Apr 09 2007
Why the head of the army is right
If you sign up for the forces - or for that matter become a Minister of the Crown - you accept that everything you do in your day job and in your official capacity is the property of the state paying your wages.
If you do something that is newsworthy you follow orders. You discuss it with your employer. You and your employer together decide if it is appropriate to hold a press conference or issue a statement. You discuss how to respond to the press interest. Because you are working for your country??you do not charge for this release of information. Sensible people release the information at the same time to all outlets, to be fair to all journalists and means of communication and to ensure a more balanced press response.
The best way of doing this is?? a Parliamentary statement. Instead of the government encouraging the sale of individual stories, what we need is a clear and considered statement from the Defence Secretary or Foreign Secretary to the House of Commons. This statement should cover the narrow issues of how the 15 were treated by their captors, why they made the statements they made to the Iranian media and authorities and what they will be doing next. The Statement should set all this in the wider context of how the government wishes to develop Anglo-Iranian relations in the light of this illegal seizure. There should also be some general comments on how UK military personnel are expected to behave in such provocative circumstances and what we have learned from this event.
It beggars belief that this government now wishes to undermine the armed forces by disapplying all these normal rules of conduct, as surely as they have worked hard to undermine other great instiutions they inherited in 1997. There lack of knowledge of our history has developed into a complete failure to grasp the important principles that lie behind public service and Parliamentary accountability for Ministers.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Redwood: “It beggars belief that this government now wishes to undermine the armed forces by disapplying all these normal rules of conduct…”
This is not a deliberate attempt to undermine the armed forces, but obvioulsy it will corrode dicipline. This is an attempt to frustrate the search for the causes of the current debacle and protect the government from criticism.
The opposition should be all over them on this, Liam Fox has been ineffectual. We don’t know;
1.Were the captured Marines unable to defend themselves because of their rules of engagement.
2.Why was the helicopter air cover withdrawn. Did this mean the group were out of radio contact with HMS Cornwall.
3.Why was the boarding party so far from Cornwall? The water where the merchantman was lying was supposed to be shallow, but she could reasonably have been closer.
4.Why was no assistance requested from other allied assets in the Gulf?
By the way, there has been far too much trimming of fighting ships, too many officers sitting administrating a shrinking navy as a result.
Finally, does no one else notice how the capture of a female was exploited by the Iranians? Should the roll of our fighting forces be to fight? Or to present equal opportunities. In this case I am sure it provided a very unequal psychological weapon to the enemy.
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I agree, and didn’t buy a newspaper yesterday and won’t be buying one all week until the stories have run their course.
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The thing that worries me is not soldiers getting coverage but the sort of events being covered. There is serious fighting going on in Afghanistan with the SAS taking on & usually surviving attacks by enormously greater numbers. Just the stuff that used to delight Victorian boyhood. But the public interest is in a foul up in which none of the protagonists have behaved heroicaly (not a criticism heroic action would have got them dead). I think this worryingly suggests a society more interested in victimhood than heroism.
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