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Last week I sat down to watch the film Black Hawk
Down. The movie was centred on an American attack on Mogadishu during
the civil war in Somalia. The plot focused around the American forces
and the terrible events that followed the shooting down of one of
their helicopters. Later in the film it emerged that the Americans
had begun the attack without informing the UN, who eventually had
to go in and bail them out. As the closing titles rolled you felt
sympathy for the 19 Americans that were killed that night in Somalia,
but in the small print appeared the fact that although 19 Americans
were killed over 1000 Somali's lost their lives.
The cost of war is a high one. And it may not be a cost that we
have to pay, but that makes it no less real. It may not be our forces
that are killed, it may be those of our "enemies" but
each life lost affects a family, and represents the failure of mankind
to live together. It sounds so clichéd to say, but surely
in the 21st century after all we have learned about war and its
effect, we can find some way of avoiding another conflict.
In an effort to persuade the public the UK government have published
a "dossier" full of scary facts and figures about how
Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction and stockpiling
chemical and biological weapons. But there was very little in the
dossier that was new, or that we hadn't heard before and the anti-war
demonstrations in London show that public opinion is yet to be convinced.
Opinion polls show that many do support the prospect of bringing
about a "regime change" in the region, but most are against
doing so by dropping bombs on Baghdad. One thing is certain, we
will find out how many biological and chemical weapons Saddam has
when we start to threaten him with force. Most of the British public
would support diplomatic efforts, targeted sanctions, and support
of opposition groups within Iraq. The seven-day deadline that is
being sought in the UN seems impossibly short, and war seems to
be getting closer rather than further away.
As a child I was taught that the only thing violence leads to, is
more violence. The western governments are trying to persuade that
the only way to stop Saddam using weapons of mass destruction is
to drop really clever weapons of only a little bit destruction,
but we have seen so many times that these smart bombs are only as
smart as the people who are dropping them and right now I am not
convinced as to how smart those people are.
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