Sometimes you get things spectacularly wrong. You think you can accurately guess the reaction of people to your deeds, words and endevours only for subsequent events to show you knew precisely shit, brother.
Well, that was me after sticking Soldiers Are Not Heroes out there less than a week ago. As anyone who’s read it can well imagine, my feelings, prior to publishing, were those of doubt and trepidation. “You can’t say that, H!” “You’ll get slaughtered” and “You’ve gone too far this time” were just some of the understandable comments offered by friends and family. People who love me and genuinely feared for my safety. The fact that those things were said at all, though, however well-meaning, is instructive and as much a damning indictment of our current climate of pro-war and pro-military hysteria as the article itself.
But here’s the thing; the response and reaction has been unbelievably supportive and even those who have disagreed have been unfailingly polite and courteous in registering their dissent. Not only that but the sheer volume of hits the piece received threatened to bring the bloody website down as it buckled under the pressure. I’ve yet to get my weekly stat report but the Facebook ‘like’ button at the end of the article registered one thousand ‘likes’ in the first 48 hours, before it, inexplicably, reset itself. My eldest son, who manages the site for me, once told me that I average 12.5 page views per every ‘like’. So do the maths.
I simply couldn’t keep up with the number of people who have emailed me, retweeted it and shared it around Facebook and I’ve been stunned that the overwhelming majority of those have been in agreement and so overtly supportive. Oh, I know there are some squaddie forums howling for my blood and I won’t be expecting an invitation to address the troops anytime soon but that’s fine and dandy. What delights me so much is that such a potentially contentious message has been so well-received. And more than that; with political debate in the UK currently narrowed to a terrifyingly small space, within which what is deemed acceptable leaves no room for me and the hundreds of thousands like me, it’s been immensely gratifying.
I tried to address several issues; the state-sponsored terrorism in Afghanistan, obviously, but also the role of trades unions, free speech, jingoism, racism and the way certain groups are demonised whereas others are practically deified depending on how each serves the Coalition and their US masters’ political agenda. Overwhelmingly, you responded and made it clear that there is a sizable constituency who see things as they really are.
You made this happen. The thousands upon thousands of you, from all over the world, who have read, shared and discussed these issues, have almost restored my faith in humanity. It seems there is a very large minority, maybe even an outright majority, who want not only an end to the UK’s occupation of Afghanistan but also the sinister climate and culture we now have which forces people to censor themselves for fear of the consequences.
Well, they can’t gag all of us and It’s clear that now, after ten, long, bloody years that the end is in sight. Keep the pressure on, people. Keep the faith.
Troops out of Afghanistan now.
I read quite a lot of the comments attached to your article Harry and you are right, there really weren’t any “From the messageboards” type comments and a lot were very supportive. I added my own!
In a way it doesn’t suprise me, I marched through London with 2 million other a few years ago (Yes there WERE 2 million there – believe me, not idiotic police “estimates” designed to undermine the impact of demonstrations against their paymasters. There were the most amazing and unlikely people on that march. My favourite has to be the young guy, obviously homeless, who had used part of what was probably last night’s cardboard blanket to make a sign which read, quite simply, in a childlike scrawl “Blair is a cunt” !! That sentiment can be easily transfered to the warmongering millionaire, public school “educated” toffs who now occupy the position formerly held by the subject of that rather pithy “banner”.
Remember that in the USA the people backed the military involvement in Vietnam until it became obvious that their kids were not dying to protect the USA, but for some misplaced and quite ridiculous political ideal !! Then they turned on the government with a vegeance! The same is begining to happen here, I feel. Troops OUT of Afghanistan NOW!