Veterans For Peace UK has a membership with a wide range of political views. That is one reason why we don’t get involved in party politics. Another reason is that it doesn’t matter who gets elected, Labour, Conservative or a coalition government, the wars just keep coming.
So if we don’t get involved in domestic party politics, it is a given that we do not interfere in the party politics of a another nation.
8 years ago people proclaimed their support for President Barack Obama. They praised him for saying he would end the war in Iraq and close Guantanamo. They even gave him a Nobel Peace Prize.
President Barack Obama went on to sign orders that led to the killing of thousands. He sent american troops into bases all over Africa. He attacked Libya, turning a functioning state into a basket case. He upgraded nukes and during his final weeks as president he ordered american tanks back into Europe, advancing them into Poland. The war in Iraq continues and Guantanamo is still open.
To sum up, Barack Obama chose to serve the war system.
On Friday, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the President of the USA and people are calling for anti-Trump protests. The rallies are being painted as anti-war rallies, but they are not. They are partisan, party political and will not challenge the underlying war system.
Some of the people calling for these protests have been missing in action from the anti-war movement throughout Barack Obama’s reign of death.
Some of the people calling for these protests completely ignore the war mongering of Hillary Clinton. You have to ask the question, would these people be calling for similar anti-war protests had Hillary Clinton won the presidential election? I think you know the answer.
Trump has not yet been to war, nor has he ordered the U.S. military to bomb, invade or occupy other countries. As far as I know he has not ordered the assassination of anyone. However I am certain that like every president before him, given time, he will be a humble servant of the war system.
Our VFP UK Statement of Intent challenges us to liberate people, the environment and resources from the war system. We will continue to agitate for this no matter who is elected to govern the UK, the USA or anywhere else.
But when it comes to the internal politics of the war system, we shouldn’t be taking sides.
Ben Griffin is a founding member of VFP UK
Veterans For Peace UK 
Never have I lost sleep over anything in my life until now. I see the world I would fight to save become a dumping ground for the rich. I used to wear my medal with pure pride as I knew that medal on my chest was given to me for what I believed at the time was a sacrifice of my all. Now I awaken daily to see that my own beliefs are challenged and my voice means nothing. As soon as my uniform was hung my voice was buried with it. I was born in Kosovo (former Yugoslavia) and I myself was an immigrant at an early age escaping massacre and rape to where I know call my home (United Kingdom) I arrived here as a Muslim and still believe in my religion and no matter what will not change. I put my uniform on for this country and carried a weapon for it as this country protected mine when it was at its last breath and needed help. I hurt daily seeing racism, anger and hatred towards a certain people because those in power say it’s okay (Trump) and it hurts more when our own leaders (May) go and shake hands and crumble in front of the same man who shows racism, sexism and hatred to other humans.
I was always in two minds on whether to join VFP and whether I would feel at home with it and whether I was a hypocrite for doing so but I hope you guys/ladies do not mind me joining and becoming a part of this new family.
I love my country and it hurts that we send our own sons, daughters, brothers and sisters… Mums and dad’s to give all so others can become rich from it.
God save the Queen and also this land which I love dearly.
Deniz
Welcome to VFP Deniz, great to have you with us.
Where were the protests against the Bush and Cheney criminality? Why are people not protesting at the status quo of establishment politics and related issues Ben mentions or poverty wages, for proffit private health insurance, an unfair wealth distribution to the wealthy elite that the country and the countless other related things that lead the anger of the declining electorate that lead to election of President Trump?
He is building the military stronger, larger, and more deadly. Here ya go… No he hasn’t had time yet has he. Does he need to be indoctrinated. I think not. He is already there.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/making-our-military-strong-again
Well said. Very insightful and truthful comments.
All former leaders of so called free world advocated war . While Peace and dialogue regarded as weakness . Arms manufactur is pivotal of their economy with no intent to scale it dowen . To coumpond the above war glourfied and remembered yearly with out any lesson learnt or oppologes for the victims . So the world roles on from destruction to other and the chasm get wider in wealth ,health care and education , compounded with homeless and refugees while Blair and Bush roms free …. why object to Tramp ?
So true it hurts. And now a lot of my relatives are traveling to Washington and other venues to protest–but what? Trump? His sexism and Neanderthal ways? It seems so, but as far as I know, they’re not involved in anti-war activism. Of course, that will come, now that a republican will be in office. I hate and despise that hypocritical stance, so evident when Holy Hillary was in the race.
very, very sad that the post-WW2 POTUS who knew war best, Eisenhower, warned us so clearly of the potential of the military-industrial complex to kill hope some sixty years ago, yet his warning has been forgotten.
In practice, some may say, Ike was far from a peace-focused POTUS, but that does not alter the point that he came to realise what almost no “western” leader has since told us, insistently and more and more urgently.
The work of VFP and comrades everywhere in peace-seeking organisations is vital, especially as the young are easy prey to the morons who run our country. Let’s hope against hope that Trump may cause less killing of lives and of hopes than (of course) appears inevitable. After all, even our late leaderine, the sainted Margaret felt before the fall of the USSR that Gorbachev was a “man she could do business with” ; and Mr Nixon , scoundrel though he may have been, struck a deal with Communist China.
Fingers crossed, despite the seemingly ever-increasing stranglehold of the military etc complex on the US as well as on the UK
David. You are right about Eisenhower’s now well quated statement in his 1961 farewell address (that was to include ‘military industrial Congressional complex) but you are aware that he was, at least nieve in terms of the trust he placed in the Dulles brothers and the abhorrent actions undertaken by the US from the CIA and State Department they ran and the law firms and corporations they represented in and out of Office? Operation Ajax (the CIA and MI6 coup in Iran), the coup in Guatemala, the support of Cuba’s Battista, and so on? Even a 4 star Genral was not immune from such inflences and his successor, who was under relentless pressure to take the US into war (not perfect by any means) got a bullet(s) in the head. I think any incoming U.S. President soon discovers the unstoppable influences of the hidden forces that seem to dictate US policy both militarily, eccomnically and domestically. The most powerful man in the world…….really?!
On a larger scale, and as another example of ‘unseen strings being pulled by unseen hands’ is the facinating and strange U2 incident that brought the long plannd Paris peace talks between Eisenhower and Khrushchev to an abrupt and and possible detante with it. Who ordered that spy plane to photograph the USSR at that time? How was it really brought down and Francis Garry Powers expected to be alive yet alone taken prisoner along with the remains of his plane? Who knows, but the Cold War was back on after this event and business as usuall!
Donald Trump’s election as the 45th president of the United States should come as no surprise. Democracy in the USA is a facade. The USA is in my view, a plutocracy within a oligarchy and both parties are subservient to multinational corporations, lobbyists, special interests and the financial elite. Working class people struggle to survive on stagnant wages that hardly pay the bills and are largely invisible and many are not covered by heath insurance due to criminally extortionate premiums that means an illness or accident can mean homelessness.
Governing as President is limited due to a separation of powers as dictated by the Constitution.
Trump’s victory no doubt sent shock waves around the political establishment who saw Clinton’s win as a forgone conclusion even though many of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, and Trump himself, are part of the 1 percent that the working class have just rejected. I think President Trump is soon to find out, to his horror, who really runs the United States of America.
Washington DC and Imperial Rome seem to have a lot in common and may share the same fate.
I recommend you look at the work of Sam Gerrans on YouTube.
You are correct but it’s more involved than you could ever imagine.
Good luck and may God guide you.
Fully agree Ben, War is not “Politics by other means” War is death by any means possible. In democratic politics there is peaceful conflict with the intention of resolving problems. In most modern wars, there is violent conflict, in many cases intended to create further problems, thereby continuing the best interests of the war industry. That is way never ending wars are the goal of the armament industry and Military Industrial Complex
Very well said, thank you.