Hands up. I see the value of national service for a country that has completely lost sight of how education is failing so many of its young people. But conscription- for a needless and wholly avoidable war, is something completely different.
Proud as I am of both of my Grandfathers and their military service in WWII; one who served in the Royal Navy working with ASDIC, the other who used his craftsmen hands to maintain the guns of Monty’s desert artillery, I also know at my core, that the sacrifices they and so many others made, had selflessness, freedom and above all, humanity at its heart.
Today, we are facing the prospect of wars or another world war, that serve no purpose other than to benefit people who are abusing power and responsibility. All at a cost that very few of us can readily understand and with possible consequences that none of us have the ability to calculate.
Wars are rarely justified. The fact that establishment figures are discussing the possibility of conscription and ‘citizen armies’ when the only reason for any war today is so that the malfeasance of the world elites can be actively denied or covered up, is just about as inhumane and evil as throwing another human being towards an unnecessary and premature death could possibly be.
Hard as it is for many of us to accept, the West isn’t and hasn’t been the kind, benevolent and all-giving force for good that can always justify everything that it does.
Money, the pursuit of influence and the power that go with both have masqueraded as democracy and peace across the World. And this selfishly driven trojan horse has been used to persuade and manipulate many millions of us into believing that all our governments have done and is doing in other countries has been necessary and just.
The power that the West has assumed since the Second World War, much of it riding the shirt tails of the USA, has been all about controlling a new world order, based on greed and control, that has already existed for 80 years.
It is from this that countless wars, coups and takeovers of different nations have been initiated. And many of the politicians and decision makers we have in public offices are either too out-of-touch or simply too ambitious to even realise how they have acquiesced and facilitated nothing less than the takeover of democracy and democratic process, from within.
The illegal and mass immigration that is beginning to harm all of us is just one of the many costs that has come from allowing selfish, self-centred politicians and whoever influences them to impose war and violence on countries around the World. Conflicts that may appear on the news, but from which we have until now been insulated, because they have been very much out of sight and out of mind.
The culpability that we hold for not holding the politicians we have trusted and voted into office to account, certainly doesn’t justify the problems we face as a nation state or right down to the communities that we live in.
Misplaced trust certainly doesn’t justify us sending young people or indeed anyone into war just to bail these very silly and ignorant people out, or justify the lies they tell that with a pyrrhic victory will somehow be spun to confirm that they were in fact right.
Today, Russia may be a problem. Perhaps a rogue state run more like a mafia fiefdom than a country under democratic control. But it is not for us to pretend that it is OK for the people that lead us to talk up wars with the people and populations of other countries just so the corporate takeover of everything and with it the continuing enslavement and control of humanity can once again be wrapped up as some quasi-protective and beneficial narrative that allows the true purpose to continue to be denied.
Yes, the reality is that a profit and therefore greed-led form of governance has captured and already taken over every part of what we believe to be todays democratic world and we have long since passed the point when there was a credible choice between believing that those who we were taught to show deference to can be trusted or not.
There is no reason for anyone to sign up and fight for such foolishness. Unless that is, you truly believe that money and wealth and the influence that it creates is now our genuine and all powerful god.
Saying this doesn’t mean that I do not see any kind of threat from countries, people and their leaders who have values that are not aligned with our own. Nor that the risk of being driven to war as some kind of well-thought-out strategic project for these people would end the moment we believe we are free of them.
In fact, war may become the only way that the World can find a way forward and to rediscover the peace and stability that we should all already be able to enjoy. But which selfishness on the part of just a few who have abused their power and influence have inflicted or are in the process of inflicting upon us all.
Wokeness and the behaviour of the so-called snowflake generation may be worrying to those who wish to embrace the call of any war that isn’t necessary, but is likely to be imposed. But I have great faith that young people and upcoming generations would certainly know the difference and would step up to protect purposes that were justified and morally right, if genuinely and properly called.
As it stands, money is the only reason we are hearing the want for war.
Yet the topic of destruction and bullshit wars is the last thing that people fighting to survive their daily lives, either want or genuinely need.
Adam Tugwell 