Conduct unbecoming
Bruce Anderson damns senior officers for not resisting moves to have British soldiers appear before the International Criminal Court Actions are being taken in the British people’s name which should make us feel appalled. The government’s behaviour towards the British army has been despicable.
In Northern Ireland, there are plans to give an amnesty to IRA terrorists who were never prosecuted because they went on the run. Though an unappealing prospect, that could be regarded as falling within the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement. But someone saw a difficulty. What if evidence emerged which could lead to the prosecution of a British soldier, after all the terrorists had won immunity. A bizarre solution was found. It is proposed to re-examine thousands of killings which took place in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, including the killings of terrorists by members of the security forces. The intention is that this will lead to a general amnesty. It would also establish a moral equivalence between the British army and the terrorists.
This has caused outrage throughout the army. When the Romans took prisoners, they made them pass under a yoke which normally harnessed beasts of burden. This was not painful, but it was humiliating. The British army feels that it is now being made to pass under the yoke. If the defence ministers were trying to sabotage recruitment and eradicate morale they could hardly have done better.
Yet there is worse. The ministers have not acted out of malice. They are merely guilty of naivety, incompetence and stupidity. They could not have done anything like as much damage without the help of the generals. Politically, this government is weak and growing weaker. If the generals had been prepared to push their disagreements to the point of resignation, the ministers would have collapsed like a wet meringue. But and this is terrible — there is no evidence that the generals did disagree.
Man for man, the British army is now the best in the world. The principal reason for this is the quality of training. But training is not just a matter of teaching techniques and instilling discipline. Training is about bonding and instilling an ethos. Both of those depend on the integrity of the chain of command and on leadership. However welldrilled the modern private soldier may be, he is a thinking creature, not an automaton. He will not long follow men whom he does not respect. Those in authority over him win that respect by their confidence, their courage and their commitment to his welfare. That is the unspoken contract between the officer and his men: do what I tell you, and I will look after you as best I can.
That is the contract which the lawyers are now forcing the officers to dishonour. In his dealings with Tony Blair over the legality of the Iraq war, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, was so invertebrate that he would go on licking the Prime Minister’s boots even while his backside was being kicked. In his dealings with the army, the Attorney General has been consistent. He believes that the armed forces should be a free-fire zone for human rights, political correctness and international jurisdiction. As a result, dubious solicitors who used to chase ambulances now chase khaki. British soldiers in Iraq often come acrosss the slug slime of shyster lawyers .
Senior officers are not seeking permission for their men to run amok. That would be the end of discipline. It is always impressed upon soldiers that they must fight within the Geneva Convention. When troops are in combat, every serious incident is investigated within the chain of command, and this is not a formality. Over the years plenty of soldiers have been prosecuted.
Chain-of-command justice has one advantage. As those conducting the investigations understand the context in which soldiers must operate, they can make informed judgments as to acceptable behaviour. That is not true of Lord Goldsmith and his minions. Yet over the past few years, the lawyers in London have succeeded in devaluing the chain of command.
Trooper Williams was cleared after an investigation by two colonels. That availed him nothing once the Crown Prosecution Service intervened. In court, the case against him collapsed. But a good soldier who had risked his life was rewarded with two years under the shadow of a murder charge. Other CPS-inspired cases have also folded, but not until the soldiers concerned had been punished with months of anxiety for the crime of serving their country.
As a result of this, one might have thought that the army would have asserted itself to restore the primacy of the chain of command. Not so: the Attorney General was able to rebut any such moves with the threat of the International Criminal Court. When Britain signed up to the ICC, there were assurances that British soldiers would never appear in front of it. It would only act in countries which refused to mount proper investigations of their own. But senior officers have now been warned that the ICC would not regard the chain of command as an adequate legal procedure. So methods which have been tried and tested over the decades would not prevent foreign lawyers from putting British soldiers on a par with Milosevic: more of the yoke.
The generals alone cannot solve the problem of the ICC. But one might expect some resistance. Instead, senior figures have made love to their employment as lawyers’ pimps. A brigadier working directly for General Sir Michael Jackson wrote as follows: ‘Do you have any evidence of officer misbehaviour in Iraq which I could use?’ The cold, callous tone of that missive could have come from some satirists’ version of the château-generals in the first world war. The satirists were writing fiction. That brigadier’s letter encouraged the prosecution of Colonel Jorge Mendonca, DSO, an outstanding soldier. A country which can treat Colonel Mendonca like this ought to be ashamed of itself. As for the brigadier, better men have shot themselves for worse reasons. Around Mike Jackson, however, they are beyond shame.
Mike Jackson: corruptio optimi pessima. Everything about the outward man inspires respect. He looks like a mensch: a fighting soldier, a soldier’s soldier, the last commander on earth to be seduced by the politicians. He has force of personality, reinforced by a hint of menace. If he had been willing to stand up to the politicians, they would never have dared to stand up to him.
But all his supposed strengths were a sham. It was said of the great Slim that he had the brains of a Field Marshal and the heart of a private soldier. Mike Jackson has the heart of a toy poodle. His career as Chief of the General Staff is a study in moral failure.
In combat zones, soldiers invariably ask one question of senior visitors: is the country behind them? They desperately want to hear a yes. But how can today’s soldiers believe that when the lawyers are allowed to run amok? Throughout the services, there are problems with recruitment and retention. Mr Blair wants to use the army more and more. The way the ministers and generals are acting, there will be less and less to use. What happened to joined-up government?
What has happened to duty, honour, patriotism — to common decency? What has happened to this country when brave colonels are prosecuted while generals full of rank and titles, wearing resplendent uniforms, by all appearances worthy successors to their illustrious forebears — fail in their most basic duty to the men under their command?
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