A few days ago I was chatting to an RAF pilot who had just served in Iraq. He was telling me some of his experiences over there. We had a bit of a chat about the politics of the situation and found that he was pretty pissed off with having to be there ... especially as one if his first missions was to fly home the corpses of 12 soldiers (9 of whom were killed by US artillery) He also disagreed with the politics of the situation and says that wasn't what he signed up for. He signed up to defend Britain. Anyway regardless of the rights or wrongs on us being involved in any form of combat. He was telling me that if Britain was to be attacked or invaded by a foreign country our armed forces are spread so thinly over the globe that we wouldn't stand a chance against an invader. Food for thought
But of course the realities of the modern world are such that an invasion of Britain is never gonna happen. Even in the unlikely event that it did, I would imagine the political build-up to this would put the writing on the wall well in advance of the actual event. Not to mention the fact that other Western countries would never stand by and allow this to happen - simply out of their own self interest. They want a stable trade environment, and wars don't generally promote this.
i noticed your inclusion of a friendly fire statistic, did you know, that in the first Gulf war, over fifty percent of the total deaths in the British army were caused by American incompetence?
I disagree, wars in other places are great for trade, just look at americas whole economy! I mean death and suffering of the poor, to feed the gross oversized stomachs of the rich, common sense int it??
while it is unlikely that Britain faces invasion any time soon, it is the case that our forces are stretched to their limit, which means we are not in a position to deal with other trouble spots or humanitarian situations across the globe. While we are probably able to send forces to Sudan if necessary, that would mean we were more or less on a "war footing", i.e. every single piece of new equipment produced or procured, every single bit of training personnel underwent would have the sole purpose of sustaining our operations abroad. No slack whatsoever. And that ain't good for our boys and girls and their families.
My husband was in Iraq at the start of the war and came home a completely different person because of it. I agree none of them signed up for this and if England was attacked tomorrow we would fall so quick we wouldn't know what happened to the country. UK is not it's own country anymore as Tony Blair takes his orders from Mr. Bush plain and simple. Big Brother screams and we jump. Then they kill more of our troops then the enemy and people wonder why so many people are against this war!!!!!!!!!! No Love & Sadness EnonEmouse
They don't want it in their own back yard though. Wars in third world countries and the middle east are one thing. But wars in western countries are another thing entirely. This is one of the reasons we were so keen to stop the conflict in the balkans - too close to home.
