On how to view the past
Jun. 15th, 2010 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumDavid Cameron has just pissed off some friends of mine. I may be doing the same with this post (should they ever read it).
Today was the release of The Saville Report which is the result of 12 years, thousands of interviews and £195 million, of inquiry into the events of, Bloody Sunday (for those who have not the time, nor the inclination to read through 5,000 pages of detail there are the principal conclusions which only run to 60 pages).
How did David Cameron, who was five when it happened (just as I was), piss them off? He apolgised. More, he did not promise immunity to those implicated in the report.
That report says the dead were innocent. Guilty of nothing; that the soldiers had no legitimate targets, and were not acting out of fear for their lives, or the lives of others (it does say that of the 14 dead, 3 were shot by soldiers acting in "fear and panic" and 11 were not).
David Cameron said, ""Mr Speaker, I am deeply patriotic.
I never want to believe anything bad about our country.
I never want to call into question the behaviour of our soldiers and our Army who I believe to be the finest in the world.
And I have seen for myself the very difficult and dangerous circumstances in which we ask our soldiers to serve.
But the conclusions of this report are absolutely clear.
There is no doubt. There is nothing equivocal. There are no ambiguities.
What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable.
It was wrong."
I have friends in the British Army. Friends who, because of the price they, and their mates, had to pay in N. Ireland, have a bone deep antipathy to the Irish. The dislike of the French, is mostly teasing (they have a thousand years of genial hostility between them). Not so the way they feel about the Irish Republicans.
I understand it (though as someone of Irish descent I can't quite share it even to the point of being more than more than merely quiet when they are being angry, and not playing, "rebel tunes" when they are in earshot).
Unjustified, and unjustifiable.
I am not, actually, trying to lay blame on 1 Para (I don't think, as one person said, they need to be stripped of all awards. It was a single act, by a singular group, and; while 1 Para must, sadly, carry the shame of those people's actions; and that days deeds, it doesn't diminish the rest of their record). No, I am more interested in the response Cameron made to a MP who was trying to make an equivalence between "terrorists" (a term which is often problematic, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and while I think the Provos, esp. in the '70s and '80s were well beyond the realm of fair insurgency (bombs in London, no. Soldiers are legitimate targets; it's what we are paid for. The various supporting elements [e.g in this case, The Orangemen] are probably fair game, but random people, far from the actual area being contested... I don't think so).
The MP wanted to know why, if the soldiers were facing prosecution why the IRA members (some of whom are known; one of whom is an MP in N. Ireland), aren't in the same spot.
He said he didn't want to draw equivalence between soldiers and terrorists, because soldiers act under the rule of law.
This is where this touches home. Bloody Sunday made The Troubles worse. It strengthened the IRA. It's why the "help the Irish" jars in US bars were always full. The cover up, the assertion that the dead were bomb-throwers, the lack of accountability, all of that gave people a grievance; one they couldn't get redress for in other ways.
We are doing the same thing in Iraq, and Afghanistan.
I have personal knowledge of it. A guy we had in the pen was arrested in the plain sight of his brother. US MPs took him away. When his brother when to the Coalition Provisional Authority to ask why, he was lied to. Spun a tale of all the groups which might have done it, but no... No Way was is the US.
Only it was. The brother saw it. I know about this because the guy was a Big Deal in South Baghdad, and it made the papers. I got to read about it, and I compared the brother's account to what I'd been told when I talked to the guy, and they were the same (inside the variability of eyewitness accounts, it was the same story).
If he'd just disappeared, instead of being taken home... how many people would have lost all faith in the honest intentions of the US?
How many similar stories are there?
Soldiers act under the rule of law. Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Khandahar... places the Gov't says the law has run out.
Bloody Sunday, as much as anything else; in the 400 years of struggle to reclaim independence, made The Troubles as bad as they were (and it's an interesting thing that the families of the victims are looking to the Crown Prosecution to give them redress... they don't want jail for the soldiers, just trials, and [they hope, even expect, convictions] that will be enough for them to say justice was done).
What troubles could we avoid, were we to take a good hard look at what we are doing, and treat the people who have legitimate complaint as if they had legitimate complaint?
Today was the release of The Saville Report which is the result of 12 years, thousands of interviews and £195 million, of inquiry into the events of, Bloody Sunday (for those who have not the time, nor the inclination to read through 5,000 pages of detail there are the principal conclusions which only run to 60 pages).
How did David Cameron, who was five when it happened (just as I was), piss them off? He apolgised. More, he did not promise immunity to those implicated in the report.
That report says the dead were innocent. Guilty of nothing; that the soldiers had no legitimate targets, and were not acting out of fear for their lives, or the lives of others (it does say that of the 14 dead, 3 were shot by soldiers acting in "fear and panic" and 11 were not).
David Cameron said, ""Mr Speaker, I am deeply patriotic.
I never want to believe anything bad about our country.
I never want to call into question the behaviour of our soldiers and our Army who I believe to be the finest in the world.
And I have seen for myself the very difficult and dangerous circumstances in which we ask our soldiers to serve.
But the conclusions of this report are absolutely clear.
There is no doubt. There is nothing equivocal. There are no ambiguities.
What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable.
It was wrong."
I have friends in the British Army. Friends who, because of the price they, and their mates, had to pay in N. Ireland, have a bone deep antipathy to the Irish. The dislike of the French, is mostly teasing (they have a thousand years of genial hostility between them). Not so the way they feel about the Irish Republicans.
I understand it (though as someone of Irish descent I can't quite share it even to the point of being more than more than merely quiet when they are being angry, and not playing, "rebel tunes" when they are in earshot).
Unjustified, and unjustifiable.
I am not, actually, trying to lay blame on 1 Para (I don't think, as one person said, they need to be stripped of all awards. It was a single act, by a singular group, and; while 1 Para must, sadly, carry the shame of those people's actions; and that days deeds, it doesn't diminish the rest of their record). No, I am more interested in the response Cameron made to a MP who was trying to make an equivalence between "terrorists" (a term which is often problematic, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and while I think the Provos, esp. in the '70s and '80s were well beyond the realm of fair insurgency (bombs in London, no. Soldiers are legitimate targets; it's what we are paid for. The various supporting elements [e.g in this case, The Orangemen] are probably fair game, but random people, far from the actual area being contested... I don't think so).
The MP wanted to know why, if the soldiers were facing prosecution why the IRA members (some of whom are known; one of whom is an MP in N. Ireland), aren't in the same spot.
He said he didn't want to draw equivalence between soldiers and terrorists, because soldiers act under the rule of law.
This is where this touches home. Bloody Sunday made The Troubles worse. It strengthened the IRA. It's why the "help the Irish" jars in US bars were always full. The cover up, the assertion that the dead were bomb-throwers, the lack of accountability, all of that gave people a grievance; one they couldn't get redress for in other ways.
We are doing the same thing in Iraq, and Afghanistan.
I have personal knowledge of it. A guy we had in the pen was arrested in the plain sight of his brother. US MPs took him away. When his brother when to the Coalition Provisional Authority to ask why, he was lied to. Spun a tale of all the groups which might have done it, but no... No Way was is the US.
Only it was. The brother saw it. I know about this because the guy was a Big Deal in South Baghdad, and it made the papers. I got to read about it, and I compared the brother's account to what I'd been told when I talked to the guy, and they were the same (inside the variability of eyewitness accounts, it was the same story).
If he'd just disappeared, instead of being taken home... how many people would have lost all faith in the honest intentions of the US?
How many similar stories are there?
Soldiers act under the rule of law. Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Khandahar... places the Gov't says the law has run out.
Bloody Sunday, as much as anything else; in the 400 years of struggle to reclaim independence, made The Troubles as bad as they were (and it's an interesting thing that the families of the victims are looking to the Crown Prosecution to give them redress... they don't want jail for the soldiers, just trials, and [they hope, even expect, convictions] that will be enough for them to say justice was done).
What troubles could we avoid, were we to take a good hard look at what we are doing, and treat the people who have legitimate complaint as if they had legitimate complaint?
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:19 pm (UTC)The March was illegal because all such marches were illegal. It was, like Selma and Birmingham, and Tiananmen, an act of civil disobedience. It wasn't like the Boston Massacre (in which I think the soldiers didn't really do anything culpable).
One of the more telling moments, from reports at the time, was a journalist who approached a group of soldiers, at a barricade, and asked to cross. They told him, "No, you go back and take what's coming to you." A couple of minutes later, as he; and a lot of other people were leaving, the person next to him was shot.
That implies (unless he is lying outright) a certain level of deliberation.
I don't doubt the soldiers were amped and upset. I don't argue that they probably ought not have been so used (though it is traditional in Britain, and it's not the first time it's led to mass shootings of peaceful protest. I forget the details, but sometime (the 1830s?) there were a number of cases of the Army breaking up demonstrations by firing into the crowds).
One of the thing the Saville report stresses is the presence of the IRA was minimal, and nothing they did that day, justified the shooting, because the soldiers who did fire, were firing into areas they knew to be free of threat, or they were firing with a careless disregard for the people in the area.
I have to say the way the British Army trains today makes another Bloody Sunday less likely, because the training they get on keeping the area behind the target clear is endemic to all training with rifles.
I'd really like to incorporate some of the drills they do.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:32 pm (UTC)I guess part of my dilemma is because I've been that angry Soldier with a firearm, and a screaming need to hurt someone, anyone, for the damages done to my friends and my comrades in arms and so, my sympathy is very much with the soldiers.
I'm sure I didn't really care if the people in front of me where actually the reason my friends were dead, or I'd been shot at or blown up...they were there, they were part of that culture, and they were fair game for loosing my rage and bloodlust on.
I was lucky and, I like to think a little strong, for never firing in anger, and never shooting at anyone I *knew* didn't have it coming, but I'm only lucky by the grace of God, and having a Chaplain who understood why I was screaming and beating my hands bloody on the walls in anger and frustration.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 05:06 am (UTC)I've been that angry soldier too (and tempted to more horrid things than shooting in anger, though I've been tempted to that too). If I am ever guilty of such a thing as the soldiers of 1 Para seem to be, or the people I know to have committed tortures, rapes and what I can only call murder, I want to be prosecuted.
Not because I want to go to prison, not because I want to be a felon, and shamed, disgraced and out of company with my fellows, but because the Army, and the Nation need to know that such things, while understandable, and forgivable, are not really excusable.
There is a case in Canada right now, which I am terribly conflicted about; a Captain who shot a desperately wounded person because the Afghani officer leading the patrol said they weren't stopping, and he wasn't going to arrange for any sort of medical help.
I don't know how I feel about it, because I wasn't there, but I do know I could never be on a jury for such a case, because I am far too sympathetic to the accused, and am likely to acquit, even if what he did was legally wrong, because I would be very likely to find it morally right.