Guest Post by The Zman
Way back when the Bush administration launched the invasion of Iraq, the prevailing assumption among those who were in charge was that it would be a cakewalk. The people would embrace us as liberators. People who had some clue about how the world works knew it would be an ugly mess, as is the case with all wars. War is, by definition, the ugliest of human activities. It’s purpose is to kill and destroy.
Inevitably, stories turned up about abuses. One essential way to prepare soldiers for war is to dehumanize the enemy. Men, even trained killers, are not going to kill people they see as sympathetic. There’s no way to finely calibrate the mind of a soldier so in every war there are abuses, even when care is taken to avoid them. That’s why things like the Abu Ghraib prison incident happened. War is and always will be an ugly business.
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That knowledge should lead Western governments to use their technological and economic advantages to avoid getting into wars with the barbarians on the edge of civilization. Instead, they start wars they never intend to win, so they can preen and pose about their virtue and morality, when something terrible inevitably happens. It means some guy in uniform gets to be strung up in order to please the vanity of our rulers.
Sergeant Alexander Blackman shot dead an insurgent on September 15 2011 after he had been injured by Apache helicopter gunfire.
The 42-year-old was originally known as Marine A to protect his identity from terrorists.
He grew up in Brighton and has two sisters and a brother, according to the Justice for Marine A website.
The keen sportsman is a skilled canoeist who competed at national events.
He joined the marines aged 23 and married his wife Alex in 2010 after the pair met in the Somerset town of Taunton.
At the time of the 2011 killing Blackman was serving in Helmand province with Plymouth-based 42 Commando.
Blackman was ”dismissed with disgrace” from the Royal Marines after serving with distinction for 15 years, including tours of Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.
He was handed seven years for manslaughter, but having already served almost three-and-a-half years since his conviction for murder, he could be free within weeks of the sentencing on March 28.
Sgt Blackman shot an injured Taliban insurgent in the chest in 2011 before quoting Shakespeare at him.
He said: “There you are. Shuffle off this mortal coil you c***.
“It’s nothing you wouldn’t do to us”.
He then told soldiers: “Obviously this doesn’t go anywhere, fellas. I just broke the Geneva Convention.”
The shooting was captured on film but has not been released out of fears it could be used as terrorist propaganda.
Dramatic footage that has been released shows troops cheering as an Apache warship fires some 139 rounds at militants trying to sneak up on British positions.
Another clip shows Sgt Blackman and Jack Hammond, known as Marine C, find an AK47, a hand grenade and spare ammunition next to the injured fighter.
Blackman ordered colleagues to move the enemy fighter out of sight from British Army surveillance cameras mounted on balloons.
Blackman was convicted of murder in November 2013 by a court martial in Bulford, Wiltshire, and sentenced to life with a minimum 10-year term.
It was the first such conviction of a serving British soldier since the Second World War.
Judge Jeff Blackett told Blackman at his sentencing: “If the British Armed Forces are not assiduous in complying with the laws of armed conflict and international humanitarian law they would become not better than the insurgents and terrorists they are fighting.”
There you have it. He handed down a sentence as a public act of piety, signalling to the other lunatics in the ruling class that he is some sort of special snowflake for throwing the book at this soldier. It’s also why the West has not won any wars in a long time. Instead of focusing all energy on killing the enemy and breaking their stuff, all energy is put into maintaining moral superiority, even if that means losing.
The point of war is to kill the enemy and break up their stuff. The hope is they quit before you kill all of them and break all of their stuff, but you plan otherwise. If the Afghans knew all along that helping Osama bin Laden was most likely going to mean their cities and large towns would be flattened, they would have chose differently. Let’s assume they played it the same and Bush had firebombed Kabul, what would have been the result?
Yeah, there would have been a lot of hand-wringing and pearl clutching in Washington, but every other nutjob in the Middle East would have been re-calibrating his plans. A lot less death and destruction would have come as a result. Instead we have decades of killing to no logical end. We have an endless war of attrition just so Western leaders can have chances to let us know that they paragons of virtue.
What’s truly insane about all of this is the people in charge seem to care more about the opinion of the enemy than they do their own people. Maybe Sgt Blackman should have been punished, but the only reason to punish him is to maintain good order in the ranks. It’s not that he killed a wounded man. It’s that he violated the rules of engagement and encouraged others to do the same. It should be ZFG about what the terrorist think.
But, that’s not the world today. Our rulers care more about foreigners than they do their own people. If it were otherwise, the rulers would be quick to paper over these sorts of incidents, defending their fellow citizens against these sorts of accusations. Given their policy preferences, and the way they conduct foreign policy, it is safe to say they truly hate the rest of us. We have to hate them back.
Unless you go to war to win, don’t bother going to war. It may be unfortunate, but civilian casualties are acceptable.
I have never heard a clearer definition of what war is and what it should be than what the Zman laid out in this article. War must be ugly if it is to be won, if not there is no victory and no termination of aggression. The nuance of the article was dead on in not fully exonerating the marine who did not follow the rules and lead others to do so; although I have yet to hear of any terrorist groups adherence to the Geneva convention.
The only just purpose of war: Defend our side, kill theirs.
Anything other than that is uncivilized, it just kills people for no worthwhile result.
It’s funny, I have these exact same discussion with my cattle prior to every stampede. I try and carefully lay out for them just what is expected in regards to their herd behavior in the middle of every frantic stampede either to or away from whatever it is that triggers them; do not leave the property, be cautious of the fences and do not damage them or any of the gates, be especially sensitive to the needs of the calves, bulls are forbidden from mounting the cows when they get pinned in by the rest of the cows, that kind of thing. Yet every time they just go about their collective behavior as if all th\e rules have gone right out the window.
It is perplexing.
Your cattle “acting out” in this way is clearly because you’re forcing them into predefined (by sexist, racist, species-ist, xenophobes) roles. You are not letting them self-identify…perhaps many of them are really sheep or pigs or chickens trapped in a cow’s body. And they have the God-given RIGHT to be who and what they think they are…and you as their long-time oppressor have the duty to pay for their species-transitioning surgeries. Only then will have happy cows/pigs/sheep etc.
I do pay for my cows surgery. They get changed into T-bone, Sirloin, Roasts, and hamburger, among other various things like shoes, gloves, and jackets.
Farmer,that’s the best writing I’ve ever seen you do.
Undeclared wars of choice are the result of rule by posers. Such wars aren’t even meant to be won, and are a waste of lives.
Everybody knows that wounded muslims have a proclivity to jump out of medical evacuation helicopters; Sgt Blackman should have been verbally reprimanded for wasting a bullet and it’s cost possibly deducted from his pay.
Unwinnable poser wars are what I have objected to since Nam.
I object to the way our rulers dress them up as saving democracy and rigged free markets and hanging the smallfry while letting the posers off free.
I said in a recent comment that wars are ugly and the Mongols and Zulus et al didn’t care what their victims thought. Alexander and the Mongols to name some scared petty kings so much they sent out ambassadors to make terms. They might offer to help feed the army or even supply troops. Anything seemed a better option than futile resistance.
Did you know that the helicopter was invented for the sole purpose of allowing captured troops to skydive to relieve the boredom of camp life and extracting info. You never hear of or see pictures of more than 1 captive skydiving from a Huey. That’s because the other 3 along for the ride decided they liked singing more that flying.
Today’s Posers are building an evil empire with unwinnable wars dressed up in pretty dresses.
A Red flag in battle means, show no quarter, take no prisoners.
When a soldier surrenders, he is no longer a combatant. He’s a POW. Killing POWs encourages the enemy to fight more fiercly since they would be killed anyway. So it’s bad psychology to kill the POWs. But it does happen.
That being said; Muslims have waved the Red flag. They kill all of their prisoners. That puts a different tenor on the battle.
Muslims want to die in jihad so they can see Allah and get their 69 virgins. I think the sargent should be commended for doing that Muslim a favor.
Great read HSF, IMPRESSIVE!!