1000 UK soldiers desert May 28, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , trackbackThe BBC reports today that 1000 UK soldiers have deserted since the start of the Iraq war, and the numbers are increasing. I doubt these people are cowards, or unwilling to fight. This is not a brave or noble war, and a deserter now is very different from one in my Grandfather’s war, when there was a real threat to Britain and a real cause to answer. No doubt there are many reasons for this rise in numbers unwilling to go to Iraq, but surely the fact that they are neither defending Britain nor, it would seem, doing much good for Iraq is part of it.
For a long time I’ve subscribed to the view that we should not have gone in there in the first place, but now that we have, we should finish the job. But of course, I sit here in the safety of Camden. I don’t have to ‘finish’ the job. I’m not a soldier on the front line, nor a scared Iraqi watching her country occupied by foreigners I neither understand nor welcome.
It is time to stop treating the lives of our soldiers with such disrespect. It is time to stop thinking that we have the wisdom or the ability to undo the damage that has been done in Iraq. It is time to bring our soldiers home, before we sink further and further into the quagmire and end up having to leave anyway, having achieved little and spent more lives.
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