1) Sultan Knish writes that 'British is the new un-British, Islam is the new British' and illustrates this with several stories including one about the
'Gurkha soldier from the 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles, is facing charges for cutting off the head of a Taliban commander, took the head so it could be identified and left the body behind. From Kipling's Grave of the Hundred Head, as retaliation for the killing of a single British soldier, we've gone over to the British government being horribly embarrassed because a Gurkha soldier beheaded the corpse of a Muslim terrorist, from a group that routinely beheads people while alive.'
2) Anna Raccoon covers the same story thus:
'A young soldier is confined to barracks today, awaiting possible court martial.
His crime was apparently to think on his feet, and comply with his instructions by the most efficacious method available to him.
On patrol in Helmand province, he was instructed to search and destroy a ‘high value target’ – a local Taliban commander. His unit, the 1st Battalion Royal Guards successfully killed the Taliban fighter as requested, and set about lugging his body back through the battle ground so that the death could be properly verified and the usual propaganda made of it.
Coming under heavy fire from other Taliban fighters, he made what to me seemed the entirely sensible decision to only risk his life carrying the most portable and identifiable part of the Taliban fighter. Since they don’t wear convenient dog tags, this meant removing his entire head.
Naturally we are now considering prosecuting him for failing to abide by the Geneva conventions regarding not ‘demeaning’ an enemy combatant, on the grounds that desecrating a dead man’s body is considered offensive in Afghanistan where custom dictates that the body is buried intact.'
Anna Raccoon reminds us that:
'Not only do the Taliban not wear dog tags, they don’t observe the Geneva conventions either. They are also inordinately fond of the IED device which is specifically designed not to leave the body in one piece for burial, as 321 fine young Britons have discovered to their cost.'
It's called a war and either we are fighting one or we are not. If we are, then let us fight to win and fight fire with fire. If we are not, then bring our soldiers home; they deserve better than to be killed in part because of a lack of the proper equipment and in part because of a lack of political will.
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