Friendly Fire: It is without doubt an immense tragedy that we are seeing our deceased and disabled soldiers arriving home on a Hercules transporter aircraft almost on a daily basis. And it doesn't alter the tragic facts, statistics, and broken-hearted relatives opinions when the Police arrest and imprison terrorists who were planning to wreak havoc here in the UK; but it helps, because they were caught before the act rather than after.
We are living in tragic times, and even in Afghanistan and Iraq it's not a war as war used to be fought, in the trenches shooting at each other and as hand-to-hand combat. No! It's a war of cowardice, of booby traps, and of car bombs. Fighting the enemy, if indeed it can be called that, is about as crude as dropping a silent but smelly fart in a crowd and walking away to watch and laugh at the consequences from a safe distance; only the results are devastating rather than humourous.
And much like Northern Ireland in its day, they don't want us there, they want to be left to sort out their own problems. They don't want the British, or any other peace-keeping troops interfering; and it's only Politics why our boys have to be sent, with Gordon Brown taking the 'British Bulldog' / Winston Churchill stance and sending them because it's "the British way," and "the right thing to do!" Yet France, amongst others, won't send anyone, which brings with it the zero-body-bag / casualty effect; so are we really "doing the right thing" by sticking our noses in where they are quite clearly not welcomed?
And what's this "friendy fire"? It seems as if every war since gunpowder was invented has suffered casualties from "friendly fire." In real terms, what they meant to say was they made an enormous cock-up, mistook their own troops for the enemy, and either shot or shelled them.
I cannot feel sorry enough for the parent's and relatives of our troops whom have been killed by "friendly fire." What on earth was "friendly" about it when our own soldiers were killed by their colleagues ammunition?
All we can hope for is some form of recompence in that "the enemy" also suffers from some "friendly fire" casualties, too. But there again, with the mentality of a suicide bomber, I don't expect they'd care!
We are living in tragic times, and even in Afghanistan and Iraq it's not a war as war used to be fought, in the trenches shooting at each other and as hand-to-hand combat. No! It's a war of cowardice, of booby traps, and of car bombs. Fighting the enemy, if indeed it can be called that, is about as crude as dropping a silent but smelly fart in a crowd and walking away to watch and laugh at the consequences from a safe distance; only the results are devastating rather than humourous.
And much like Northern Ireland in its day, they don't want us there, they want to be left to sort out their own problems. They don't want the British, or any other peace-keeping troops interfering; and it's only Politics why our boys have to be sent, with Gordon Brown taking the 'British Bulldog' / Winston Churchill stance and sending them because it's "the British way," and "the right thing to do!" Yet France, amongst others, won't send anyone, which brings with it the zero-body-bag / casualty effect; so are we really "doing the right thing" by sticking our noses in where they are quite clearly not welcomed?
And what's this "friendy fire"? It seems as if every war since gunpowder was invented has suffered casualties from "friendly fire." In real terms, what they meant to say was they made an enormous cock-up, mistook their own troops for the enemy, and either shot or shelled them.
I cannot feel sorry enough for the parent's and relatives of our troops whom have been killed by "friendly fire." What on earth was "friendly" about it when our own soldiers were killed by their colleagues ammunition?
All we can hope for is some form of recompence in that "the enemy" also suffers from some "friendly fire" casualties, too. But there again, with the mentality of a suicide bomber, I don't expect they'd care!
posted by Alan Burridge at 12:11 AM
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