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Friday, 9 January 2015

For Whom The Bell Tolls?
No, I'm not talking about my perennial topic of involvement in conflicts in Muslim lands but whether we should be dissuading EU citizens from going to fight abroad.
I am a child following on from the Spanish Civil War where Volunteer Brigades came to aid
the Republican cause from every corner of the planet.
As a child I knew someone who had fought in a Brigade in Spain during the Civil War.
By the time I was seven or eight he was already in his 60s, but still very proud of his involvement.
He certainly did not do it for money – as he was living just on the breadline – but was entirely motivated by his political ideals. It was, as he would say to us kids, his sacred duty to defend Spain from the Fascists.  Those pictures of himself and his comrades are now very vague in my mind and I cannot actually see their faces anymore. One had such black skin it almost shone out against the yellowing photograph as the light from the kerosene lamp in the room illuminated their profiles.  Sometimes when I see a film or read a book with photos from that era it all comes back to me and I am back in that room.
Most were young men, many in their thirties but some much older as I recall.
There were also women – so proud to be equally on the front line of a conflict where the ideals of liberty, justice, democracy and light were confronting a darkness soon to descend across the entire continent.   But at that time, they were oblivious to the greater evil soon to follow.
A civil war is exactly that - brother in arms against brother, sister fighting against sister, father against son and mother against daughter or son.   Nothing can be more terrible than a civil war.
A civil war tears at the very foundations of civil society fracturing it so badly that it can take hundreds of years for the wounds to finally heal. The butchery and carnage are almost incomprehensible.  The ideals – religion and politics – become morphed into something very ugly and very evil.
All wars dehumanize but in civil wars we find our true homes as creatures in the jungle of primitive life on a very primitive planet.

If our societies so sicken individuals that they are motivated to fight in combat against their brother countrymen (sic. as NATO, Coalition or EU deployed forces) then we need to understand why this is so.   Perhaps we already do.
There are no hero welcomes today for Volunteers returning home from wars abroad.  The Spanish Civil War was something quite different. The Brigades were sourced often through Socialist, Marxist, Trotskyist, Anarchist or Communist Party affiliates in many European countries and in The United States. These might be individual sympathizers or actual Party members of such organizations.  Some of those going off to fight were very highly educated men and women.   But all were passionate about what they believed in.
Even as we listened to a retired veteran tell us of his adventures from long ago I could still sense a pride in his voice as he recalled with tears his fallen comrades in arms.
It's difficult to explain to today's generation but at that time Socialism and Communism were regarded as the Nirvana for the downtrodden and impoverished.  Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were Gods sent from on high to break the bondage of servitude of the masses to corporate (Upper Class) exploitation. If only the masses could be educated, they would understand the salvation which Communism could deliver for the whole planet.  At least, that was what the masses were told.  The reality was of course something quite different but Uncle Joe's (Josef Stalin) party political propaganda machine was so captivating you could not but be impressed by the wonderful singing workers harvesting in the fields of the Ukraine, Russia's breadbasket, singing their joyous hearts out to be reaping the harvest for mother Russia.
[It was that same captivation, that same hero worship, those same atavistic fears which would equally mesmerize ordinary Germans to join the Nazi Party and set the course of Europe on a path to total annihilation and slaughter on an industrial scale.]

Those committed individuals felt that it was their destiny to be in Spain.  It was their equivalent of a Jihad - a Holy War against the forces of evil – capitalism and fascism. A Holy War which would usher in a new dawn where the Proletariat would finally take their rightful places at the Masters' Table instead of foraging like animals for the scraps he threw them after feasting.
At least that was what the nomenclatura taught the uneducated masses.   The reality was, of course, equally, something quite different.
Some did indeed come back to their local communities and to heroes welcomes.  Many others just returned with memories.   Some went out again to fight the Nazis domination of the continent of Europe.  Others were so disillusioned (or psychologically scarred or traumatized) by what they had done, seen and experienced during the Spanish Civil War that they had to be actively commandeered by Uncle Sam or by Winston Churchill to 'fight the good fight'. This is what they don't tell you in the history books.

We have thousands of individuals across the continent of Europe who are in despair at our governments policies of military interventions in Muslim lands.
I have always said that we are waging wars in such lands in manners not dissimilar to the Crusaders – playing one local ruler off against another, supporting our client Muslim allies against their enemies – creating (Crusader) fortresses (military bases) where none previously existed – to secure our interests.

If such individuals feel so strongly that they will take up arms against their brother citizens (and many Muslims in Europe would not call Christians their 'brothers') then perhaps we should think again as to whether we are doing the right thing in preventing these committed individuals from fulfilling their perceived destinies in defense of the ideals which they hold so dearly and sacredly to be prepared to die for the cause, even to place in peril their right to return home to Europe.

As a human being with a conscience and as someone who has experienced war first hand, I would attempt by all means possible to dissuade them from going as many are no different from those proud and idealistic (mainly, at least the ones in my community) young Republicans who went to Spain to fight the good fight (and many to die in a foreign land, in unmarked graves or just soil cover, far far from home) not possibly knowing (and how could they?) the true horrors of war – close up and personal, where you have to live with the nightmares of fallen comrades, the tortured, the butchered, the dismembered, the crippled, the disfigured, the grieving and those left alive but in eternal pain and anguish, wishing they too had been taken as death would have been a kinder gift than their living in an eternal hell.
Even if they were to tell me that this (the Middle East) is 'spiritually' where they want to die as they would feel more at home dying for a cause they believe in I would still attempt to dissuade.
I would not wish this nightmare of war on anyone hence I would attempt to dissuade 'Volunteers' to armed conflicts where the glory, the fighting and the dying are more to be linked with the duties of professional conscripted armies and professional mercenaries (or, in today's language, 'contractors') than causes for idealistic young volunteers.   But youth is often about idealism.

I would attempt to dissuade them – but at the end of the argument, I must respect their wishes.

What is to become of their future citizenship should they wish to return home is a matter for their individual countries.
Should they be injured in battle against Coalition or NATO or EU Allied Forces I would be as reluctant to see their health care or other needs met in European hospitals and institutions as I would to see Nazi, Gestapo and SS troops health care needs met in the United States or Britain either during or after the Second World War.   This view of the majority they should be in no doubt about.  (I do of course preclude those individuals who could have a potential intelligence value - and indeed, there are historical precedents such as 'Operation Paperclip' providing as it did an exit for former Nazis after World War II.)
Likewise should they destroy their passports and later recant, then it's at the discretion of individual countries as to how to deal with such matters.

Rather than locking these highly motivated idealistic and spiritually committed individuals away from society (to be out of sight and hence out of mind) and assuming we have no intention of negating responsibilities to our Muslim allies in the Middle East in the foreseeable future, we need to find an answer other than one of alienation and ghettoization for our Muslim brothers and sisters in Europe.

I would strongly disagree with their ideals but would be prepared to defend their right to express dissent from the status quo - using whatever means they can – and within the laws of Christendom.
We need to make extremists aware that we too are equally prepared to stand up and be counted to defend the ideals of free speech and democracy to the same extent as they are prepared to die in order to bring about their own intolerant tyrannies.


© Patrick Emek, 2015

Operation Paperclip and Stalin's 'Trophy' Brigades:
We live in a dysfunctionally hypocritical world where the so-called socialists and neo-liberals
will condemn the U.S. for offering sanctuary to former Nazi scientists and intelligence personnel
whilst approving or turning a blind eye to the Soviet Union's pillage of the looted treasures of the Third Reich.  Be under no doubt, the Soviet Union was just as eager to get it's hands on German rocket scientists as were the Americans - but 'slave' labor in Russia would have been very different from the freedom, the wealth and personal anonymity offered by the United States to former (and recanting) Nazi party members.
In the absence of the likes of 'visionary' politicians (such as J.F.K) and efficient technocrats to carry out their unreal expectations - such as Wernher von Braun - the U.S. Government's  Space Program has virtually collapsed - or at the very least, in my opinion, has absolutely no idea where it is going beyond the Moon and Earth's orbit.
We may get to Mars (and beyond) someday, but probably after China and India - and good luck to them if they have the clarity of vision and the political will to succeed.


*idea for the title of this blog is taken from the book of the same name:







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