Guest Post by Oscar Wilde

posted by The Vidiot @ 9:02 PM Permalink

Tawdry Tears and Tombstones

Tawdry. Taw-dry adjective
1. showy but without real value.
2. of finery: gaudy; showy and cheap.
3. low or mean; base: tawdry motives.
4. noun. Cheap, gaudy apparel.

The first description I feel best befits this image of Bush as he sheds a tear, or do I do the man a disservice and the tear is genuine? If it is, I can but think it is not for the marine who was being honoured, but for George W Bush.

And is that marine buried at Arlington Mister Bush? You are hardly likely to know are you, not for you the funerals of those that you sent so eagerly to their needless deaths, no Mister Bush, for those who's lives you ended so prematurely, just a cold patch of earth and a tombstone. Tombstones Mister Bush, those tombstones that caused me to write these comments some time ago in a forum other than where I write this.

Shame and decency are not to be found. Yet they offer the parents of the dead a free headstone if it bears the inscription "Operation Iraqi Freedom" Shameless, and overflowing with abject hypocrisy. Bush knows all too well why the troops died, I hope the spirit of the countless thousands, the spirit of every dead man woman or child haunts the son of a bitch to the grave and beyond. But he cannot see the irony of this "magnanimous" gesture, forever and a day will that inscription, "Operation Iraqi Freedom" etched in stone, mock the man and his presidency for what they truly are. But the bitterest of ironies is lost on this fool, because forever and a day those words will be synonymous with: "They died for nothing."

How different then can two epitaphs read but achieve the same purpose?

Those that fought in this travesty, I can but call it such, for to call it a war lies uneasy with me, those that took up arms and fought and now lay in the cold earth do mock.

But there is another, probably unknown to many readers here, or if known, soon forgot.

He was a strange little man, little in stature that is. Far from being handsome, far from being movie star, but a star he was a man of great integrity, his name was Robin Cook

What follows are two five minute clips of Cook's resignation speech as Home Secretary, given in the House of Commons. I cannot urge you strongly enough to view them. Cook was under no illusions about the situation in Iraq and that Britain was getting dragged, with indecent haste by the United States, into a war we did not want and for which there was no justification. As I re-watch his performance I cannot help but wonder how we did in fact end up being party to this mess.

Rhetorical I admit, my last sentence that is, for it is known to all. I shall write on Blair's culpability in these war crimes, but another day.

Cook's address to the Commons, a snippet:

"That explains why any evidence that inspections may be showing progress, is greeted in Washington, not with satisfaction but with consternation because it reduces the case for war. What has come to trouble me is the suspicion that if the ??? in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected we would not now be about to commit British troops…"

Part one. Part two

I think then that you might care to agree that Cook was a honourable man and continued to sit on the back benches until his untimely death in August, Two Thousand and Five.

But Cook, even in death had not finished with Blair. The commendable steps taken by his widow and two sons, steps which I am sure would have met with Cook's full approval, resulted in…I will let the print article take it from here.

"In life Robin Cook was the most outspoken Parliamentary critic of Tony Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq. In death he will remain the scourge of the Prime Minister forever. The headstone on Mr Cook's grave carries the legend:

"I may not have succeeded in halting the war, but I did secure the right of Parliament to decide on war."


Oscar Wilde. 15/01/07