printable version PDF version

War and the London Riots -- UK Double Standards on Display AGAIN!
by Robin Beste via reed - Global Research Saturday, Aug 13 2011, 10:42am
international / injustice/law / other press

Don't hold your breath waiting for UK prime minister David Cameron to express outrage over War Crimes committed by the UK/NATO and the US in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, he's too busy playing double standards with alienated British youth. The "sickening violence" that Cameron attributes to British youth for making their dissatisfaction known, is meaningless next to the holocausts and atrocities committed by the British government in Iraq, Central Asia and North Africa.

Iraq March 2003 in no way justifies or excuses the rioting witnessed in London this week but it seems that some forms of thuggery, theft and criminality are more worthy of condemnation than others.

A brick thrown through a shop window, a furniture store torched, a bus burnt out, certainly warrant condemnation, but can you imagine David Cameron condemning the criminal devastation and mass murder visited on Afghanistan and Iraq over the past decade or our David labelling the bombing of Libya as "sickening violence?"

The 'London riots' are the kind of "sickening violence" that Cameron and the majority of MPs are now falling over themselves to voice outrage over because they signal the failure of British society to the entire world.

Many of the same MPs who voted along with the majority in parliament for the criminal war that reduced much of Iraq to ruins and killed a million innocent Iraqis, take to the moral high ground when alienated youths from our ghettoes of deprivation commit their mini-version of "shock and awe".

Would politicians, now demanding that the London rioters be subjected to "the full weight of the law," say the same of Tony '45 minute' Blair, guilty of international war crimes, lies and deceptions that propelled Britain into an illegal war? Where is the outrage over Blair's crimes and the fact that he has been allowed to accumulate vast wealth directly from the political and business contacts he made when he was committing these crimes?

Stealing sports shoes, mobile phones and designer clothes from London retailers is insignificant next to a human HOLOCAUST, wouldn't you think? At best the London rioters are only petty crooks compared to the thievery/PLUNDER that has BP, with the aid of the western terrorist nations, stealing Iraq's most valuable resource, OIL, which was the main motivation for the invasion in 2003.

As for the cost of clearing up after the London riots, estimated at £100 million, that amount is roughly equivalent to the cost of 15 missiles among the thousands Britain has rained on Libya over the past few months.

While the politicians' reaction to the London riots ranges from those who say lock 'em up and throw away the key, to those few who say we need to seek explanations for how this could have happened, it's hard to believe that the imminent report by the Iraq Inquiry will lead to anything more than a fleeting wringing of hands, with no one held to account for a war that brought such suffering to millions of Iraqis, the deaths of 179 British soldiers, serious injuries to hundreds more and terrorism onto the streets of London.

Politicians quick to condemn young people in deprived areas of our cities as being "out of control," are themselves no sluggards when it comes to endorsing uncontrolled bombings in illegal wars abroad. Should we expect our politicians to RESPECT the SOVEREIGNTY of other nations while they lament the lack of respect for some London real estate? Shouldn't OUR politicians respect international law and the private property of sovereign nations?

We are told the London rioters are "uncivilised" -- often by the same people who thought it was right to invade Iraq and Afghanistan and bomb Libya in the name of what they call "civilisation".

Making these comparisons does not condone the behaviour of British rioters, it simply highlights the outrageous DOUBLE STANDARDS of our hypocritical parliamentarians. As Owen Jones stated yesterday in a BBC interview on the 'Demonisation of the Working Class;' attempts should be made to understand and explain why young people in deprived areas feel they have nothing to lose by collective acts of rampant vandalism .

Would it be too much to expect that our politicians, so free with condemnation for the London riots, explain their own willingness to support illegal wars and policies that have brought death and destruction on a monumental scale to the innocent people of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya?

To paraphrase the late Amy Winehouse, what kind of [double standard] thuggery is that?

[Edited.]

Author retains copyright.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26003