IT TOLLS FOR THEE

 

HUGH WELSHMAN, HERE, FOR THE BBC

Load of old bollocks, if you ask me, look you. GIs on safari. Spot the wog and blow his head off. I mean, if the wogs came storming into Merthyr Tydfil, kicking the fucking doors in, isn't it, look you, like the co-a-fucking-lition do, dragging poor Owen off to Caernarvon Castle and wiring his wedding tackle up to the National fucking grid, then we Taffies would not be best pleased, not a bit of it. Probably not do anything about it, mind, boyo, just go down underground and sing We'll Keep A Welcome In The Hillsides - Only Not For Muslims, in four-part harmony, look you, and hope for the best. Great singers, the Welsh.

But your raghead Ay-rab, he's different. Takes it personal, he does. A gang of psychobastard, crewcut Momma'sBoy GI Joes winning hearts and minds by gang-raping his sister, not that they do, of course, and slapping his mother around, just like she was Vietnames, not that they do that, either, only when they feel like it; stress, you see, sometimes the grannyporn channel breaks down in the barracks and the poor lambs have to go and rape somebody to death. 'Sthe American way, e pluribus unum, the many into one. Something like that, anyway, struggle with latin, I do, Kirsty, English not even my first language, bit like you.

No, Jeremy, your wog, he doesn't care for all this Shock and Awe shit, and who could fucking blame him, really ? Funny isn't it, look you, how when the Yanks or the Israelis knock out a school or a hospital it's all down to some software error in the Pentagon but when some wog wraps himself in Semtex and does the same thing it's a whole different sort of uncivilised behaviour. Clash of cultures they call it, look you. Japs was the same. In the last World War. Little yellow bastards'd just down a thimble full of rice wine and go and crash their planes into defenceless US Warships. North Koreans, millions of the short-arse toothy bastards charging the machineguns and only one in ten of them had a weapon, the VietCong the same. If only they'd had nuclear weapons they could've fought clean, like, isn't it, and instead of taking their own lives they could've roasted a load of civilians, like you often have to in order to make the world a better place.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, that's a line from the great Welsh poet, Wilfrid Owen, isn't it, and it means it's great for enlisted men to throw themselves on grenades or squat-down on rusty bayonets so's the politicians can stay safe at home, banging each others' wives and making fortunes, just like Mr Hoon does, the cunt, and that mouthy, blind git, Blunkett - fuck me sideways, Andrew, is there a more obnoxious bastard in the country than him? I mean, if you was to trawl the United fucking Kingdom, even in Scotland, looking for someone to beat in the face with a PP9 battery wrapped in a sock could you find anyone more deserving than Blunkett? Jesus fucking Christ, if that bastard'd ever been defence secretary the world'd a gone up in smoke long ago. These blind fuckers, piano tuning's all they're fit for and they're not much fucking good, look you, at that, isn't it. Anyway, those at home, filling demanding posts in the MOD and on the green benches, thay have a saying, too - They also serve who only stand and steal, isn't it ?

This Arab chappie, the one with no head, he died for his country, too, not only died but was about to blow his own arse to Kingdom Come or Mecca or Paradise, whatever, isn't it, only Sergeant Chuck saved him the trouble; if he was English we'd give him a medal, Mohamed, that is, well, most of us would but not that cunt Max Hastings, he wouldn't, officers only/for the use of, that's his view, the loudmouth tweedy prick, look you, isn't he; bit of a fixture on Any Questions with Dimbles minor, that Hastings, not the proper BBC, schoolteachers' radio 'swhat we call it, whiny self-important little dictators, asking the panel for their fucking opinion on everything, like they were fucking Solomon and as for the Money Programme, well I'll be fucked up Mount Snowdon and down again if there's a more mean-minded, penny-pinching crew of bastards than that audience, Dear BBC is there some way I can wring an extra farthing a month out of my investments, I need it because I want to set up a trust fund for my grandchild in the hope that he'll love me because no fucker else does; as it is, though, since he's not English, old Mohammed bin No Head, we call him a cunt. Doesn't seem right, somehow, I mean, there'll be English lads, and Jocks and Taffies, too, had their heads blown off, just like that, but you'll not see them on the BBC, fuck me, no. Bad for morale, not the squaddies' morale, the politicians' morale. Best that the enemy remains bestial, a monster; even though there he lies, poor bastard, just like any other poor bastard, only with his head shot off.

That Tony Blair, and his bint, Imelda, Weapons of Mass fucking Destruction all on their own, really, isn't it, no need to search for WMD, sending out sappers and spooks digging up half the fucking desert; just look in the bleeding mirror, isn't it? Millions of people and not just wogs, dead, homeless, maimed and they give him a Hebe Peace Lottery-winning ticket, the Isaacs, that is; and him virtually a Cardinal in that Mick business. Chapel, me; none of that smoke and mirrors shit, bend-over-for-Jesus-little-boy stuff, just plain, good old-fashioned worship. And singing. That's what's needed, I think. A place for everyone and everyone in his place, only preferably not with his head blown off. And it's back now to George in the studio who has the weather for us, shit, I expect, although not as bad as here in Baghdad, fucking shithole, when I started out on Radio Daffyd never thought I'd be stood here like a cunt, in a flak jacket, talking bollocks.


The original juxtaposition of those two pictures had Sergeant Chuck calmly explaining how shooting Mohamed's head off was just in the line of duty and so, probably, it was. But they were accompanied by typical redneck, phallic, triumphalist bravado; since lynching niggers was proving difficult these days and likely to become more so, then shooting suicide-bombing Ayrab sonsafuckingbitches was the next best thing. None of the rednecks, the last great hope for mankind, as they call themselves, has the wit to wonder, just why there are so many suicide bombers. The dumb, shitbrain bastards making such comments probably just fool themselves in a variety of ways - Mohamed probably planned the Twin Towers attack, himself; America really is the home of Liberty and Freedom and not the modern home of genocide, slavery, ethnic cleansing and state-sponsored terrorism; that working class GIs blown to smithereens, gutted, blinded, crippled and immolated are happy for the Bush gang to make a fortune out of all this shit, whilst denying them - a la Bob Ainsworth - proper veteran care and, best of all, that this shit is going to make a better world.


John Donne had it then and he has it now; no man is an island, each man's death diminishes me, send not to ask for whom the bell tolls..... These pictures, which we so rarely see, are appalling, both of them; but the moot point is: does the warrior nobility lie with the sniper, exquisitely armed and resourced, armoured, air-covered,hamburgered and coca-cola'd, keen to complete his tour and return to Little Rock, Ark., or is it with the man in the cheap trainers, his waistcoat tailored by Death, willing, eager to blow himself and his enemies to bits in order to repel an infidel, an unwelcome invader? Or is it that, led on both sides by the cowardly and ignoble, by the wailing imam, by the draft dodger and the career politico, all in arms fight the wrong enemy?