Another smiling young man,
Private Robert McLaren from The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland (3 SCOTS), was killed in Afghanistan on the morning of 11 June 2009.
Pte McLaren aged 20 years old from Kintra, by Fionnphort on the Isle of Mull, was fresh out of infantry recruit training.
Hap by Thomas Hardy. 1866
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"
Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? —
Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
Hardy, an athiest, approaches the subject of war in his poetry perfectly, for me.
"the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival."
Part 2, Chapter 9, pg. 192.
1984, George Orwell.
"Six years after fighting an illegal war on a lie told by Toadie BLIAR and his Poliburo of New LIEbour with 179 British service personnel dead and HUNDREDS wounded,7 BILLION pounds of tax payers money wasted,Britain is finally pulling out of the forlorn hope that is Iraq,and what exactly have we accomplished?-Bugger all!!
Iraq is still in the grip of of the worst terrorism the world has ever seen,with hundreds of thousands dead and the death toll still rising,the evil flames of Islamic fundamentalism spreading throughout the entire Middle East and let's not forget our own "Home grown" Muslim nutters who are practically falling over themselves to get their brains blown out for Allah!
Has Britain's commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting the inanely misleading named "war on Terror" made the world and more importantly our streets a safer place or did George Bush and his lapdog Toadie Bliar,not forgetting his UNELECTED successor Gormless Brownose,light the blue touch paper of Islamic lunacy that has resulted in the appalling suicide bombings in our country and the alienating and of so many of Britain's Muslims?
Now Britain is finally getting out of the nightmare that is Iraq are we going to have the public enquiry that common decency demands we have into the sordid circumstances of our deployment by Todie Bliar and the lies his joke of a government told?
It's now Crystal clear,even to the lowest intellect,that Saddam Hussein did not have any weapons of mass destruction,the excuse Bliar used to drag us over there in the first place,the fact of the "Dodgy dossier" is common knowledge so are the CRIMINALS who have the gall to call themselves our government going to be made to account for their crimes or are we going to have another Whitehall whitewash?
let us also not forget the deplorable shortages in men and equipment our servicemen had to cope with which had the DIRECT result in killing dozens of our service personnel,Inadequate Body Armour,Faulty Radios,insufficient ammunition and the infamous "Snatch" land rover,because of years of cutbacks,penny pinching and incompetence from a government where NONE of it's senior members have ever worn the uniform of our Armed Forces!
I started my Blog shortly after returning from a tour in Iraq in 2004.I was appalled by the treatment of our Armed Forces by Bliar's ungrateful government and it has been my hope to bring the injustice of this to the public eye.
The equipment our troops are being issued with has finally improved.Better weapons,radios and armoured vehicles have made a difference but the changes were only made possible with the blood of our servicemen.
Unfortunately it looks like our Armed Forces have an even greater challenge in Afghanistan.We know they are more than capable of coping with whatever is thrown at them,I wish I could say the same for Gordon Brown and his government but they've already proved that they are not!" Scipio. 1/05/09
www.the-chosen-man.blogspot.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCSB_BiNSZo