is the iraq war your fault ?

I posted on a thread about puppy killing on another site and a former marine basically said well unless you have stopped oil refineries or are willing to go to jail over the iraq war you havent done anything to stop the war .

also its your lifestyle thats causing our governments to go to iraq if we didnt use more oil than we produce we wouldnt be in the middle east .

even if your not driving a hummer your still using oil in some form , your eating food thats produced by oil or wearing clothes that are produced by oil .

I have a friend and she quit her job and has become a full time iraq war protester shes jailed all the time and her oil use is pretty small so I think she may be innocent , so are the amish. but I think the rest of us are likely guilty even if we didnt support the war or went to a few protests .

would you go to jail over slavery or over anything

 

What is getting yourself banged up going to achieve?

I went on many demonstrations in Edinburgh in the run up to the Iraq war, I marched down to a police station with about a couple of hundred people screaming my lungs out, they had just arrested someone for burning the American flag.

I mostly cycle everywhere these days, but on the other hand I work for a company who uses a LOT of oil. What can I do about that? I need to make a living. I have no choice but to buy food from supermarkets, although I do have certain ethical standards which I follow, for example I only buy food products grown within the EU, so that cut's down my food miles tally.

I cannot do much more than that. Getting myself sent down for a cause isn't going to make a difference.

No disrespect to the hardcore eco warriors though, I just haven't got the balls for it. I have a great amount of admiration for the women who climbed onto the Hawk fighter plane on it's way to Indonesia, vandalising it and costing BAE Systems millions of pounds. They got away with it in court as well!

 

is there something you would be prepared to go to jail over , Im wondering about this myself

 

I could be a conscientious objector.

 

Well neither of us drive and we grow as much food ourselves as is possible, although its pretty tricky with not having a proper garden. The food we buy is local...we very rarely buy things we dont need to buy. And i dont feel we personally are to blame for the war. These ridiculous drivers who drive their kids to school or drive to the letterbox to post a letter, or to go somewhere they could easily walk/bike/train are a different story imo..I mean we do a lot more...Not denying we probably are paying for oil somewhere along the way, somewhere...but its small and near unavoidable unless youre really willing to go out into the forest and build yourself a hut to live in and, well, you get the picture. Im not sure wed be able to do that. We do what we can whilst keeping a decent home and looking after our bodies

 

I don't agree with the proposition that unless you are doing everything you can to stop something then you are tacitly supporting it. We are largely trapped within a system over which we have no control. Even those who voted Labour back into power aren't responsible for the decisions taken after they were in office.

Anything I'd be prepared to go to jail for... I'd rather go to jail than go to war if there was conscription, but otherwise I think I could do more out of jail, though I'm aware that one person can do practically nothing to stop such things.

 

Largely I agree, though Jonny's most compelling and uncomfortable point is that we all, excepting perhaps for the most ardent amish and committed commune dwellers, have a collective responsibility for over-consumption and a reliance on finite resources that have, are, and I expect will increasingly come to be, the source of conflicts around the globe....

 

in a word, NO. You are not responsible, especially when the reasons given by state officians for going into the war had nothing to do with oil. If oil is the real reason we're there, then the responsible parties are the oil industry and greedy corrupt politicians.

 

that being said, we should all clean up our acts and paint ourselves green because the future of the world depends on it.

 

No individual can make a real difference. Even Ghandi needed the collective support of the Indian population to achieve what became the republic of India. Until such a time we will continue to be at the mercy of those who create policy and make national decisions.

There are no political acts that I would give up my supposed freedom for jail. I've watched OZ!!!

 

Getting yourself banged up is the last thing anyone needs. It entails a stripsearch the very moment you are hauled through reception. You then give your name, age, religion and crime. Then you are jeered and scoffed at by prison officers twice the size of your height, looking down seeing you as new dough to be ripped apart. Dogs sit at their heal, licking their lips, looking for a chance that you might attempt to run. Then they are specifically trained to kill you as though you were a fox.

Anyway, it was everyone who voted in Labour and everyone who voted in George Bush, who is to blame here. But while we continue to vote in Labour, Britain crashes and our occupation in Iraq sustains for yet another year.

Additional: There is a march being gathered at Trafalgar Square on the 15th March 2008. You can get the Bakerloo line, Southeastern services and Northern Line, (Charing + branch) to Trafalgar Square. There are also chariot of fire(Bendy bus 453) and major intercapital bus services that will stop nearer the time. Check for situation on the day. If anyone cares about an end to war. If you believe war is stupid. Then boogy on down to London, for what is set to be yet another massive march.

 

That maybe true but the Tories weren't objecting to the call for taking the UK into Afghanistan and Iraq. Then I'm not here to defend Labour, after all that party is more right wing than most previous conservative administrations, probably all pre Thatcher!!!

 

not that i voted for him or would EVER vote for him ... but you seem to think that voting actually got him elected ... and are forgetting the whole bit about how he STOLE the election, forged votes, Florida debacle ... and then the 2nd time around kept a lot of minorities (who tend to vote Democrat) and poor people from being able to vote ... thus winning the 2nd election.

 

Indeed, the Conservatives were cheerleaders for the war all through the process, it's a mistake to think it would've been any different had we had a Conservative government. The Libdems consistently opposed the decision to go into Iraq, along with many of the minority parties of course.

 

If only Howard Marks was PM

 

Yes, it's a shame their new leader seems determined to throw away whatever credibility the party has built up over the last 10 years, what with his farcical manoeuvrings over the Euro-referendum and abandoning their high-tax stance. Chuckie Kennedy may have had his faults but no-one since has matched his popularity among the electorate at large.

 

i think the war is all our faults
nobody really wanted it but only a handful of people stood up and spoke against it
if we all had joined hands and spoke against it it probably wouldnt have happened
its nobodys individual faults
its just a lack of organisation

 

A million people marched against the war on Iraq in London alone, and the government knew that for every person who protested, there were at least ten more who thought about doing so. I think it showed not that we can't mobilise against political decisions but that when we do, it's incredibly easy for a government to ignore the will of the people and go and do its own thing anyway. There really is nothing more we could have done, we could not have made it any clearer. The electorate simply has no say, no power whatsoever in any political decision... our votes are worthless.

 

*holds hands up* yes it was i *waves back his cape* i told the gov that saddam was building WMD's inside the hospitals and generally in poor farming districts of iraq. fact being the war happened whether we wanted it to or not, people took to the streets etc but still it happened so no we didnt so much as allow it to happen. its more a case of there was nothing that would have prevented it from happening and a fail to see how the blame lies on us as the general public ?

 

Well maybe protests dont have as much effect as cash money , what is the reason we give a damn about the middle east oil .
why are we still there we want to have troops on the ground in the most important oil area on earth .

you can blame bush or blair but its our lifestyle that makes oil important and people arent prepared to do anything to change their lifestyle , or very little .

going to protests and still depending on plastics oil and cars and flying here and there is well pointless