In a financial situation it describes as ‘challenging’, the MoD has Continue reading
Tag Archives: Iraq
Harris Tweed drops ‘Scottish’ from branding in USA
Harris Tweed has admitted that it has dropped the word Continue reading
Sign The Independent’s Veterans Campaign Petition
The Independent is running a petition campaigning for all necessary treatment for our armed forces veterans. Of course they face problems in getting the best medical and surgical facilities to deal with injuries the rest of us cannot bear to think about. But there are unseen and enduring injuries to the mind.
Men and women in the armed services experience things beyond imagining. They are working – fighting – at and beyond the limit of what humanity can give and take. In the pressure of the moment they cannot stop to think.
But inevitably, when it’s all over – between tours of duty, during hospitalisation and when they leave the service – the assimilation process begins. But the material they have to confront is not digestible. There will be images, memories, questions, guilt and above all there will be alienation from the everyday world.
The things that concern the rest of us, that make us worried, angry, tearful, proud, elated and happy must seem utterly out of scale with what veterans of conflict have dealt with. Life around them afterwards must seem like looking through the wrong end of a telescope – small, far away, unimportant and lacking the adrenaline of the ultimate challenge. The change is abrupt and many cannot adjust.
Injuries may, to a degree, be put aside. Knowledge, though, once with you is with you for life. And the sort of knowledge veterans have is almost biblical in its impact. It is, profoundly, the knowledge of good and evil. We cannot know or imagine what it is but we can imagine its impact.
And we need to. Our veterans get virtually no help with the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from which very many suffer and which does not always make itself known for up to two years after leaving the service. They get no help with the depressions that regularly lead to suicide. And they get no help with the anger and with the very different value-set that can lead them to commit murder and other crimes.
This is an issue not much discussed. But we require these young people, in their service, to set aside the values and the moral and behavioural codes that govern normal life. They have to use force, they have to kill and, don’t let’s be naive, they have to torture.
Do we really think they can leave the service one day, walk into our world never to return and leave behind them everything they have lived with and by through these experiences – just like that?
For as long as we choose to send people to do for us what we cannot and would not do for ourselves, we are responsible for them for the rest of their lives. This is what we mean when we talk about ‘the military covenant’.
But the government which acts in our name is neither exercising that responsibility not absorbing its moral imperative.
We have The Argylls – The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, or 5 Scots as they are now known, whose service in Iraq and Afghanistan brings this close to home. But it is a moral issue of individual responsibility. In Meditation XVII, the poet John Donne wrote: ‘Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee’.
Sign The Independent’s campaign petition online and at the same site, donate, if you wish, directly to veterans.
The photograph above is protected by British Crown Copyright. It shows Johnson Beharry, holder of the Victoria Cross, in front of a mural of the Victoria Cross at the Ministry Of Defence Main Building on 18th March 2005.
He was awarded the VC for valour in Iraq for incidents in May and June 2004, when he twice rescued fellow servicemen from ambushes, sustaining serious head injuries in the latter engagement. His investment with the Victoria Cross – the first award in over 20 years – was on 27th April 2005.
Lance Coporal Beharry has very recently spoken out on behalf of traumatised troops.
A tale of two protests – and a tale of none
A protest rally was planned for Holyrood for this afternoon (21st January) by the Liberal Democrats against the Scottish Government’s proposed forest leasing scheme. This is one of the lowest points in the history of an honourable party embedded in Scotland’s political culture. It has been one of the worst examples of a campaign aimed at political advantage, run in flagrant misuse of the facts and counter to the inerests of the taxpayer.
For Argyll has reported on this matter regularly and has named and shamed the perpetrators – which now incude rhe Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, Tavish Scott.
The flag of protest has been run up the poles of loss of jobs, loss of authority for Forestry Commission Scotland and loss of forest amenities and access for the general public.
None of these are true. Environment Minister Michael Russell has given the most secure and absolute guarantees on all of these matters to everyone concerned.
But in these times of economic hardship and fears for the future it is easy to raise anxieties and protest by disinformation and by frightening the vulnerable by groundless claims that their jobs are at risk. This is dishonourable and stains the already shabby fabric of political life.
The guarantees have been specific, repeated, public and recorded. Michael Russell’s and the Scottish Government’s integrity could not more clearly be on the line. It is inconceiveable that the assurances so resolutely given are less than the facts. But hey, who cares about the facts when there might be votes to be grubbed for.
Elsewhere, in Iceland, when their parliament reconvened today, thousands protested outside the building, demanding that the Icelandic government step down and that early elections be held. The demonstration began at noon yesterday and ran into the small hours today (21st January).
This is a country which is in serious financial crisis and against whom the UK used anti-terrorist legislation to seize the UK-held assets of the troubled Iceland banks. Kaupthing Bank is suing the UK’s Financial Services Authority over its actions in this respect, claiming that its actions forced the bank into administration which might otherwise have been avoided. The Kaupthing action has the backing of the Icelandic Government which is prepared to take the matter to Europe if necessary.
While Icelanders protest at a financial crisis they are living through, the depth of which we cannot imagine – yet – Scots are romping around making idiots of themselves at Holyrood protesting on false premises.
And it’s not as if there aren’t enough causes just now crying out for committed and selfless protest:
- The UK Government is about to send substantially more troops to Afghanistan
- It is keeping a minimal military presence in Iraq for no reason than avoiding the holding of a public enquiry here into why we went into Iraq in the first place. The Government has decreed that such an enquiry will be held but will not take place as long as we still have soldiers (of an unspecified number) in Iraq.
- And there’s Gaza, where new tungsten Dime bombs have been used unnecessarily against the Palestinians, inflicting injuries which are currently untreatable.
These are real things to protest about rather than be gulled into playing the part of pawns in schoolyard political games.
How’s this for entrepreneurship? Istanbul shoemaker overwhelmed with orders
An Istanbul shoemaker is selling out of a particular line faster than he can make them. He has just had orders for 300,000 pairs.They are the shoes thrown in anger and disgust at President George Bush by Iraqi television journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi – who has become a cult hero.
In the same line – another fun development is the emergence of a shoe throwing computer game. Game on.
Argylls given only one third required time off between six month tours to Iraq and Afghanistan
The Herald reports today that more than three out of five of Scotland’s infantry have been denied the recommended twenty-four months between tours of duty to war zones. This was promised them by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) between 2003 and 2007. Worst of all has been the experience of the Argyll’s – given only a third of this respite before being returned to combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.