A minor rant about overseas deployment
Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2020 7:05 am
There was a British army colonel on the radio today, discussing PTSD and the recently proposed US/Taliban deal. I was rather struck that he had previously felt the Allied engagement in Afghanistan had been worthwhile because of the lives it had saved. I hope I’ve accurately reflected his comment.
I’m stuck trying to work out whose lives would have been in jeopardy had the coalition of the willing not deployed in Afghanistan to start with.
I’m moderately sure that the majority of British service people would feel a foreign occupation of Britain should be met with civil disobedience and insurgent tactics by the resident population until the occupation was defeated, and that as a general principle this would be true in any country. The only time I have heard the principle disputed is when the occupying force is that with which one serves, in which case the resident population’s insurgency is to be deplored and the occupiers are for some reason to be cheered on.
There was, to the best of my knowledge, no civil war in Afghanistan prior to the Western invasion. After the invasion there was clearly Quisling collaboration alongside domestic resistance.
I’m frankly baffled why anyone should think PTSD might not be expected in these circumstances. It stems from thinking that the individual was serving a respectable cause, having volunteered to perform whatever task their political masters chose to set them. The solution was surely not to voluntarily hand over such power to such scoundrel policy-makers in the first place. Did anyone think the scoundrel politicians in Britain were to be trusted with a military capability outside of the Homeland? What rosy-tinted lying spectacles were they wearing at the time. What could they possibly have got out of a contract like that other than an education and a regular pay cheque. And, eventually, PTSD.
The world is a piss-awful place for a lot of people a lot of the time, mainly because volunteers refuse to think beyond their own short-term advantage.
I’m stuck trying to work out whose lives would have been in jeopardy had the coalition of the willing not deployed in Afghanistan to start with.
I’m moderately sure that the majority of British service people would feel a foreign occupation of Britain should be met with civil disobedience and insurgent tactics by the resident population until the occupation was defeated, and that as a general principle this would be true in any country. The only time I have heard the principle disputed is when the occupying force is that with which one serves, in which case the resident population’s insurgency is to be deplored and the occupiers are for some reason to be cheered on.
There was, to the best of my knowledge, no civil war in Afghanistan prior to the Western invasion. After the invasion there was clearly Quisling collaboration alongside domestic resistance.
I’m frankly baffled why anyone should think PTSD might not be expected in these circumstances. It stems from thinking that the individual was serving a respectable cause, having volunteered to perform whatever task their political masters chose to set them. The solution was surely not to voluntarily hand over such power to such scoundrel policy-makers in the first place. Did anyone think the scoundrel politicians in Britain were to be trusted with a military capability outside of the Homeland? What rosy-tinted lying spectacles were they wearing at the time. What could they possibly have got out of a contract like that other than an education and a regular pay cheque. And, eventually, PTSD.
The world is a piss-awful place for a lot of people a lot of the time, mainly because volunteers refuse to think beyond their own short-term advantage.