Tag Archives: Rant

No-fly zones cause greater suffering

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The purposes of air support are reconnaissance, tactical strikes and to support ground troops.

Denying reconnaissance results in (a) that side committing larger forces to pitched battles making destruction of the opponent more likely and (b) not committing enough of the right forces to pitched battles resulting in greater losses (one intention of the no fly zone).  It also increases the likelihood of successful assaults on those denied aircract.

Tactical strikes allow the destruction of tanks, opponent HQs and leaders, supply dumps and key infrastructure.  These actions lead to a shortening of the conflict.  Preventing these actions increases theneed for land-based assault using tanks, machine-guns and infantry against one another.  Destruction is more wide-spread, more troops are needed to be killed.  More homes, hospitals, schools, offices and business are destroyed as towns need to be flattened.

Without air support, warfare is more akin to the kind of close combat massacres that occurred up to the Great War.

When the great powers impose a No Fly Zone “for humanitarian reasons” it results in a longer war, greater destruction of infrastructure, more deaths, more civilian deaths, more trauma, more widows and orphans, more refugees, more cost to aid agencies, more influx of external combatants, more civilians becoming armed and involved.

The imposition of a No Fly Zone is not ‘humanitarian’; it is a cruel and cowardly way of manipulating the outcome of an internal conflict for poitical ends with wanton disregard for the suffering caused.

Children of The Bomb

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(Originally written 19/10/2012.)

There was a common acceptance when I was at school that

“There’s not much point getting O Levels or A Levels.  We’ll be dead before we start work anyway”.

This was because we were growing up in the Cold War, after the Cuban Missile Crisis / October Crisis / Caribbean Crisis / Kарибский кризис had occurred, when it was clear the USA really would consider use of a first-strike with nuclear weapons, and knowing there were Mutually Assured Destruction policies in place on both sides.  That is, one small error or political crisis would result in the destruction of missile sites in the UK, and the death of most everyone in Europe and certainly us children before we’d had a chance to grow up.

This made it hard to find the motivation to plan for the future, as there was little point.  There were many of us who had poor grades as a consequence of this, including some who gave up althogether.

And we all knew how we were going to spend our last 7 minutes when the sirens went off.  We certainly talked about it often enough.

Growing up in such a climate cannot be healthy.  Off the top of my head, our cultural exposure included:

1979 – the Protect and Survive films like Casualties
1983 – 99 Red Balloons – Lena
1983 – WarGames
1984 – Two Tribes – Frankie Goes to Hollywood (“War!  What is it good for?” *)
1984 – Threads
1985 – The War Game
1986 – When the Wind Blows

All manner of cheerfulness: www.atomica.co.uk/culture.

Perhaps it is no surprise that my generation, born in the 1960s, have such a strong “think of the children” and “children must be allowed freedom” and “children must be protected from fear” mindset.

My mother, who lived through the second World War, said the Cold War was a huge improvement over the hot sort.

 

* Record sales, apparently.

No New Wars – but what does that mean?

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No New Wars 11 11 2018.  Meaning, “let’s ensure No New Wars start as from 11th November 2018“.

How?  By making it clear we expect our leaders to use other means to achieve change.  It will have been a hundred years since the Armistice, a hundred years in which we have learned an awful lot not just people’s ability to harm other, innocent, people, but also about communication, reconciliation, change management, energy creation, environmental management, understanding, and sharing.

In our name, and with our financial support through taxes, people are dropping air-bombs, firing guided missiles, shooting long-range heavy-calibre machine-gun fire, remotely-controlling armed drones … to kill people including civilians.  And is a person who picks up a gun to defend their home a soldier or an armed civilian?  Much of the 20th century involved the deaths of tens of millions of civilians; the 21st century so far has comprised the deaths of 100,000s of civilians, and if you include civilians carrying guns, it is already in the millions.  And the media is glorying in the “Arab Spring” ignoring that it is the worst kind of war: a civil war.  A civil war that is being armed, funded, supported and maintained by external forces who benefit financially or politically from the suffering and deaths of those involved.

Wars are the principle cause of this suffering, and it is time they stopped.  They are not necessary for peace. There are other means, and not just financial sanctions which are only a feeble exercise in trying to show the futility of peaceful solutions. Governments and politicians are just not trying to end war; it neither adds to their power nor is it financially attractive for their sponsors.

Wars are started by politicians being manipulated and promoted by the media.  If politicians can be made to see that war-mongering is no longer going to create votes, they will become peace-makers.  And if the media are hit financially by not getting readers and web page hits, they will lose advertising revenue and so will cease that behaviour.

The trite cliché “War is the continuation of politics by other means” is not only facile, but also two hundred years out of date and inappropriate in a nuclear-energy, internet connected, post-empire world.

I am not so naïve as to think existing wars can be just stopped.  But we can do out bit to create a world where it is not necessary or politically wise to start any new wars.

  • We – that means you – can tell politicians they will lose their jobs if they start down the path of war.
  • We – that means you – can tell the media they will lose advertising revenue and sales if they promote war.

I am not saying we should not support our troops nor have a defence facility.  I am not saying the campaign to stop population growth is wrong.  But I am saying we must actively prevent our leaders from starting down paths that lead to the deaths of thousands of civilians just because that is easier and more attractive to them than any alternatives.

We must make peace more attractive.