This is a blog I wrote for the release of the song and video Time will tell in 2009...
War : A personal account
Countless thousands march in the streets of london whilst thousands off innocent lives are being lost overseas. The masses rise up only to be closed down by spurious UN resolutions… the year is 2003. 2 years earlier I am sitting in my front room, the sun is shining in Wales and this Saturday morning seems just like most when the first footage comes on the television. I can`t believe my eyes as the plane hits the second tower and watch in bewilderment as the horrible scene unfolds. I am shocked, outraged and stunned to say the least. September the 11th will be remembered for the dire tragedy that happened that day and for all the innocent lives lost, good decent hardworking people with families, lives and hopes. But we all lost something that day, we lost our innocence and perhaps our humanity. In their unrelenting determination to seek out and destroy terrorism based not only on fragmented unverified and spurious dossiers about weapons of mass destruction and propelled by a ridiculous notion that somehow Iraq was responsible as a country for the terrible act of aggression on US soil by a terrible few we are plunged into war with both Iraq and Afghanistan. Shock and awe they called it as it was presented in true holywood fashion over our tv screens. What crime had hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians done to deserve this? The pentagon have a word for risk assessing the civilian casualty predictions.. They call it bugsplat perhaps that makes the act more palatable to those at the top!
War affects everyone not just the brave and the young sent by older men to fight the good fight losing life limb and mind in the bargain. Is it really the good fight? I think not. The Un says a country cannot be held responsible for the actions of the few.. should they have listened? I think so.. Al qaueda were in Afghanistan so we were told and yet these few were used in the name of outright military action on an entire country! I heard a phrase a while ago… ‘Afghanistan is like a Hotelier who accepted a bad guest when the guest left the hotel was destroyed. Terrorism is as frightening as it sounds but military action is not the solution to the problem. If you want to stop stealing do you destroy the thiefs country? I think not.. You catch the thief. The human cost can never be underestimated and almost every day innocents are killed in this unending war. Turn the tables if you will what if it was your country it was happening to? What if it were your children your homes your lives torn apart, thousands killed and countless more displaced. We owe it to ourselves to stop this now.
The year is 2009 and as the fighting continues in afghanistan my thoughts turn to the terrible human cost of the war with reports and images posted daily to my computer of untold carnage on the civilian populations my response to this barbarity and injustice is the song Time will tell… I had the power at least to write about it…. On september 11th we are releasing the video to the song and I hope you will join us in remembering the innocent on such a poignant day… John