Op ed by Eva Roberts
The recent notice of resignation by the British Defence Minister, Ben Wallace, provides another insight into how impunity operates inside British imperialism. Mediocrities rising to positions of tremendous influence in the imperialist British Parliamentary system are free to wreak unimaginable havoc upon the world, only to return to a cosy life, tending their vegetables.
Wallace will be able to water his cabbage patch almost certainly knowing that black markets in Europe are seizing British weapons in Ukraine, and passing them into the hands of killers for use against innocents, including very possibly Wallace’s own people. He can bake to his heart’s content, knowing that residues of depleted uranium contained in shells he shipped to Ukraine can be ingested by mothers carrying unborn children. But in his garden, all will be well. The soil will be pure. He can enjoy time with his loved ones and think about the Ukrainian homes where there are no sons at the breakfast table, no fathers, no husbands, no brothers. Their bodies are still rotting in muddy ditches in a faraway land Wallace once supplied with deadly weapons, funded by his own people whose cupboards were bare and who were pulling out their own teeth as a trip to the dentist cost too much.
Wallace no doubt will profit nicely from his memoirs, or from speaking at dinner parties of the rich and well-connected, or pursue a successful new career knowing that a generation of Ukrainians are shell-shocked,suicidal, deprived of childhood, or severely disabled, most likely limbless. From his comfy chair, enjoying tea and crumpets, he can watch the destruction of Ukraine through the NATO game of “We might let you join our club if you kill enough Russians – but for now you must die for the right to join our club – and here are a few more weapons to keep you busy with that”. Wallace can think about how his boss, Boris Johnson, pressured Ukraine to abort a peace settlement with Russia last spring and the human cost of that warmongering manoeuvre.
Those eagerly packing Ukrainians off to fight for the NATO dream know only too well the squalid cost to life their actions have caused. But they can tend their gardens and sleep well thank you in their warm beds, impunity guaranteed. Their titles are coming, and their bank accounts are fat. British imperialism rewards.
And those other mediocrities of Parliament, fearing the mention of peace as political suicide, and, kept in check by NATO’s war-addicted corporate media hounds, are complicit in this bloodbath, the latest and most terrifying savagery of the British imperialist class.
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