My mother flew to England earlier this week to take care of my grandmother. They’re north of Manchester, so this morning, I know they’re safe. Nevertheless, I’m angrier than hell this morning, and I’m trying to sort out my feelings.
My grandmother was born during World War I, lost her father in the trenches of France when she was a babe, lost her mother when she was a child. She lived through World War II, with its food privations, with the bombings of the industrial North by the Luftwaffe. She lived through the Post-War depression, was left a widow when my grandfather died at the age of 50, leaving her with two children at home. She helped raise me when my parents, who were 17 and 21 when I was born, lived with her while my father went to school to earn his degree and my mother worked. She lived through the Thatcher years, which devastated the North. And now, she’s 89, and Tony Blair, with his ill-considered support of George Bush, has brought the Iraq War home to England’s shores. To the heart of its London Tube system. Bastard.
Yes. I know it was the terrorists who blew up the Tube system. Madrid last year, London today. If it turns out that it was Al Qaeda, then it’s notice to the “coalition” governments that terrorists will punish the citizens of those countries. Of course, ironically, Al Qaeda didn’t give a shit about Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Osama Bin Laden and Hussein were enemies, not friends. But we created a situation where Al Quaeda is now in Iraq, and so we are reaping what men like George Bush and Tony Blair have sown.
What will Blair say to the families of the dead today? “Sorry, my bad?” No. I don’t expect so. I expect it will be some canned speech about “standing firm in the face of terrorism.” It will be the same empty words he offers the families of the soldiers he has sent to their deaths. He will not see his part in what happened today. The terrorists are responsible for the deaths of innocent people today. I am not absolving them in any way of their crimes. I am a pacifist, but today, I am unbelievably angry at the evil behind planting bombs on commuter trains and buses knowing that those bombs would rip bodies apart. But Mr. Blair, you invited those terrorists into your country when you supported George Bush. You could have said, “No.” You had the fucking evidence in the Downing Street Memos that this was a mistake. No. Not a mistake. A lie. A plan by an axis of evil in Washington DC to wage war on a country based on lies. And you did nothing. You said nothing.
There are people dead in London today, Mr. Blair. And what is to be done now?
