Copyright Bill McQuillan - www.billmcquillan.com 2009
You can’t get at the truth by writing history; only the novelist can do that.
Gerald Brenan
All Governments, especially those which claim to be ‘democratic’ by having elected politicians always present their doings in the best possible light. This is because they are all concerned firstly about keeping their jobs and then there is the major incentive of promotion. Sometimes they think it is sensible to be economic with the truth, or to put it bluntly to lie in their teeth. It is the case that all politicians tell lies; that is part of the job, indeed it is the best definition of the term. To get around this sobering fact came the new word ‘spin’ or in other words not necessarily to lie but to withhold vital detail or present the subject in a special way; all advertisers know how to do this.
The public also know this and generally are not too concerned as it is part of ‘the system’. The question arises how far it can go while the Government concerned can still claim the moral high ground. If the public has no idea what is going on it is simple and if the detail does not emerge for years as is commonly the case they get away with it. How would the people of Great Britain as it then was have reacted had they known the truth about the Boer War. Had they known about the saturation bombing of Germany with massive civilian casualties some might have said they deserved it, but the conviction of German war criminals would have been seen as massive hypocrisy. It was all of that but only those who knew the truth were aware of that fact.
Innocent civilians are killed day and daily by so-called NATO forces, often in huge numbers but there are few protests other than by specific organisations. How long can the people of the UK continue to accept this even if their guilt is by association. Day and daily deaths of our forces in Afghanistan are announced in The House with great solemnity. How many people ask how it is that British troops are there? Few remember that Blair committed our Forces to fight in Afghanistan on the basis of the decision by Bush to attack that country following the happenings in USA on ‘9/11’. Why was the UK dragged in to this sordid affair?
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