.... are destined to repeat it. (Edmund Burke 1729-1797)
This quote often gets confused with the later one by Santayana: 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'
But as Santayana came a good hundred years after Burke, I shall use the Burke attributed quote. Especially as Santayana seems to get rather more popular coverage than Burke. I wonder why that is?
However this is not a post about philosophy at all, or whether Santayana plagiarised Burke, just that the Burke quote is the most obvious title.
It is about modern day intervention aka invasion/imperialism/21st century colonialism - take your pick of description.
While searching on the tinties, I found this gem of a vid. Excellent visuals, a very neat summary, and some good points succinctly made. You may need to turn the volume up, the recording is rather quiet.
Note at the end, the mention of women's rights when questioning the intervention in Afghanistan. At least it got a mention. And no doubt we are repeating our own history with seven British deaths this week alone and 176 deaths for British armed forces in total since our involvement. Here is a link with details of the ones who have died to date, including serving members in the British forces from Fiji, Nepal, South Africa and Zimbabwe. And that pales into insignificance compared with the number of civilian deaths.
So just why are we all there yet again?
1 comment:
How strange you should post about this subject today!
Btw the video was very interesting and informative, Anthony Wedgewood Benn's voice?
There is also a lot of publicity over here today, about the young ages of some of the soldiers who have been killed recently.
I was mulling this over, particularly because I have two sons, both older than the ones killed in Afghanistan; and wondering what exactly we are STILL doing there?
What are we trying to gain/prove? What exactly is the point?
And the tally of lost lives and injuries to our forces continues to rise unabated, whilst our greedy politicians on both sides of the House of Commons, have their faces in the trough, with expenses claims.........
don't even get me on it!
J
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