Spa Tek

Valentine

It's Valentine's Day, so I'm clutching a piece of rose quartz hoping the world is looking for love. History is not giving much cause for optimism. Yet Iraqis seem happier now they have an elected set of rulers, and Israel and the Palestinians are talking to each other. Let's hope it lasts.

It's been a time for remembering some of the atrocities of the last war. Last month Auschwitz raised its ugly head, with memories of man's inhumanity. This week the bombing of Dresden, and no doubt the bombing of Horoshima and Nagasaki will also soon be recalled.

The carpet bombing of Dresden was an abomination. It should never have happened, and the use of nuclear bombs on Japanese cities was equally obscene. I'm left wondering whether these events were not deliberate acts, designed to see the effects of carpet bombing upon a city and of the use of nuclear weapons upon a population. These atrocities did nothing to slow down the inevitable conclusions of the wars. Germany was close to capitulation at the time, and the Japanese would have been as aware of the power of the forces against them if the bombs had been dropped on a nearby mountain, rather than upon cities teeming with innocent people.

Someone was to blame. They made the decisions, knowing the likely outcomes. That depth of depravity goes beyond national pride, beyond the desire to win. That was barbaric.

Democracy is a ludicrous concept in such events. How many of us would have opted to bomb Dresden, knowing that tens of thousands would be killed, or to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima knowing that hundreds of thiousands would either perish or have their whole lives blighted?

We should be capable of removing the power to take such decisions away from a few power-crazed individuals and leave the mass of the people to decide. At the very least the decision to go to war should be put to the people, to vote for or against.

Only then can we begin to have a democratic process that is representative.

posted by Suffolk Notes @ 10:40 am