attacking the gods
i've been wanting to discuss something i'd heard a very long time ago, it is a quote attributed to winston churchill. i've been trying for the better part of the past hour to find that quote with proper attribution, and though there seems to be no doubt he said it, i did not wish to put it up until i had some sort of source to cite, i finally came across this article.

here's what i'm talking about,

He (Winston Churchill) was disappointed and " led to observe anxiously that he had not become the King's [Prime] Minister, or fought a bloody war for six years, in order to achieve the dissolution of the British Empire "
Morgan, Kenneth O.. , ed. The Oxford Illustrated History Of Britain ( pg. 562 )

( the text in parentheses is mine )
with reference to the 'evil and heinous dictator' saddam hussein's gassing of the kurds in 1988, an example of saddam's tyranny that was incidentally ignored by the americans at that time, consider this, from an article in the straits times,

Arguing strongly for the use of mustard gas in 1919, Winston Churchill -- then a secretary of state in Britain's War Office -- said he did not understand the 'squeamishness about the use of gas'.

'I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes,' the former British prime minister was quoted in Iraq: From Sumer To Saddam, by Iraqi expert Geoff Simons.

via uggabugga

winston churchill, for all his attributed greatness, statesmanship and wizardry with the english language was undeniably an imperialist at heart, as seem to be the folks at this party. to speak in one breath of freedom and democracy and the rights of man and to utter in another breath a resolve for continued british dominance, now that's chuchill the hypocrite for you. from this speech at the westminister college, fulton, missouri, delivered on the fifth of mach, 1946,

[.....] We cannot be blind to the fact that the liberties enjoyed by individual citizens throughout the British Empire are not valid in a considerable number of countries, some of which are very powerful. In these States control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all-embracing police governments. The power of the State is exercised without restraint, either by dictators or by compact oligarchies operating through a privileged party and a political police. It is not our duty at this time when difficulties are so numerous to interfere forcibly in the internal affairs of countries which we have not conquered in war. But we must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

the prime minister's assertion that the peoples of the british empire were far better off than those under other tyrannical dictatorships may or may not have been true, but those peoples were also by no means experiencing the oft touted pleasures of democracy and freedom either. it has long been my belief, and i'm guessing many historians will agree, that the british left my country not because of gandhi's approach of resistance and protest through non violence, but rather because they could not afford to continue their rule. history has indeed been kind to 'the last lion' since, as he so famously proclaimed, he did write it.


posted by ubaid - Friday, April 18, 2003 at 1:06 AM - 0 comments - post anonymously