Anyone else up watching things unfold?

Ben Blaney says...

No. It's wrong.

The soldier is doing his job, a job that he does for the government and
people of this country. He should not be on murder charges for following
the orders he is given.

I don't expect you to understand this, Ben. Your liberal viewpoint is
exactly what terrorists love about Britain, and exactly what make us a
soft target for them. In your perfect world we may as well issue the
soldiers with the best weapons money can buy, but deny them access to
the ammunition for them. We don't need an army of toothless tigers, we
need an army that can be expected to do the right thing first time every
time without nanny-state do-gooders and liberals compromising their
efficiency.

We also need a civilian population who respect our armed forces for
doing the difficult job that they do, for crap money.

 

Ben Blaney says...

Define how it can be murder in the circumstances I have given
perviously.

I don't consider shooting someone who runs a checkpoint as being murder,
and I'm sure you're only arguing with me on this point just to get a
bite. OK, you've got it, but I'll stand by my views on this, and nothing
will change them.

Going by what you believe in, we should be dragging every single British
soldier who's killed an Iraqi to trial for murder. My belief is that
they shouldn't be there, but they were ordered to go there and do a job
which entailed killing Iraqis. Does that make the individual soldiers
accountable for murder, or Tony Blair, the man who lied about WMD to
justify ordering them to go and do their job?

 

Ben Blaney says...

Sorry but I disagree, putting the soldier up for trial is wrong. The
person who dealt out the "shoot to kill" order is an entirely different
matter.

They do its called a court martial. The military the a different set of
rules to the rest of us.

 

I was, in addition to my point that soldiers should not be immune to
criminal prosecution.

 

Unless (of course) you believe in the survival of the fittest..

Phil

 

That's where the problem is. The government doesn't respect the armed
forces any more and so how can you expect the public to respect them?

The British Army [1] of today is nothing like that of yesterday. It's
all the fault of all governments over the last 20 years. Fair enough,
it can be seen that this was been brought about by the fall of
communism, etc, but no one foresaw the future in that Britain's forces
would change roles from one of being the protectors of a Nation to
peace-keepers [2].

Changes have come in very quickly and all successive governments
haven't reacted properly (IMO) in providing the forces with the
necessary money to accommodate those changes.

[1] And RN/RAF, I'd assume. But I'm not as knowledgeable about them.
[2] Which was the original direction that they were meant to take,
until the Iraqi problem popped up.

 

Ben Blaney says...

If they disobey orders then fine prosecute them. If they're obeying
orders then it's the person(s) who gave the order who should be tried.

 

I have no issue with this.

I'm saying that being a soldier on duty does not automatically exempt
one from criminal prosecution, should one break the law.

As an aside, I'm saying that just because there's a checkpoint,
doesn't make it legitimate, necessarily, and so the persons whom the
checkpoint affect might not recognize its authority. Yes, they might
get shot, and yes, that might not be technically murder, but you have
to understand that the relatives will still feel aggrieved that a
checkpoint set-up by an illegal occupying force has killed a family
member.

What would you do if the French invaded Bedfordshire and setup
checkpoint? Would you be happy about it, and meekly bow down and
agree that they can do what the **** they want?

Oh **** off. Terrorism isn't new, and the level of terrorism doesn't
depend on how "liberal" (in your, American, usage of the term) a given
society is.

According to your logic, there'd be more terrorism in Holland than in
the United States, but there clearly isn't.

You know next to nothing about my "perfect world" so I suggest you
keep your extrapolations of my opinions to yourself.

You also might want to bear in mind what I do for a job, for whom, and
where. I know a fucking fair amount about terrorism, as it happens.

We don't *need* a civilian population who respect the armed forces; it
makes no fucking difference.

And respect is *earned*, not demanded.

 

Hmm, that'll open up a can of worms. The buck can be passed as far as
you want up the chain of command, but it's "he" at the bottom that did
the deed. (I do agree with you though)

 

Agreed. That wasn't the point I was making.

 

Lozzo wrote

It would if their victims were Jewish but only under that circumstance.

 

Not really related to the above, but this thread is far too long to
find a suitable place to say this, so...

....As Muslims believe it's God's will if they die, then surely nobody
should ever be charged for killing a Muslim apart from God? Similarly,
if Muslims make revenge attacks, they are, according to their religion,
directing that revenge against their own God. Or is that a bit
simplistic?

 

I don't.

 

It's completely ignoring the difference between the word "kill" and
the word "die".

 

In the real world the punishment for stupidity is often death and I can
think of many instances that make good examples.

 

Hmmm. So if a Muslim dies through natural causes, it's Allah's wish.
But if they're killed by an infidel, it wasn't Allah's wish, but he was
too busy at the time to stop it. What if a Muslim kills himself by
wearing semtex underwear, & happens to accidentally kill another Muslim
in the blast? Does that mean he's in the shit when he gets to heaven,
or is that ok because he took out a few infidels at the same time?

 

Ben Blaney says...

You weren't very specific about what constituted breaking the law. The
way I read it, and I'm sure many others read it the same way, was that
you expected all soldiers who fired upon checkpoint runners to be
prosecuted for murder.

Hardly likely to be the French, more like GWB's men being handed the
keys peacefully.

If they were there illegally I'd do my bit to offer resistance. I
certainly wouldn't drive through a checkpoint when told to stop by a
bloke pointing a gun at me. I can't argue about whether he was right or
wrong to be there when I'm dead.

Terrorism isn't new, I'll grant you that. If we let our defences down
we'd run the risk of becoming as lawless as certain parts of Russia and
the middle east, where almost anyone can procure a weapon and fight for
his chosen cause however he likes.

Holland doesn't have a head of State like Blair, or the same kind of
relationship that he has with the US. I don't even know who the current
HoS is in Holland. Maybe our problem is we make too many waves on the
international front, and it gets us pinpointed as a target. Holland
doesn't do that.

Fair enough and I apologise for that, but surely you agree with my
'toothless tigers' analogy?

But nothing about how the man at the checkpoint holding the gun feels,
unfortunately.

Yes we do, the same as we need a population who respect our police
force. Unfortunately that respect is undermined when the general public
can see that the government are just using them as pawns in a
international game. As long as we have people who don't respect our
forces then we have people who will gladly see them being abused in the
manner they are. It's these same people who elect other people like
Blair to parliament.

Who said anything about *demanding* respect. Our forces have earned the
respect of almost every nation in the world, it's our own government who
are undermining it. When the general public sees this happening it's
easy for them to take the same view and treat them disrespectfully.

 

Preston Kemp wrote

From what I see it varies according to what your local vicar says.

 

I seem to recall that British Army soldiers are requred to obey any
*legal*[1] orders given to them. So they can disobey orders to shoot
unarmed civilians but they had better have a good legal argument as to
why they did..

Phil.

[1] According to the GC? I can't remember

 

Oh. As I don't believe anything vicars say, that could be a problem.