Blair owes the dead more than words

Tony Blair today [wednesday] paid tribute to the two Shropshire-based soldiers who were killed in Iraq.

He expressed his condolences to the families of Private Joseva Lewaicei, 25, and Private Adam Morris, 19, during Prime Minister's Question Time in the Commons this afternoon.

Mr Blair said: "We owe them a great debt of gratitude and we pay tribute to their dedication and their courage in the service of their country."

The riflemen, of the 2nd Battalion, The Royal Anglian Regiment, at Tern Hill barracks, near Market Drayton, died in a roadside blast in Basra on Saturday. Link

Howard Zinn: "Patriotism is being used today the way patriotism has always been used and that is to try to encircle everybody in the nation into a common cause, the cause being the support of war and the advance of national power. Patriotism is used to create the illusion of a common interest that everybody in the country has .... and the flag is the symbol of that common interest."

Blair understands the allure of a patriotic word or two - how we are thus seduced into thinking that the deaths of our children in Iraq or Afghanistan somehow serve the greater good of the nation and are thereby transformed into worthy, natural or just 'sacrifice'.

There is no 'common cause' there is no 'common interest' - only a misguided U.S. agenda to redraw the political map of the Middle East - open up new markets, gain strategic control of oil supply, and kill all who stand in the way. War on Iran is next. And by the way, the Tories might well be worse. See Liam Fox's recent speech to the US Heritage Foundation. He is a frightful shit. Britain is doomed to be ruled by these pigs* - who donate the blood of our young as though it was there own - for the foreseeable future.

*sorry pigs