Monday, January 16, 2006

Feeding intolerance

To declare war on terror doesn't mean having missiles randomly pissing down from the sky. Surely there's enough handsomely paid-up US war strategist who'd gather that.

The 1996 IRA attacks on the Docklands and Manchester’s Arndale centre left us with some devastating scenes. Now imagine this. Without any warning or consultation with the Irish government, a couple of avenging RAF planes would take off and bomb Dublin. 18 dead, streets and buildings raised to the ground. Of course that never happened. It’d be a daft, absurd and misguided piece of revenge.

It happened, instead, on Friday. Only difference, a missile or two was dropped out of the blue by the US Air Force on a Pakistani village. The reason? They were looking, in vain -it turned out- for Al Quaeda number two, Mr Al-Zawahari. The creepy geezer wasn’t there, of course, and I just wonder how many more deprived, ignorant kids, witnessing their huts smashed into pieces and with nothing else to lose, will now join a fundamentalist group as a result. To declare war on terror doesn't mean having missiles randomly pissing down from the sky. Surely there's enough handsomely paid-up US war strategist who'd gather that.

Yet, we haven’t got much to worry, as sure enough our pampering news coverage system will keep us safe in the bubble: Jodie Marsh’s eviction or Sven-Goran Eriksson’s grotesque gossip are our media fodder of preference, forget the Pakistani slaughter. Til the next 7/7 blasts up the crack of our arse.

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