A well-trained, well-supplied military force with high morale is the measure of a nation’s health. There should not be a need to formally document a covenant between power structures, the people and the men and women who risk their lives to serve their country.
Vets minister Al Carns ready to resign
How then, in Great Britain, in the birth place of modern judicial fairness and justice, do we find ourselves in a position where the Minister for Veterans, Alistair Carns, MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, a Military Cross- winner and one of the most highly decorated and professional soldiers Britain has ever produced, is reportedly on the cusp of resigning his post over the government’s proposals to remove protections for British Soldiers who were sent to prosecute wars in the interests of the British people?
Soldiers prosecuted for doing their jobs
Never in history, in any of the world’s main Western civilisations, have individual soldiers faced the level of scrutiny displayed by our government and the human rights lawyers who befoul our legal system. “Marine A” was imprisoned in 2013 for killing a Taliban combatant while fighting a war. “Soldier F” was prosecuted for his alleged part in the Bloody Sunday Shootings, 50 years after the event while well-known republican terrorists roamed free.
There are currently Special Forces operators who are being dragged through the judicial system for doing the job their paymasters required them to do, jobs that ultimately are designed to allow the British people to carry on living in peace, oblivious to the dangers they are being protected from.
Lawyers and politicians targeting our armed forces should be publicly shamed
As professional soldiers, we are paid to go to war, close the distance and kill or capture the enemy in either defence of our country or in the pursuit of extending borders and resources. Like it or not, that’s how it is. War is a dirty business and any politician or barrister asking a soldier to justify their actions, in a spur of the moment life or death decision, should be stripped of their positions and publicly shamed.
In the 10 years I served with the Royal Marines I didn’t work with anybody who didn’t adhere to the articles of the Geneva Convention despite being put at a disadvantage by them.
Labour tanking in the polls after ‘repugnant’ policy proposals
This current Labour government has not covered itself in glory in the year it has been operating the levers of power. Keir Starmer’s opinion polls are in the gutter along with the front bench of socialist ideologues, all floundering with him after a multitude of repugnant policy proposals apparently aimed at bringing Britain to a stand-still and the British people to their knees.
If they go ahead with these proposals to scrap protections for British service personnel, they can kiss goodbye to any support they think they will get for prosecuting future wars, and the drums are beating loudly at the moment.
The reality
To the human rights lawyers and career politicians who deign to look a soldier in the eye and ask him to explain his actions in the midst of his enemy, you would do well to remember the words often attributed (but almost certainly incorrectly) to George Orwell: “Good men sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
