Wickham's musings from Chalke

 
The Americans continue to adopt an unfriendly attitude towards the populations of territories they have invaded with the intention of helping to introduce democracy.

I remember my father saying that when the allied armies went up through Italy and Austria towards the end of the Second World War they were billeted on local households. My father made friends with the Austrian family he was billeted on and the friendship lasted for the next fifty years. The husband of the family had been conscripted into the German army and he had been presumed killed in Russia, although his body was never found.

Admittedly the family was anti-Nazi and I presume the husband had been conscripted because he had little choice, but weren't the majority of Iraqis anti-Saddam Hussein when the Americans invaded?

Don't the Americans realise they should be trying to cultivate friendships with the local population as surely they will want to trade with them, visit as tourists and buy their oil in the future?

The Americans continue to hold people in Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay without charge and there have been allegations of torture. There has been a lot of discussion about Extraordinary Rendition of suspects by secret flights through European countries to Eastern European and Central Asian countries for interrogation. The Americans are apparently financing the construction of a high-tech prison in Morocco presumably for special interrogations. Why do they need to do this? Isn't one prison at Guantanamo Bay enough? I suppose it is too well known and visited by non-government people who report on the conditions so they transport some prisoners elsewhere.

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Violence has increased since the recent bombing of the Shiite Askariya shrine in the golden-domed mosque in the mainly Sunni city of Samarra. No one knows who bombed the shrine. It may have been terrorists intent on stopping Shiites and Sunnis getting together to form a government. At any rate, tit for tat murders have been commonplace since and attacks against American and British forces have increased.