The Gooner Forum

olgitgooner wrote: They haven't got a fucking clue about the real world in a war zone. Soldiers have to take decisions in a split second.

The fact that they've been charged with murder suggests its something more then a split second reaction to a situation. I'm sure there are casualties of misunderstanding/snap judgements in warzones all the time but how many times have they resulted in murder charges?

I'm no pinko liberal but nb123 has a point. You can't just send soldiers into these places with free reign to kill anyone they want in any situation. The role of the army in Afghanistan is to try and stabilize the country, reduce the level of violence and prevent it becoming another terrorist breeding ground. If they go around executing and killing unnecessarily then they're simply screwing up their mission.

Saw that they were allegedly arrested based on footage found on one of their laptops. Would it still be wrong to charge them if the evidence showed that they abducted and brutally murdered him in cold blood and filmed it?

SammyDroppedHisShorts wrote:NB123

The difference being is this...

Unless you have been in the forces or in combat you can not really understand what goes through the mind of a soldier

That's where we differ....
If you have been a serviceman then I am judging you wrong

Have you been in combat? Because there is a huge difference between being in combat and just "being in the forces". My cousin was in the Leb in the 80's when it was basically open season on UN peacekeepers and he still believes to this day that the RoE they operated under prevented more innocent people getting killed.

And I don't buy into all that elite soldiers are infallible bollocks. They are just as likely to kill innocent people as any other soldier when under pressure. And thus you get things like Sunday Jan 30, 1972 in Derry, when 13 innocent civil rights protesters were shot dead by British Paratroopers - a so called "elite" unit at the time, I believe? The Saville report found that all of those shot were unarmed, and that the killings were both "unjustified and unjustifiable." These weren't IRA scum that were killed, these were innocent civilians protesting that were murdered.

Afghanistan (and Iraq) are super-sensitive conflicts because on the Western side (in it's most media-friendly and base concept) we are trying to show we are not attacking Islam and are only trying to defeat terrorism. But the Taliban and Al-Queada are trying to generate a popular uprising throughout the Islamic world by comparing it to the Crusades and an overt attack on Islam. We have to be seen to be above random violence and murder and torture. It may seem silly to a 19 year old troop in a firefight but we must maintain the moral high ground.

RoE do indeed make a soldier's job more difficult and more dangerous but that goes with the territory. They are not there to kill everyone. They are there to do a job. That job has rules. And rightly so. Anyone that doesn't see that shouldn't be there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but was the victim not only captured, but also wounded, and the laptop had a recorded conversation in which the accused were heard discussing how to "dispose of the victim".
Elite soldiers my arse, trigger happy murderous thugs sounds nearer the mark to me.

I dont know the full details but if the soldiers killed any person in cold blood ie not in a battle situation then they deserve to be done for it. Yeah the taliban may capture, torture and execute westerners whether they are military or not but we have to be above that shit and thats why we have to show this the right way for Afghanis, Iraqis to go

Have to disagree with you Sammy and I agree with DB10 and others.

People have to be accountable for their actions, whether they be soldiers, politicians or whoever. No one is above the law. If there is a case to answer (as seems the case) they should be brought to task.
N Ireland is a prime example of this and what can go wrong. Soldiers are sent into a (largely) urban area where the majority are innocents and ye we have Bloody Sunday, the shoot to kill policy as found by Stalker and all the other ''mistakes''.

By the same token I think we ask a lot of young soldiers and put them into environments that would be alien to most of us by politicians who base their strategy on mountains of lies.

LDB wrote:I'm no pinko liberal but nb123 has a point. You can't just send soldiers into these places with free reign to kill anyone they want in any situation. The role of the army in Afghanistan is to try and stabilize the country, reduce the level of violence and prevent it becoming another terrorist breeding ground. If they go around executing and killing unnecessarily then they're simply screwing up their mission.

What the fuck is a "pinko liberal"?

arseofacrow wrote:

LDB wrote:I'm no pinko liberal but nb123 has a point. You can't just send soldiers into these places with free reign to kill anyone they want in any situation. The role of the army in Afghanistan is to try and stabilize the country, reduce the level of violence and prevent it becoming another terrorist breeding ground. If they go around executing and killing unnecessarily then they're simply screwing up their mission.

What the fuck is a "pinko liberal"?

Chippy, when he's wearing his Salmon coloured tie and Fuchsia shirt at the party conference.

Don'tcha know nuffink?

Yes DB10

I have

And I stand by what I say but also respect the viewpoints of the majority here.

Mixing it up nicely some of you.

arseofacrow wrote:

LDB wrote:I'm no pinko liberal but nb123 has a point. You can't just send soldiers into these places with free reign to kill anyone they want in any situation. The role of the army in Afghanistan is to try and stabilize the country, reduce the level of violence and prevent it becoming another terrorist breeding ground. If they go around executing and killing unnecessarily then they're simply screwing up their mission.

What the fuck is a "pinko liberal"?

Dunno, heard it on the radio once