Reid: More Understanding for Troops Needed

‘Tis sad that things have come to a point where a British official must almost beg for his nation to not rush to judgement of its men in uniform.

Defence Secretary John Reid has called for more understanding of the difficult tasks British troops face in conflicts around the world.

He asked politicians, pundits and the public to be “a little slower to condemn and a lot quicker to understand” what life is like on the battlefield.

Advances in technology meant soldiers “have never been under greater scrutiny”, which he said created an uneven playing field for British troops.

[…]

“We ask an enormous amount of our troops; that the most junior faces risks, dangers, threats unimaginable to most of us; that our officers take calculated risks, and make immediate life and death decisions upon which literally thousands of lives may depend,” Mr Reid said.

His remarks come in the wake of an international outcry over a video of soldiers beating unarmed Iraqi youths.

The footage has reportedly lead to regional Iraqi councils in Maysan and Basra ending all co-operation with the British Army.

Three soldiers have already been arrested in connection with the incident while military police have interviewed four youths about the attack.

Any abuses by British forces had to be condemned but involved less than 0.05% of the 100,000 troops sent to Iraq and should be kept in perspective, he added.

And just what did I omit from the above selection? What did my “[…]” skip over? Just the following:

Just hours after his keynote speech in London, hundreds of mourners gathered for the funeral of Corporal Gordon Pritchard who last month became the 100th British forces member to die since hostilities started in Iraq. He was killed when the Land Rover he was travelling in was hit by a roadside bomb.

Ah, the ever-present reminder of casualties. Nothing about how Gordon Pritchard lived, but just the fact that he died, thrust into a barely-related story. However, I’m sure the British media do a better job than their American counterparts at covering the abuse stories and accomplishments of their own troops. Well, maybe not, as a Brit veteran is, like Reid, also all but begging for the media to reel itself in on its coverage.

A former soldier who served in Iraq has urged the media to exercise great care in coverage of the conflict.

Iain McMenemy was speaking after Defence Secretary John Reid called for more understanding to be shown towards British troops serving in Iraq.

Mr McMenemy said it was right that abuses by troops were dealt with.

However, he warned against a focus on “snapshot” incidents and said there should be a greater emphasis on the pressures troops face.

[…]

Mr McMenemy, from Larbert, near Stirling, was a Territorial Army soldier who served with the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Recalling his reaction on seeing the controversial video footage, Mr McMenemy said: “It comes as a punch in the guts really that the soldiers have carried these actions out because it is going to be used, no matter what the circumstances, to stir up further tensions.

“But I have to be honest and say I also do get a little bit annoyed that you never hear it from the soldier’s side, you only see the effect, we never actually see the cause.

“We don’t know what happened to lead to what we’ve seen in the videos or the photographs. We only get that very, very small snapshot.”

Mr McMenemy said that there was “no excuse” for soldiers acting irresponsibly.

[…]

Mr McMenemy, a business consultant, said the defence secretary was right to raise concerns that the public were only seeing a “snapshot” of what goes on in Iraq.

There are similar pleas on this side of the pond, as the conservative group Progress For America has published a couple of videos of veterans and families of our fallen trying to rouse support by espousing our under-reported progress and the nature of our enemies. Unsurprisingly, they have come under attack from the left.

It has long been the popular notion that Hitler’s 1940 invasion of the Soviet Union was the blunder that cost Nazi Germany the Second World War. Often cited are the mistakes of opening a second front or being unprepared for the Russian winter or incapable of dealing with the eventual accumulation of Soviet resources. Today’s stories led me to think of another reason to consider Operation Barbarossa a mistake — the move depleted the desire for the leftists among the Commonwealth and its soon-to-be-official Yank allies to undermine their own countries’ war efforts, as Allied victory also became intertwined with the salvation of the then-gem of the socialist dream, the U.S.S.R. Bad move, Adolf, some of them might’ve helped ya, if only for deluded reasons. After all, that’s how the term useful idiots came to be.