The UK newspapers and TV channels have been full of stories about a coroner trying to determine the cause of death of a British soldier in Afganistan and demanding a copy of the onboard tape from the US tankbuster aircraft that was alleged to have killed him. The so-called “friendly fire”.
The tape, to my untrained eye, looks pretty conclusive.
What is so sad was reading today that the US authorities tried so hard to prevent this tape from ever seeing the light of day. And then reading that they are as equally uptight about sharing this type of information with their own press when US service men and women are killed or injured by friendly fire.
Our press has been making a meal of how the US treat the British troops (and Britain the country) as second class citizens. This is arrogant nonsense given my comment above about how they treat their own people.
War is a dirty business. People get hurt. Accidents happen. They always have and they always will. The fact is that modern warfare can be fought from literally miles, if not thousands of miles away from the battlefield. We are not living in the days of horses and pitched battles. Consequently these accidents are going to become increasingly common. So the authorities, regardless of which country is involved, might as well come clean. That doesn’t make any accident acceptable, but I think it makes them more understandable.
Not that that will be much comfort to the families of the unfortunate victims. But the truth might go some way to helping them come to terms with their loss.
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