Fighting talk: why war isn't just a matter of words
In one of the most blistering verbal attacks on a serving government by senior members of the military in living memory, defence chiefs have accused Gordon Brown of treating Britain’s armed forces “with contempt” - prompting one civilian to suggest the warmongers of Whitehall should try a spell on the front line.
The treatment meted out to troops by Whitehall incumbents – the disgraceful manifestation of a dwindling defence budget – was brought to the fore in a series of devastating broadsides launched against the government last week by a small but boisterous battalion of military top brass, past and present.
Slum accommodation, cancelled leave, sub-standard food, insulting compensation packages and criminally inadequate equipment (often paid for by servicemen and women out of their own pockets) are putting the lives of our soldiers, sailors and airmen at risk, the defence chiefs warned.
Broken promise
The crux of the attack is the fact the military covenant – the sovereign statement outlining the “mutual obligation” between Britain and its armed forces – has been broken by the government, a treacherous betrayal of this country’s most priceless asset by the very nation it is expected to serve.
General Lord Guthrie, whose 44-year Army career included a tour in the SAS, launched the offensive in the House of Lords on Thursday during a debate on defence spending. Moments before entering the chamber, the former head of the armed forces said he had been left “needing a sick bag” after reading an article by part-time Defence Secretary Des Browne insisting the government “values our forces and their families by ensuring it delivers the support they deserve.”
In defence of the 174,780 men and women currently serving in Britain’s armed forces, the military leviathans fired volley after verbal volley at the government, citing cripplingly poor morale (as evidenced recently in an internal survey of views at all ranks of the Army), the strain placed on resources by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the “appalling” treatment of troops – from insufficient recuperation time between deployments, to the “disgrace” of continued delays to military inquests.
Treated with contempt
“The military covenant is clearly out of kilter”, raged the head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, adding troops feel “angry and devalued and suffering from Iraq fatigue.” Of the prime minister, Admiral Lord Boyce – chief of the defence staff in 2003 – said: “I feel that he has let the armed forces down by not appointing a secretary of state who is full-time. When you have got people who have been killed and maimed in the service of their government, and you put at the head of the shop someone who is part-time, that sends a very bad message. And that is the message I get back from our soldiers, our sailors and our airmen. They feel insulted; they feel that he is treating them with contempt.”
The government’s response thus far has been a series of simpering excuses, feeble fob-offs and blatant point-blank denials in what looks suspiciously like an attempt to duck and cover. Confronted with the damning revelations in the Army survey, a Ministry of Defence spokesman insisted the report represented the unedited views of individual soldiers which were not necessarily widely representative. Defence Minister Derek Twigg removed his fingers from his ears long enough to insist morale was “good”. And Gordon Brown, cornered a conspicuously safe distance from any front line fighting, said: “I have got nothing but praise for our armed forces. I have visited them in Iraq and Afghanistan and what they are doing are acts of great courage. I want to see the armed forces properly equipped.” Indeed – and so do the armed forces.
Different perspective
But how different would the view of our elected representatives be if, rather than being solicited from the relative safety of plush government offices in central London, it was taken from deep behind enemy lines in, say, Iraq? What if we bundled Gordon Brown and his over-privileged cronies into the back of a plane, hopped a few less-than-friendly borders and propelled them out of the door 12,000ft above the battlefield armed only with only a fish fork and a talent for filibustering?
The reality of front line warfare is indescribably horrific. In 1941, an elite group of British soldiers was handpicked to conduct raids behind enemy lines in the World War II North African campaign. Known as the Special Air Service Regiment, or SAS, their number included my grandfather.
The secretive nature of his assignments meant my grandmother, a jazz singer in Nairobi at the time, was told almost nothing about his experiences in the regiment, even after he died. But what she did know, and what was passed down to me, is too horrific to recount here. And when those sanity-obliterating realities have become nothing more than an abstract concept to the people who control the fate of the armed forces, namely our members of parliament, it is time for a little citizen-instigated shock and awe. And I have a proposition.
Decisive action
National service should be reinstated immediately. Not for the general public, but for our elected representatives – the politicians directly responsible for deploying our troops. Irrespective of age or gender, they should be forced into ill-fitting fatigues, armed with antiquated equipment (which we’ll invoice them for later) and parachuted into the depths of the most hostile enemy territory we can muster. Any dissenting MPs will be Maced in the face and tossed to the Taliban. Six months later, the survivors - assuming there are any - will be hoovered up into a helicopter and deposited back into their Westminster chambers, where they, and they alone, will be responsible for deciding the defence budget.
There is, of course, a rather more liberal alternative. This government could cease putting words in the mouths of the men and women risking limb, life and liberty on the front line for a nation that is blatantly failing them. It could admit that, although the defence budget has increased annually since 1980, it is no longer based on a proportion of GDP as it was during the 1980s – a small, but nonetheless important distinction, which, when viewed in that context, means defence spending is now half what it was during the Cold War.
But while the concerns of servicemen and women continue to go unheeded, provisions remain criminally inadequate and the efforts of front line troops are ignored in the Queen’s speech, peaceful and progressive solutions seem a long way off. And in the meantime, the floors at the Ministry of Defence are awash with blood, and the ministers responsible continue to dodge bullets.
An opinion editorial by Laura J Snook, MSN UK News Editor
November 26, 2007
The views in this article are those of the author alone, not those of MSN or Microsoft
