THE British army has sometimes been deployed against its own people but has never met a foreign foe on its home ground.
Battle honours resemble a Cook’s Tour of the empire, with latterly a few excursions into places where now it is the Stars and Stripes that represents the dominant imperial power.
Although the military Establishment promotes the myth that its recruits are drawn from the widest demographic, the reality is that its officers come predominately from one social class and the bulk of its foot soldiers from working-class families.
The army targets young working-class people from what marketers and polling experts categorise as C2DEs. The top brass are happy to take anyone but they concentrate their efforts on towns everywhere that working-class youngsters find their life chances stunted.
On the evidence of its own internal documents, the army puts young disadvantaged people at the greatest risk.
The minimum requirements for joining include literacy and numeracy skills at Entry Level 2. This means a young person with the reading age of a seven or eight-year-old can enlist.
Young people from 16 to 16-and-a-half can only be recruited to front-line combat roles in the infantry, armoured corps or artillery or as drivers in the logistics corps.
The campaigning charity Child Soldiers International got hold of the military’s recruitment campaign documents which reveal this strategy and point out that, for obvious reasons, combat roles are far more dangerous than most other jobs in the armed forces.
“For example, the British infantry’s fatality rate in Afghanistan has been six times that in the rest of the army and seven times that in the rest of the armed forces. This means that the army’s very youngest recruits face a greater long-term risk, on average, than do older recruits.”
The Ministry of Defence admits that beyond the 453 British deaths in Afghanistan while more than 7,300 were treated in field hospital for battlefield injuries, non-combat wounds or disease. In Iraq, 173 died and 5,800 were wounded or injured.
Every one of these left a family traumatised and relatives grieving.
Britain has been engaged in a series of resource wars in terrain that can be very challenging even for the experienced. Military operations are conducted in places where the population is hostile to foreign invaders.
This can be something of a shock for anyone who allows themselves to believe the bullshit and is especially disturbing for the socially inexperienced and politically naive who find themselves ill-equipped to understand the big picture.
The fallout from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts shows that even in the limited terms in which the top brass and the politicians define the objectives of Britain’s engagement our military intervention in these places is completely counterproductive.
The Commons defence committee report shows that soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have experienced a wave of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The human cost of war is unimaginable for the people who live in Iraq and Afghanistan but imperial war is indiscriminate in its lust for blood.
One dimension of our opposition to Britain’s wars is the obligation to seek justice for everyone caught up in them.
The injured and traumatised survivors deserve all the support that the state that sent them can provide.
It is a scandal that spotlights the hypocrisy of our ruling class, that while it was the state that put these soldiers in harm’s way it is a privatised health service and private charity that they must rely on.
For their sakes and for ours there must be no more wars for oil and profit.
