbed to death when responding to a routine call by a member of the public, unless you're like the men and women of the forces who continue to risk life and limb trying to make Iraq and Afghanistan a safer place for their populations (people like my good friend RN from the cathedral choir who is a high ranking consultant in the National Health Service in the UK but who doesn't just stick with the easy safe option so he also happens to be a Lieutenant Colonel in the Territorial Army who has very recently been posted abroad (yet again) to work in a military field hospital treating sick and injured people whether they be UK & US personnel or "the enemy"), unless you are one of Churchill's ruffians, then don't fucking whinge about it!
Just be thankful that someone is prepared to do it on your behalf.
Update: The second last sentence above was not directed at MadPriest in any way. I don't think the post of his which prompted my rant was in any way whinging and I'd like to go on record as saying I like his Blog and think he's a decent, genuine bloke. The rant was obviously already inside me and I just needed him as a catalyst!
Ranting is good. What winds me up is that for whatever reason Britain has cultivated a situation where I am frankly amazed that anyone would wish to be a police officer, let alone a traffic or even worse an armed officer. If an armed officer shoots someone then they are automatically put under investigation - why would anyone want a job like that?
ReplyDeleteOr a traffic cop chases a joyrider in a stolen car in some city estate, the joyrider crashes and kills themselves and the residents of the estate start riots against the police? Or a biker nutter rides like an idiot so much that folks notice him and report him, a bike cop follows him one day to gather enough evidence to get a prosecution and other bikers are "outraged" that the idiot had to be followed and "provoked" into riding like an idiot.
Grrrrrr.
MP just wants to do what is right.
ReplyDeleteAnd technically yes, it is immoral to kill children for any reason.
It's immoral to kill other human beings. War in general is so freakin' immoral it defies description.
And believe me, military veterans are the first ones to tell you this.
I know this because my man (not husband yet, but he'd like to be) Joe is a US Army veteran. He served 3 years in the combat engineers, stationed in Baumberg, Germany, just 30 kilometers outside the Czech border during the Cold War. An injury with some plastic explosives brought his military career to an end, sadly. He got an honorable discharge in 1986 and flew home to Arizona.
I never, ever forget to hug all my veteran friends on November 11, our Veterans Day. I know that they are doing a tremendous job to defend this country and our rights, and since I'm not out there myself, I feel I can't criticize them too much, if at all.
If I'm ever out and about, in a restaurant or bookstore or whatever, and I see a uniformed soldier/sailor/airman/Marine, I will always go over to them and shake their hand and thank them for their service.
There's an entire entry in my head I plan to write, but this illness I've got slows me down and jumbles my thoughts...
It's a complicated issue, to be sure. Personally, I'm never so sure of anything except whatever side thinks they're not to blame for anything are usually never to be trusted. Thought it was Orwell, though, not Churchill who said that?
ReplyDeleteNo, it was Churchill.
ReplyDeleteHmm, actually I'm not sure that quote has ever been definitively attributed to Churchill or Orwell.
ReplyDeleteWell, you might well be right anonymous, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter who said it, it's the words and the sentiment that are important, not the originator.
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