Careful consideration
Sunday, October 28th, 2001 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerFriday provided the ironic spectacle of the British defence minister announcing the planned deployment of commando units in Afghanistan, saying that no government would ever put its servicemen and women at risk without "careful consideration". The irony came from the fact that he was wearing a poppy at the time. Are we to assume, then, that the three battles of Ypres, where thousands of British soldiers were mown down by German machine guns, garrotted by barbed wire or simply drowned in the mud, were undertaken after careful consideration? If so, God save us from the consideration of governments.
Perhaps "careful consideration" is one of those specialised military terms which have the opposite meaning to what one would normally expect, like "precision". An example of "precision" came the same day, when the Americans bombed another three Red Cross depots in Kabul. Four down, one to go. At least in Belgrade they only bombed the Chinese Embassy once.
What these British forces will actually be doing in Afghanistan is, of course, classified information, but military experts seem to be at a loss. Retired Rear Admiral Loughran stressed "flexibility" and said more or less that since we didn't know what we were going to do, this put the Taliban at a disadvantage, as they wouldn't know what we were going to do either. The only certain thing was that it meant we would be "standing shoulder-to-shoulder" with the Americans.
Given the American definition of "precision", I wouldn't want to stand that close.
Perhaps "careful consideration" is one of those specialised military terms which have the opposite meaning to what one would normally expect, like "precision". An example of "precision" came the same day, when the Americans bombed another three Red Cross depots in Kabul. Four down, one to go. At least in Belgrade they only bombed the Chinese Embassy once.
What these British forces will actually be doing in Afghanistan is, of course, classified information, but military experts seem to be at a loss. Retired Rear Admiral Loughran stressed "flexibility" and said more or less that since we didn't know what we were going to do, this put the Taliban at a disadvantage, as they wouldn't know what we were going to do either. The only certain thing was that it meant we would be "standing shoulder-to-shoulder" with the Americans.
Given the American definition of "precision", I wouldn't want to stand that close.
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Irony
Date: 2001-10-28 06:06 am (UTC)I was dissappointed when we(USA) first started bombing, that we had not asked any of the surrounding nations to let us provide shelters for the citizens. But sadly, that's not a realistic request.