Tuesday 28 March 2017

Huge congratulations to Shakespeare-quoting Royal Marine Alexander Blackman on the news that he's about to be released

There was nothing - literally nothing - in the Alexander Blackman case to justify the grotesque 10-year sentence handed down to him by a British court for dispatching a Taliban fighter on the battlefield in Afghanistan. As far as I can see, the British government, its minions, and the Army indulged in a sordid vendetta to cover their own sorry arses. Some sort of sanction was evidently required - but a ten-year prison sentence? Ridiculous. Anyway, he'll be out in a couple of weeks, thanks to his splendid "lioness" wife, Claire, the author Freddie Forsyth, who brought this dreadful miscarriage of justice to the attention of Jonathan Goldberg QC (who I want defending me if I ever get into trouble), and everyone else - including those newspapers and fellow marines -  who fought to get the soldier released. Well done, all of them.  I want to make just a few points:

First, I wonder if those doughty social justice warriors who make television dramas ever worry that the climate of moral hysteria which made Alexander Blackman's conviction possible in the first place was partly created by them. I've lost count of the number of films and TV drama series whose fictional plots involve a former American, British or Danish soldier running around killing people at home in order to cover up the fact that he was responsible for the cold-blooded murder of an entirely innocent Iraqi or Afghan man/family/village - take your pick. I eventually stopped watching dramatic representations of such incidents, because (a) I refused to believe they were all that common,  or Newsnight and the Guardian would have been ramming down them our throats day and night,  (b) I thought they were aiding and abetting the enemy by fuelling the sense of victimhood to which Muslims enjoying the benefits of Western hospitality seem just as prone as those experiencing the delights of Islamic rule, and (c) they were undermining the will of Westerners to give unquestioning support to their troops when they were still in harm's way.

It seems reasonable for people to question the wisdom of our governments sending troops abroad to risk their lives against, say, Islamist barbarians while failing to halt the spread of the same poisonous ideology at home, just as it's reasonable to ask whether the actions Western troops are engaged are likely to help keep us safe. But when broadcasters use fictional and "factual" programming to sap the national will to fight - and to undermine the will of those actually risking their lives - well, you end up with the Vietnam War which, one suspects, the Americans would have won if its media hadn't gone full Tokyo Rose.

Should Alexander Blackman have shot that wounded Taliban fighter? No. Should he have been sentenced to ten years in prison (or any years in prison) for having done so? No, of course he shouldn't. Apart from the fact that I'm far too much of a coward to have ever found myself facing the same temptation as Sgt. Blackman, can I imagine myself doing something similar, having been through what he'd been through? Most definitely.

!!!VERY BAD LANGUAGE WARNING!!!

I know this will sound macabre (not to mention, heartless), but I couldn't help being struck by the remark made by Sgt. Blackman after he'd shot  the insurgent: "There you are, shuffle off this mortal coil, you cunt. It's nothing you wouldn't do to us"  It may seem an odd time to quote Hamlet (albeit unconsciously, one supposes), but given all the blood, gore, battles, soldiers and moral dilemmas in Shakespeare plays, not in the least incongruous. It's not hard to imagine the exact same sentiment being expressed in the exact same circumstances and with the same seemingly casual callousness, in any of the History plays.

The best of luck to Alexander Blackman.

10 comments:

  1. This is a very fine post. I think you have absolutely nailed it. No further comment necessary.

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  2. I'm with you and SDG, Scott. I wonder if anyone is starting a collection to help with any legal bills he has.

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  3. should he have shot a wounded taliban, absolutely!

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  4. As with many legal issues, there is a sort of automaticity about the original verdict. He apparently shot dead a wounded and defenceless person. The words you quote indicate that there was an intent to do so. Given those facts, it is not surprising that the military court concluded it was murder, the intent being a factor that differentiates murder from manslaughter. The penalty for murder being life, which this blog seems not to have a problem with in other circumstances, a recommended sentence of 10 years doesn't seem excessive. That's how the law operates.

    The real question is whether the full panoply of the law as it applies to civilian life has an identical (or near identical because it was a military court) application on the battlefield. For what it is worth, I think that it is ridiculous that we have imported the same legal process which is necessary as a deterrent to violent behaviour in civil society into judging actions committed in conditions of war. But given that we have done so, it's not logical to blame the judges in question for applying the law as it is. Nor is it really logical, if we leave emotions out of it, to conclude that where there is evidence that some one has been killed and that the perpetrator meant to do so, it is manslaughter.

    The case should not have been brought but only for the reason that the present system is absurd in asking soldiers to fight a war against a ruthless enemy with the judiciary looking over their shoulder.

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    1. Thanks, ex-KCS - extremely illuminating, and I understand the problem better now. I'm surprised the Department of Transport doesn't send out a crack team of traffic wardens to stick tickets on illegally-parked tanks - or Bobbies to administer breathalyser tests to British troops. Maybe they already do.

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  5. ex-KCS. Thank you for bringing great clarity to a complex subject. I have never understood why or when civil law started being applied to military cases and the subsequent cost and suffering it has caused a number of individuals because civil authorities simply do not have the necessary experience.

    Yes, lawyers and admin wallahs can sit around and draft endless "Rules of Engagement" and invoke them in the court room, but when the fog of war descends these rules are immediately supplanted by "Rules of Survival". The pen-pushers [and politicians generally] have no experience of battle-field conditions and are therefore unqualified to get involved.

    Another question for the lawyers. If your enemy is not a signatory to the 1929 Geneva Convention does that mean you have carte blanche to behave without restraint against him [only one of two boxers is bound by the Queensberry Rules]?

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    1. One of my least favourite lines in films and television dramas is when some bleeding heart utters a variant of, "If we did that, we'd be no better than what they are, Sarge," as if modern war was some sort of grotesque virtue-signalling contest and as if the death-cult fanatics Western soldiers have to face these days are playing by the same rules.

      I just checked online and the various articles on when it's acceptable to ignore the Geneva Convention. I'm no clearer than when I started, but my brain's somewhat on the fritz right now, and you may be better able to figure out what the rules are. It rather looks as if military patrols should have a lawyer with them at all times - but, given that the law is always open to interpretation, that probably wouldn't help much either.

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  6. Where is John Mortimer when Lefties need him?

    We may have to make do with the Rumpole creator's devil,viz., Australia's ( via the Scottish Hebrides ) Geoffrey Robertson

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    1. I once had lunch (in my capacity as a publisher's PR wallah) with a female journalist who turned out to be a former, long-term lover of JM's, and definitely not a fan. Entertaining meal, enlivened by about four bottles of wine, I seem to remember. Apart from Rumpole and the excellent "A Voyage Round My Father", I wasn't a huge fan of Mortimer - especially after he said he'd like to die in the Crush Bar at Covent Garden, because it was his idea of heaven, whereas I viewed it as one of the penalties you had to pay for going to the opera. Still, at least he was living proof that even a severe battering with the ugly stick won't necessarily put women off (the opposite in his case, it seems).

      The description "human rights lawyer" usually makes my heart sink, but Robertson is more interesting than that - especially his views on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and on the Armenian genocide of 1915. Still, I mean - "human rights lawyer"!

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  7. "Geoff is a much better lawyer than I could ever be and he supplied the legal arguments. In return I think I handed on to him my father's secret of the art of cross-examination which must be, he used to say, never be confused with examining crossly."
    ["Murderers and Other Friends" John Mortimer].

    A piece of advice that should be passed on to all these shouty, aggressive BBC interrogators masquerading as interviewers.

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