Poor little insurgents - they got shouted at - boohoo!

Poor little insurgents - they got shouted at - boohoo!

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Discussion

Digga

40,207 posts

282 months

Friday 19th December 2014
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Mrr T said:
As for your assertion that the treat of Nazism did not justify carpet bombing means you clearly have no idea what Nazism means.
Even at the time there was opposition to Bomber Harris's campaign - I totally fail to understand how you think it a 'back and white' issue. The victor writes history and we have 'justified' our actions thus, but there is nothing - either now or back then - which actually gives the moral high ground you percieve other than the simple fact that something had to be done and there was no simple, clean, perfectly humane way to achieve the required ends.

Siko said:
A lot of sense spoken here IMO. War is indeed hell and I find the attempt to portray war nowadays as clean, clinical and fair is utterly morally repugnant....that we judge some weapons as 'good' and some as 'bad' is one of the biggest lies I've ever heard. That weapon 'a' that shreds a person to pieces is legal and fair, vs weapon 'b' that eviscerates a person to pieces in a slightly different fashion is bad confuses the hell out of me. They're all bad, war is bad, people die in a large variety of horrible ways, if you don't like don't go to war, simple.
Indeed. Only those who are far removed from the action can ever believe there is a humane way to deliberately kill opposition.

CrutyRammers

13,735 posts

197 months

Friday 19th December 2014
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Siko said:
A lot of sense spoken here IMO. War is indeed hell and I find the attempt to portray war nowadays as clean, clinical and fair is utterly morally repugnant....that we judge some weapons as 'good' and some as 'bad' is one of the biggest lies I've ever heard. That weapon 'a' that shreds a person to pieces is legal and fair, vs weapon 'b' that eviscerates a person to pieces in a slightly different fashion is bad confuses the hell out of me. They're all bad, war is bad, people die in a large variety of horrible ways, if you don't like don't go to war, simple.
Agree totally. Is nuking or firebombing a city, or drone-bombing a madrassa different to shooting up a school? Logically, not in any way. It can be justified in our minds because we think that our aims are better than the enemy's aims. But that doesn't give you any special moral high ground, after all, the enemy thinks that his aims are better than yours.

Once the decision to go to war is made, the aim should be to defeat the enemy as quickly and completely as possible. If we can't stomach the consequences, we shouldn't get involved at all.

Digga

40,207 posts

282 months

Friday 19th December 2014
quotequote all
CrutyRammers said:
Once the decision to go to war is made, the aim should be to defeat the enemy as quickly and completely as possible. If we can't stomach the consequences, we shouldn't get involved at all.
Of all the failed military campaigns the West has involved itself in since WW2, the lack of clarity of goals and thereby a lack of commitment to them has been pivotal.

toppstuff

13,698 posts

246 months

Friday 19th December 2014
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Digga said:
CrutyRammers said:
Once the decision to go to war is made, the aim should be to defeat the enemy as quickly and completely as possible. If we can't stomach the consequences, we shouldn't get involved at all.
Of all the failed military campaigns the West has involved itself in since WW2, the lack of clarity of goals and thereby a lack of commitment to them has been pivotal.
Precisely. Lack of strategic goals and rules of engagement dictated by politicians rather than military men, has caused real problems and completely blunted the ability of armed forces.

spaximus

4,230 posts

252 months

Friday 19th December 2014
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I have no military background at all, my nearest connections are to an uncle who was a bomber pilot and a Polish man who married by Dads sister who was part of the Polish fighter squadron. So my view is based on what I read and see.

War is terrible, but worse to me is fighting for something that is right only to have others who have an agenda to follow dragging the issue out whilst we naval gaze. From the comfort of an armchair in some Guardian enclave it is easy to say what our troops do wrong, as we have the press there wanting to find out wrongs. A good journalist who finds something profoundly wrong is suddenly elevated by his peers, regardless of the outcome for others.

For me I only want to know we won. I only want to know we did everything to protect our forces. I accept that in war there will be innocent people killed, but I would prefer that those innocents were not ours. The German civilians killed in the carpet bombing, were legitimate targets to me. They supported the Nazis, celebrated their success and their enemies deaths and would have enjoyed the spoils of war had we lost.

Now the wars have changed but the killing is still the same. As others have said any war fought without a clear goal is likely to be lost, if not at the time of battle, most certainly afterwards.
When Saddam was engaged after invading Kuwait, the lack of plan and desire to go the whole way allowed him to rebuild and cost more lives in the subsequent war.

And now in the middle east we have no plan, no willingness to do whatever it takes to win, we have thrown good peoples lives at something that is no better than it was.

I support our troops actions and forgive their very occasional errors when they have snapped under the most extreme circumstances. When everyone has been where they have been, seen what they have seen, done what they have been ordered to do, then maybe they have earned a right to judge them, but sitting in a comfy office taking legal aid does not give them any right in my mind to try to take down an odd squaddie who makes an error.

Mrr T

12,153 posts

264 months

Friday 19th December 2014
quotequote all
Digga said:
Mrr T said:
As for your assertion that the treat of Nazism did not justify carpet bombing means you clearly have no idea what Nazism means.
Even at the time there was opposition to Bomber Harris's campaign - I totally fail to understand how you think it a 'back and white' issue. The victor writes history and we have 'justified' our actions thus, but there is nothing - either now or back then - which actually gives the moral high ground you percieve other than the simple fact that something had to be done and there was no simple, clean, perfectly humane way to achieve the required ends.
Did I say it was black or white?

It was you who said the threat of Naziism could not justify bombing of civilians,

I disagree. I believe the threat of Naziism could justify virtually anything to defeat it. If this involved the bombing of civilian both enemy and friendly then it had to be done. There was very little operation to Bomber Harris tactics on moral grounds. After all the Germans had already bombed British cities. The opposition was about the effectiveness compared to the vast loss of life amongst bomber command aircrew. Even now the effectiveness of the campaign is difficult to judge.

terenceb

1,488 posts

170 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
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Good post, just change the word "nazism"for Islamic. Not that much difference really apart from Islam so much more widely spread across the world.It is becoming a serious threat to the western world-possibly why there are more and more anti islamic protests.Its the future that counts.

pork911

7,087 posts

182 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
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terenceb said:
Good post, just change the word "nazism"for Islamic. Not that much difference really apart from Islam so much more widely spread across the world.It is becoming a serious threat to the western world-possibly why there are more and more anti islamic protests.Its the future that counts.
wow

Grumfutock

5,274 posts

164 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
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Having spent over 2 decades in the Army and served in N.I., Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and the Stan so here, for what it is worth , is my take on this situation.

When you fight a Western country you play by one set of rules, an Eastern country has a more reduced set as they hold life somewhat cheaper. When, however, you fight radical fanatics then you are in a whole different realm and not an easy one. To tie the hands of the troops with rules is right to a point but only the 'you don't torture kids' kind of thing. To tie our troops hands any other way is a disgrace to them and will cause more casualties, to ban certain weapons because they might kill the bad guy in a nasty way is complete rubbish.

This is a fight and from the enemy point of view it is a fight to the death, I say help him on his way. To defeat this radical and fanatical religious zealots you must kill them, the go and find their goat and kill that.

We executed prisoners regularly in WW2, did anyone care? No! Why? Because we won! We need to make sure we win this one as well.

terenceb

1,488 posts

170 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
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Bravo that man!! At last someone with an insight into the real world of how this stuff works!
Capture one and release him? Like he'll go back to where he came from and never cause anymore problems? These brainwashed beings only have one goal.

CrutyRammers

13,735 posts

197 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
Grumfutock said:
Having spent over 2 decades in the Army and served in N.I., Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and the Stan so here, for what it is worth , is my take on this situation.

When you fight a Western country you play by one set of rules, an Eastern country has a more reduced set as they hold life somewhat cheaper. When, however, you fight radical fanatics then you are in a whole different realm and not an easy one. To tie the hands of the troops with rules is right to a point but only the 'you don't torture kids' kind of thing. To tie our troops hands any other way is a disgrace to them and will cause more casualties, to ban certain weapons because they might kill the bad guy in a nasty way is complete rubbish.

This is a fight and from the enemy point of view it is a fight to the death, I say help him on his way. To defeat this radical and fanatical religious zealots you must kill them, the go and find their goat and kill that.

We executed prisoners regularly in WW2, did anyone care? No! Why? Because we won! We need to make sure we win this one as well.
Good post. The decision to use force is a terrible one, but once made, the politos need to MTFU and follow it through. They seem to think they can absolve themselves from the consequences of their decisions by limiting the troops, which is just moral cowardice IMO.

Grumfutock

5,274 posts

164 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
CrutyRammers said:
Good post. The decision to use force is a terrible one, but once made, the politos need to MTFU and follow it through. They seem to think they can absolve themselves from the consequences of their decisions by limiting the troops, which is just moral cowardice IMO.
Thank you, although I am awaiting the usual hippie tree hugging back lash from the hand wringing liberal fkwits.

grumbledoak

31,504 posts

232 months

Saturday 20th December 2014
quotequote all
CrutyRammers said:
Good post. The decision to use force is a terrible one, but once made, the politos need to MTFU and follow it through. They seem to think they can absolve themselves from the consequences of their decisions by limiting the troops, which is just moral cowardice IMO.
Well said.

BlackLabel

13,251 posts

122 months

Sunday 1st March 2015
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telegraph said:
Human Rights lawyers allegedly misled a five-year war crimes inquiry in a “shocking” smear of British soldiers, with false claims that they murdered and tortured innocent Iraqis, according to a damning government dossier.

Evidence drawn up on David Cameron’s orders suggests that Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) continued to pursue the claims for a year after realising that the allegations of abuse may be “untrue”.

In what would be a flagrant breach of the rules, lawyers allegedly used an “agent” based in Iraq to trawl for hundreds of new cases, encouraging local people to bring torture claims against the Armed Forces, the dossier claims.

Senior commanders said that the allegations in the Al-Sweady inquiry that soldiers had killed, abused and mutilated the bodies of innocent Iraqis caused “very great emotional strain” to military personnel and their families over 10 years, with one serviceman put on suicide watch.

The claims – drawn from emails, text messages, court documents and letters – will form the basis for an unprecedented legal move by the Government to sue PIL for millions of pounds and for its chief lawyer, Phil Shiner, to be struck off.

A government source said: “Millions of pounds of taxpayer money has been wasted on investigating false allegations. These shocking and utterly baseless smears were hanging over our Armed Forces for far too long.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11442574/Al-Sweady-file-exposes-the-smearing-of-British-soldiers.html

Pesty

42,655 posts

255 months

Monday 2nd March 2015
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These were armed insurgents who would have cut of the head and paraded the bodies through the streets if the roles were reversed.

Pathetic.

spadriver

1,488 posts

170 months

Monday 2nd March 2015
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Puts a shadow over HR lawyers, best thing Cameron has ever done. CAGE investigation next?

DocJock

8,341 posts

239 months

Monday 2nd March 2015
quotequote all
Grumfutock said:
Having spent over 2 decades in the Army and served in N.I., Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and the Stan so here, for what it is worth , is my take on this situation.

When you fight a Western country you play by one set of rules, an Eastern country has a more reduced set as they hold life somewhat cheaper. When, however, you fight radical fanatics then you are in a whole different realm and not an easy one. To tie the hands of the troops with rules is right to a point but only the 'you don't torture kids' kind of thing. To tie our troops hands any other way is a disgrace to them and will cause more casualties, to ban certain weapons because they might kill the bad guy in a nasty way is complete rubbish.

This is a fight and from the enemy point of view it is a fight to the death, I say help him on his way. To defeat this radical and fanatical religious zealots you must kill them, the go and find their goat and kill that.

We executed prisoners regularly in WW2, did anyone care? No! Why? Because we won! We need to make sure we win this one as well.
I've disagreed with, and criticised you in the past but totally agree with you.

Your post is 100% on the mark. Well said.

spadriver

1,488 posts

170 months

Monday 2nd March 2015
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Maybe the appeasement and appologist brigades should consider a world ruled by islam or sharia law.Could bring a different point of view.
Its a big problem that has to be stopped now not in the future.War is not nice, shooting unkown targets is not 'nice' but it is something that has to be done.
Wars have to be successful !

Asterix

24,438 posts

227 months

Monday 2nd March 2015
quotequote all
Grumfutock said:
Having spent over 2 decades in the Army and served in N.I., Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and the Stan so here, for what it is worth , is my take on this situation.

When you fight a Western country you play by one set of rules, an Eastern country has a more reduced set as they hold life somewhat cheaper. When, however, you fight radical fanatics then you are in a whole different realm and not an easy one. To tie the hands of the troops with rules is right to a point but only the 'you don't torture kids' kind of thing. To tie our troops hands any other way is a disgrace to them and will cause more casualties, to ban certain weapons because they might kill the bad guy in a nasty way is complete rubbish.

This is a fight and from the enemy point of view it is a fight to the death, I say help him on his way. To defeat this radical and fanatical religious zealots you must kill them, the go and find their goat and kill that.

We executed prisoners regularly in WW2, did anyone care? No! Why? Because we won! We need to make sure we win this one as well.
Ex-Army here too - I wholeheartedly agree - RoEs only work on a level playing field. Oddly enough, it's rarely level...

BlackLabel

13,251 posts

122 months

Monday 2nd March 2015
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I wonder if the Iraqis get similar text messages to us over here.

'Our records indicate that you may have been blown on, shouted at or blindfolded by a British soldier in the last 6 years -if so we have £18,312 waiting for you as compensation. Please contact us at..........'.