Monday, July 27, 2009

Its the Somme all over again II

This is an update of the previous post by this name. Last night I watched a documentary called "1916: Total War". It was mainly about the Somme- why it was fought, how it was fought, what it meant to those who took part, and what its effect was on the British army.

The Somme is constantly used by lefties as shorthand for 'prime example of the futility of war, and especially the stupidity of donkey aristocrats who think nothing of killing their working class squaddies'. As this documentary points out, that analysis is bullshit. Approximately two hundred thousand ordinary soldiers turned out for Earl Haigs funeral. Earl Haig was the general in charge at the Somme. The Somme was the blooding of a whole nations fighting men, Lord Kitcheners New Army. It was the formative experience which enabled the victories of 1918, the greatest victories a British army has ever won, by the largest army Britain has ever fielded.

British casualties on the first day of the Somme were 57,470 of which 19,240 were killed or died of wounds. As a point of comparison, the whole Rhodesian army was approximately 20,000. The battle then ground on for four and a half months.

No British engagement in the twenty-first century compares to the great clashes of the twentieth. To put it into perspective, the New Zealand Division, lost 2,000 of its 15,000 men at the Somme. That is more men lost in one battle than Britain has lost in all warfare since the Korean war. Britain lost 179 personnel (many not combat fatalities) in Iraq between 2003 and 2009. It has lost 191 personnel in Afghanistan (again many not combat fatalities) in the even longer period 2001 to 2009. By absolutely any yardstick, those are miniscule totals. Given the amount of contacts and combat that have taken place in both countries, it shows how staggeringly effective our forces are at killing and not being killed.

Yet if you read the BBC website, you'd imagine that not only are our troops pathetic little children wandering about in someone elses war, but that they are taking casualties on a massive scale. They are victims, hung out to dry by the monster Gordon Brown and the despicable MOD.

How many Britons outside the White City group wank see our armed forces this way? A tiny sprinkling in our big cities, and thats all. Everybody else (excepting the moslems in the moslem state-within-a-state enclaves) see them as heroes, the battle-hardened but thin green line toughing out a mostly unrewarding posting in inhospitable places on our behalf.

The BBC coercively takes £3.2 BILLION every year from British taxpayers, and yet their coverage of Afghanistan is completely pathetic and shit.

Compare:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8167615.stm


with:

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/an-artery-of-opium-a-vein-of-taliban.htm

Michael Yon gets no assistance from anyone, just private contributions (please make one if you like his material). And yet he does a better job than the whole over-paid BBC. Why aren't people angry? Maybe they are.

No comments: