Is not to go to war
IAN Bell (Comment, June 23) is right to point out that “no protection can stop soldiers dying”. Arming soldiers to the teeth with proper combat gear and equipment might give them a better chance, but the best way to keep them safe is by not sending them into war zones in the first place. It adds insult to injury that British armed forces were sent to fight an illegal war in Iraq, and are currently putting their lives on the line fighting an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, while the UK Government’s irresponsibility was further demonstrated by their sending inexperienced young soldiers of 18 and 19 to fight the Taliban in Helmand province, one of the most dangerous places on Earth. Ruth Marr Stirling IAN Bell further teases out some of the issues around the UK Supreme Court ruling that our service personnel are entitled to a degree of protection under human rights legislation. In a full-blown existential war, it would be absurd to afford service personnel – indeed, even civilians – anything approaching the range of protections we normally enjoy under the law. But we are not at war.
There appears to be something quite absurd about inquests into death resulting from a combat situation. However, the reality is that we are not at war, we do not face invasion or anything remotely approaching it. As I have said before, the coming Russians are about defence contracts and nothing to do with defence. The threat of international terrorism exists but it is a fraction of the threat that the UK faced during the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland.
We are not at war. Yet the collateral civilian body count, on the “other” sides (there have been so many) over the past 10 years would match virtually any 10 years that red-coated armies marched back and forth across what was once our empire. But we are not at war.
It is precisely because we are not at war that it is entirely appropriate that our service personnel should be afforded the opportunity of some degree of legal protection.
Will this lead to some ludicrous decisions being made at the operational level in the future? Most certainly. But it will be in relation to operations we should not be undertaking in the first place. Bill Ramsay Glasgow