BY JIM BROWNE
MARINE A, Alexander Blackman from Taunton, has had his murder conviction downgraded to manslaughter. Blackman shot an injured Taliban fighter in Afghanistan and had his murder conviction reduced to manslaughter yesterday by five judges at the Court Martial Appeal Court in London. They heard argument on his behalf that fresh psychiatric evidence would have provided him with a diminished responsibility defence. He will remain in prison for now, and a date for a hearing regarding his release will be announced soon.
This is great news.
Perhaps Blackman shouldn’t have been jailed in the first place. Those defending our peace, protecting our world from evil and giving devoted service to our country should always be treated with fairness and understanding. Those who judge should be people who have actually set foot in the arena of war; even then they may well not have been up to their necks in it like Mr Blackman was.
I am reminded of some lines in the film Eye in the Sky when Alan Rickman’s character makes a brilliant “Never tell a soldier the cost of war” speech to some whining desk jockey government official after droning some Islamist terrorists:
This was Rickman’s last role before his death and one he should have been very proud of.
Yet Leftists and British army-hating Irish nationalists are furious that Blackman has had his conviction downgraded. Just take a look at some of their responses on Twitter yesterday:
Fortunately, for the nation’s sanity most disagreed with them:
With former Sun journalist Stig Abell hitting the nail on the head:
Until we Britons start to respect our service personnel and give them the benefit of the doubt for their service in conditions most of us will never know, we are open to division and weaker for it.
Whatever people say about Marine A, he was fighting our fight for us. Risking his life for us. Defending our values against Islamist savages who want us to convert or die, who would happily rape our daughters and grad-daughters. And we owe him fairness and understanding.
Let’s hope Sergeant Blackman is out for time already served. And soon.
The Rules of Engagement are absurd—Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions adopted in 1977 extends foolish protection to terrorists (the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ is also relevant here). However, that is a separate debate; rules are rules and can’t have soldiers exceeding them and performing vigilante-type actions. But the matter should have been dealt with quietly, in-house. A bollocking by the RSM would have done more to get Blackman back on track than crucifying him, and the military would not have lost an experienced SNCO; and the Taliban and their apologists would never have known about it—instead, we’re actually propagandising on behalf of our enemies.
This is far from the first such case: e.g. there was one of the Iraq abuse scandals—private ‘beasting’ sessions of looters (BBC link). Again, soldiers exceeded their orders, for which punishment was merited—but they weren’t ‘beasting’ ordinary Iraqis but looters (who risked being executed during WW2). Should have been dealt with quietly, in-house; and any journo sniffing round later, informed, ‘There was an incident, it’s been dealt with, soldiers have been disciplined, end of story.’ Instead, the State hung good soldiers(*) out to dry, our dirty linen displayed before the world.
(* And they were basically good soldiers as the link shows; but the kind of men who are ‘considered for a mention in dispatches for his bravery in destroying an enemy mortar position’ and ‘commended for defusing as many as 80 boxes of explosives’ are not nun material.)
Plenty of questionable prosecutions of soldiers in NI and now we’re hounding the ‘Bloody Sunday’ soldiers for decisions made in seconds in confusing circumstances (N.B. even the 21 paras who opened fire handed back nine-tenths of their ammunition that evening—would psychos or soldiers ‘running amok’ have so much ammo left to hand back?).
We need a greater understanding of the nature of warfare and accept that considerable latitude must be extended to the decisions a soldier makes in combat, on whose judgement lives balance. And the State must stop behaving like Saturn eating his own children and sacrificing its most loyal servants, whilst also acting as the enemy’s propaganda department.
I hope that this is not the end of Sgt. Blackman’s campaign—he should be fully exonerated.
Message to ISIS keep going we are constantly undermining our armed forces soon there will be no-one to defend us between PIRA accusations of “shoot to kill” (only common sense if issued with a loaded weapon) and government aided lawyers seeing if anyone might have used a weapon or fist slightly wrongly in Iraq/Afghanistan. Why would any reasonable person lift a weapon to defend us? Just who made the decision to try Sgt. Blackman for murder? That crass idiot should be stood in front of a platoon returning from fighting for their lives and have the question put to them would we be better off without this person?