[WCUSP] Fwd: Plea to End Wars of a Former Cdn. Soldier - April 5, 1999

[Odile Hugonot Haber]

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From: Communicator <sefton at telus.net>
Date: Nov 12, 2006 4:24 AM
Subject: Plea to End Wars of a Former Cdn. Soldier - April 5, 1999
To: wilpf-news at wilpf.ch


WILPF International News List
[This is a plea to end all wars written in the context of NATO's war in the
Former Yugoslavia.]

PLEA OF A FORMER CANADIAN SOLDIER, HARRY RANKIN, K52258, written APRIL 05,
1999

Written by and now In Memory of Harry Rankin, K52258, Service : Active
Force, 5 September 1939 to 7 July 1945; Q.C., lifetime Bencher of The Law
Society of British Columbia, Former Treasurer of The Law Society of British
Columbia, practicing Barrister and Solicitor until his death in February
2002; 27years of service as champion of the people as Alderman to City of
Vancouver.

This plea against war could have been written today against Canada's
participation in Afghanistan.

PLEA OF A FORMER CANADIAN SOLDIER, HARRY RANKIN, written APRIL 05, 1999
Arretez la guerre!!! Stop the war!!!

My name is Harry Rankin. I spent five and a half years of my life in the
Canadian Army during WW2. I served over two years of that time as an
infantryman in the Canadian contingent of the Eighth Army (British), from
the landing in Sicily to the north of Italy in what may in truth be called
the "Last Just War" . I was wounded twice. I oppose all war. Out of war
comes the impoverishment of millions of people crippled, maimed and
tormented for the rest of their lives.

I have struggled for the last several weeks to comprehend some rationale for
NATO's war in Serbia. My conclusion is, it is Fascism revisited.

War is the worst catastrophe of the human race. In war, everyone is
expendable except the leading generals and politicians. There can be no war
without the genocide of women, children and old men, not to mention the
young (mostly male) who serve and die or are maimed for life. War is always
an atrocity.

History is full of these integral losses. In the Boer War, the English set
up concentration camps for the Boer women and children to let them die of
plague, and lack of food and sustenance. In the Italian campaign for the
colonization of North Africa, General Grazioni set up huge fences in Africa
against which he drove the native peoples to slaughter them. In the
Ethiopian war, Count Ciano, the son -in -law of Il Duce, (the man who made
the trains run on time in Italy) recounts bombing Ethiopian tribesmen on
horseback watching them explode 'like the unfolding petals on a rose". In
the Spanish Civil War, Hitler and Mussolini tried out their new weapons at
Guernica devastating a whole city as a prelude to that monster Franco.
Franco slaughtered half of the Spanish civil population while the shabby
diplomacy of the West practiced "non intervention". At the time of the
Second World War, after a year of the "Phony War", I recall England's Prime
Minister Churchill finally deciding which side he was on. I remember the
cynicism of U.S. President Truman who said, "Let the Russians and Germans
kill each other off. We 'll look after ourselves." He did this very well by
dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki testing the bombs against
a country already defeated.

The US Clinton administration says the U.S. will take 25,000 Albanian
refugees on a "temporary basis". Does anyone in his or her right minds think
the Albanians can go back to Kosovo after being used as pawns by the NATO
beasts? NATO now is nothing more than a cover for US industrial- military
might in the takeover of the world. The chance of the U.S citizens willingly
risking American soldiers to put that theme in place is pretty slim. And
good for the U.S. people. They should not risk a single life to this NATO
Fascist army. They should go further to destroy economically that New World
Order structure in process which attempts to fulfil Hitler's dream.

At the end of WW2 we thought we had won by destroying Fascism, only now to
discover that the Fascists never really went away, but have re-emerged in a
new guise. I remember Hitler's slogan: A Thousand Years of National
Socialism! This was Hitler's language for conquering the world, running
roughshod over national sovereignty and the people of the world. I was in
England in 1940, only 19 years old. Five year later, Hitler, the animal,
died in a bunker after taking poison. In my naivete I thought a great new
world loomed on the horizon. Instead, we have descended to an alliance of
the lickspittle Tony Blair and the Social Democrats of the world grovelling
and slobbering before that great "Statesman" Clinton, all in a mad
subservience to the New World Order euphemistically named "Globalization".
It is a submission to the money men, the new fascist elite, who are imposing
their will on the people of the world.

It was always the case that the people of the world have a long hard
struggle ahead of them. All I know is that the dream epitomized by Hitler
rings as false in my ears today at my age of 78 as it did in England in
1939-40 . Fifty two million people died for that charade.

WITH PEACE, EVERYTHING GOOD FOR PEOPLE IS POSSIBLE.

WAR ONLY DESTROYS.

LET US PUT AN END TO WAR!


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