The real scandal about our troops

Excerpt from a review of "The Mark of Cain" which will air on British Channel 4 this Thursday. Looks like a movie well worth seeing.

In one sense, I hated the whole film, because of the damage it must inflict on the battered image of what is still a great national institution.

Few mothers who see it will afterwards pat their own little Johnnys and Jimmys on the head, and send them running to the nearest recruiting office to sign on. Yet it is impossible to dismiss the programme as a figment of fantasy.

It contains important and painful truths. First, soldiers under the stresses of mortal peril do not always maintain the standards of boy scouts. In my own researches on World War II, I have often encountered examples of prisoners being shot.

Sometimes, this was because exhausted and frightened men facing the likelihood of imminent death found it intolerable to send captured enemies to the safety of a PoW camp.
On other occasions, prisoners were shot in response to alleged atrocities committed by the other side. The British Army's record in insurgencies is better than that of other armies - the French in Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam, the Israelis in Gaza.

But there have always been a few men who committed monstrous acts, because conflict itself is monstrous. In the old days, however, no one cared - not the high command, not the politicians, not the media.

You could kick an Adeni or Greek Cypriot or Kenyan Mau-Mau suspect half to death, even kill him, with little chance that questions would be asked. What has changed today is not the British soldier, but the climate in which he must fight his wars.

He is expected to maintain extraordinary standards of decency and humanity, while fighting foes who have no standards at all.

If he errs, exposure, disgrace and retribution are almost inevitable. The Army has always had its share of mindless young thugs, but their excesses are no longer tolerated.
No civilised person can regret this. Yet those of us who honour soldiers and understand the nature of their dirty job - to kill and be killed - pity their vulnerability in our squeaky- clean new world.

There is no mercy for little people who fall from grace. The stomachchurner is the manner in which the great criminals escape.

Tony Blair, the man who launched the Iraq nightmare, who committed the British Army to this war under false pretences, will soon walk out of Downing Street to make his millions and live happily ever after.

The burden of guilt, shame, punishment, falls solely upon such wretched men as are depicted in The Mark Of Cain. This is the real scandal, in which we are all complicit.