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I was reading Victor Hansons’ weekly article, this week entitled War Over The War (via ForgetFoo), and it got me thinking about war in a more general way.

Normally when I read an opinion on the current ‘war on terror’, as it’s been billed, the article is written by an American. I often find myself getting pissed off; not because i disagree with the content of the article, but i often find the American viewpoint to be somewhat polar in it’s presentation of the facts and reasoning.

What I got to thinking about is this: why do i find it so hard to see this as a war? It occurred to me that the current template for a war over in the UK is probably the second world war - it’s what we think of when considering the term ‘to be at war‘. It’s probably the same in America; after all, it was the biggest war ever fought.

The difference is that to us in Europe, the war was fought on the home front; the blitz bombed London indiscriminantly, the south coast was constantly prepared for a German invasion, and at airfields as far north as Newcastle bombers were stationed for raids against France, Germany, Poland and Norway. Even civilians saw the war first-hand.

In America, men were sent away to fight on foreign shores. Apart from several weak-hearted attempts at bombing the western seaboard from Japan (using hot air balloons and so on), there was no home front in the US.

I’m not saying that America suffered any less, or that American soldiers or civilians were any less brave than their European counterparts; i’m saying that until the bombings in London last week, I found it difficult to see the war on terror as a war that we, as an allegiance of nations, are actively involved in.

The Observer reports that many Indian call center staff are leaving jobs due to the persistent rudeness of British and American callers, while many employees have begun allowing staff to hang up on callers after a third bad language warning.

I have had much experience with the Bombay call center of an unnamed phone company, and have found most of the staff to be unknowledgeable, unwilling to help and quick to hang up on me - I have even been shouted at by some of the customer service reps. This seems to be down to bad training and probably the stress of having to be first line support for one of the worst service providers I have ever dealt with; HSBC on the other hand are helpful, informed and polite.

Some companies still specify staff must anglicise their names, adopting forenames such as Mary and John, to try to stave off resentment.

This just stinks of a bad employer to me; call center managers are trying to help staff avoid angry customers, but the root of the anger is usually poor service (possibly followed by poorly trained support staff).

The employees are therefore caught in the middle - the jobs they hold are sought after due to (relatively) high pay; the company employs them because to western corporations they are cheap labour, and often these are the companies that also cut financial corners on their products and services, leading to more stress for the first line customer service advisors.