Britain's Hired Killers

This post has partly been inspired by a discussion that took place over the weekend regarding someone who was a part of our group many years ago, but has now burned his bridges with many people.

Fact is, he's changed. And not in a nice way.
He has lost all ability to use people skills.
He is now a compulsive reactor- in a violent way.

The oddity is, he is one of the few people I know who is EXACTLY where they planned to be in this stage of their lives.
He is a Major in the Royal Marines.

I liked the guy I knew many years ago. Nowadays I would respectfully decline an offer to go for a drink with him.
Not because I dislike him, but because he is no a longer a person I could feel comfortable with.
The fact is, I've never killed anybody. Nor has anybody I know. I don't know how many people this guy has killed in his life, but bearing in mind he served in Afghanistan and Iraq, I suspect it's quite a tally. He has an exemplory service record, which means he is very good at his job.
But let's not escape from the fact, that his job is as a career killer.
Soldier, Mercenary, Hitman- all paid to kill.

I understand that we need the services of such people, but just because it's done in our name doesn't mean I want to be around them.
I have never yet come across anyone who left the army capable of readapting to life outside.

That's understandable. When you have spent twenty years in the company of others who regarded killing people as part of a days work, it's got to change you.
It cuts you off from ordinary emotional understanding of the rest of humanity.

Sometimes, we are not particularly honest with ourselves about the British Armed Forces.
It's true that the British Army is very good at what armies are supposed to do- win battles, and ultimately, wars.
It's record of victory is almost unparallelled.
As an example of how a fighting machine should work, it's highly impressive.



Sometimes we in this country are blind to the fact that though the Empire has gone, this is still a very powerful country- the only European nation to be in both the top five Economic powers AND the top five Military powers.

Put bluntly, we have one of the highest shares of wealth in the world, and spend one of the highest figures on armamaments. It doesn't cost that high a percentage of GNP, because contrary to what we like to think, we have a lot of money to spend, period.

Most countries have armies to protect their borders, hardly ever used, unlikely to see real combat and ineffective against a serious attack.
Only a tiny handful of countries possess armies capable of invading countries in far off regions of the globe.

Ours is one of them.

British Troops are pretty much always involved in conflict situations somewhere.
Whereas the soldiers of many countries can serve a whole career without killing anyone, the majority of British soldiers will.

In one sense, while armies exist anywhere at all, I'm glad ours is still one of the best.
In the same way, while nuclear weapons exist, I'm glad we have one of the larger stashes in the world.

I think both are thoroughly dangerous to world security- and potentially to our species in the world we live in now.
World War Three will not last six years- possibly not much more than six hours.



But there is a social side too, one we ignore.
There are two countries in the Western world which stand out as markedly more violent cultures than all the rest.
The United States and the UK.

The UK doesn't have the gun crime problem the US has, but only because we try to disarm everybody here. This is a sad sign really- we can't trust anybody with guns, although our constitutional theorists all agreed that the people should have the right to bear arms if their government did.
If the forces of the state have all the guns, it is a threat to liberty.

But in our society that needs to be sacrificed because it is just too dangerous to allow too many weapons out there.
In spite of this, you have more chance of being shot here than anywhere else in Europe.

As regards fighting, people are much more quick to turn to blows here than in most countries, we have a murder rate, high robbery rate, high burglary rate, in fact we have a high rate of most violent crimes.



There is a reason for this, in my opinion.
British culture- like US culture- has to be ambivalent towards violence, to a degree other countries don't have to be.

We need to ensure that a certain proportion of our young, usually those with sad upbringings who yearn to go off and be a hero, will buy the dream of soldiering, will join the army to become trained killers.
Because don't forget, unlike soldiers in other armies who only need to learn about about defensive tactics, British troops need to learn a lot more. They are unlikely to ever need to defend their homeland from attack- most will go elsewhere to fight.

We need an army of people, who didn't join to defend their home, but actually really want the chance to go abroad and kill people for the Crown.
We glorify it.

We classify our films much more stringently than our fellow Europeans when it comes to Sex, but much more relaxedly when it comes to violence.

And the Army is a fairly aggressive recruiter. It is impossible to watch the TV for long without an Armed Forces recruitment advert popping up.
It goes into High Schools to promote the option of serving the Crown.

It allows boys of seventeen to enlist, even though the state doesn't trust them to buy a drink or vote.
It trusts them, however, to really think about what they are signing up for.

We see them as heroes, but most of them end up human tragedies, spat out with a pension and no real life skills to serve them in the community at large.
But they retain their conditioning and mentality- rabid wolves let loose.

Few leave the British Armed Forces unscathed.

That's the reality.

If we had any sense, the permanent members of the UN security council, four of whom also happen to be amongst the leading military powers would announce a definite commitment to Total Universal Disarmament, certainly removing Standing Armies and Nuclear Weapons.
I'm not saying it would be easy to acheive, it would take a long time, but we need to at least commit to it.

We cannot any longer retain War as an ultimate resort in International Relations.
It is too dangerous for all of us, and the cost to society is too high.

Postscript; Just noticed, this is the two hundredth post here!