We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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To those who are not au fait with arcane Australian military procurement debates – and those that wish to be so – I present to you a rather fascinating discussion of the merits of the F-22 Raptor (a most superior bird) versus the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (which the Australian government has plumped for). And those that do not give a tinker’s cuss about Australian defence procurement (hell, I do not blame you), I have some quite breathtaking footage of an Su-37 being put through its paces.
I believe this footage (also via Catallaxy) is of an Su-37 being exhibited at the Farnborough air show in the late 90s. Would not like to be facing this plane in a dogfight during daylight hours. According to the linked source, the Su-37 is not currently being manufactured for any particular client. Okay, Samizdata military talking heads – discuss!
If the report turn out to be true about the success of the US military attack in Somalia, that is good news indeed. It is being claimed that some of the people targeted were those responsible for the horrendous 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi in Kenya and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and 2002 atrocities on in Kenya against Kenyan and Israeli civilians. If those are the bastards who have indeed been killed then that is a cause for some satisfaction.
It is interesting that the attack, which took place in Somalia, has attracted praise from the Somali president, who is no friend of the Islamists. But rather more baffling is that the EU has criticised the attack, with a spokesman for EU development commissioner Louis Michel saying “Any incident of this kind is not helpful in the long term”. I wonder how killing members of Al Qaeda is not ‘helpful’ in a fight against Al Qaeda?
In the latest body blow to the British Army, Scottish soldiers have been denied their heritage as the latest supply shortages hit the infantry.
The British army’s decision to end its 150-year relationship with a kilt maker has left Scottish regiments with a shortage of dress kilt uniforms.
The 5,000 soldiers in the Royal Regiment of Scotland only have enough kilts for one out of every 15 men, The Daily Record of Glasgow reports.
Jeff Duncan, campaign manager for Reinstate Our Army Regiments, blamed Prime Minister Tony Blair.
“Mr. Blair promised they would get whatever was needed — what they need is a change of government,” he said.
This is a government that cannot provide basic equipment for its soldiers. Private Widdle would be shivering in the Khyber Pass but he would probably be dead, due to a lack of body armour.
The Daily Telegraph’s Charles Moore has good and important things to say about how the Armed Forces are viewed these days in Britain. He cites several examples of how soldiers, sailors or airmen returning home from a tour of duty frequently feel completely unvalued, sometimes despised, by the home population.
To a certain extent, this has to be placed in historical context. Since the end of compulsory military service in the early 1960s and the end of the Cold War, the forces have shrunk, so a smaller proportion of us are likely to encounter people who are serving in the forces. I know a couple of people in the RAF and my father was a navigator in the 1950s – on aircaft with spiffing names like Meteors, Javelins and Venoms – but many of us do not. I wanted to follow my old man’s footsteps but I developed a small defect in my eyesight in my late teens so the prospect of Johnathan Pearce at the controls of a Typhoon was zero (probably to much relief to you readers). The idea of having a career in the armed forces is something that occurs to very few of us these days. None of the youngsters I know would be remotely interested in joining up. The pay is not attractive compared with what one could earn in other walks of life and the whole catch of travelling around the world, meeting interesting people and subsequently killing them does not appeal to a generation that can backpack around the globe on a cheap flight anyway. And the killing stuff is clearly not popular. Maybe the impact of television, culture and politics has sapped the military ethos. This is a good thing mostly, but it clearly comes at a cost in the supply of motivated personnel.
Moore’s article concludes with a plug for a very fine charity that helps support our services. Without apology, I recommend those so minded to donate something. May I also suggest this RAF Benevolent Fund site as a place that people can visit. Other branches of the forces have similar bodies looking after people who have served and now need some help.
These words of Rudyard Kipling, the great poet for the British Army, are nice:
“Troopin’, troopin’, give another cheer –
Ere’s to English women and a quart of English beer.
The Colonel an’ the Regiment an’ all who’ve got to stay,
Gaw’s Mercy Strike ’em gentle! Whoop! w’re goin’ ‘ome to-day.
We’re goin’ ‘ome, w’re goin’ ‘ome,
Our ship is at the shore,
An’ you must pack your ‘aversack,
For we won’t come back no more.
Ho, don’t you grieve for me,
My lovely Mary-Ann!
For I’ll marry you yit on a foup’ny bit
As a time-expired man.
(From the poem, Troopin’).
Following on from Johnathan Pearce’s article yesterday, I see more and more articles in the media about the issue of Britain’s military being asked to fight two wars without proper funding by a government which seem to know sweet FA about military affairs. Is this a sign that the issue is gaining some wider political traction? If so, I expect to see Dave Cameron suddenly develop an interest in military matters (perhaps a Tory spokesman will soon ask why the UK treasury has been skimping on military equipment funding and thus failing to fit more eco-friendly engine in the army’s clapped out Warrior APCs).
Cynical? Moi?
As a minarchist (rather than an anarchist) I regard managing the military as one of the few legitimate roles of the state and thus find myself in the unfamiliar role of arguing for more tax money for a state endeavour… how weird is that?
EU Referendum has a long and detailed article on the problems the British Army is having with its equipment in the Middle East and the lessons that could and should be learned from other forces, such as the Canadians. The EU Ref. blog has become a regular read for me, and it specialises on two or three consistent themes and sticks to them solidly. You will not get closely-argued analysis of the armed forces like this unless you buy a specialist book or attend a lecture by military historians such as John Keegan. First class stuff all round.
There seems no end to the absurdity of US planners as to the conduct of the war in Afghanistan… surely the way to victory in all military conflicts is the unswerving pursuit of a single core objective (in this case the destruction of the Taliban and its power base) with ruthlessness and focus.
Yet what do we see? A demented conflation of the entirely justified war against the sponsors of the 9/11 attack on New York and Arlington, with the preposterous ‘war on drugs’. At a stroke, attacking the income of Afghan farmers and warlords alike thereby more or less guaranteeing that these people will make common cause with the Taliban on the basis that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Yes indeed:
Miss Israel has been given permission not to carry her assault rifle during service in the Israeli army because she says it bruises her legs.
This has everything that a Samizdata quote of the day should have. It is about a beauty queen. It is not just something said by or about some dreary politician. Plus, guns are involved.
But: Is this decision evidence that Israel is going soft, or does it display a fine understand of the balance that must always be struck between the needs of national defence and the need not to damage that which is being defended?
Today is Remembrance Sunday, and outside Westminster Abbey there is a Field of Remembrance. The field’s crop consists of young men, each commemorated by a wooden cross. I took photographs there last Thursday.
The most effective pictures for evoking what it all looked like were those which hinted at the sheer number of wooden crosses, which in their numbers of course only hinted in their turn at the number of young men killed in war in recent decades.
Who, I wonder, is that particular young man, who was, like me, taking photos? Probably, also like me, just going for an effective shot, rather than remembering anyone in particular. He is (as I later did in the exact same spot) photographing the backs of the crosses nearest to him. The nameless dead.
Other photographers focused tightly in on one particular name and one particular cross.
The oddest photograph I took that day was of a car number plate, on what looked like an official, government, chauffeur-driven Rolls.
At any other time, and with no poppies on the front, that would be a good laugh. But with poppies everywhere, it seemed very peculiar.
Here, alas, is another relevant BBC story.
This reports states that Britain’s armed forces are considered to be below strength for the tasks they have been ordered to perform. Nothing very surprising about that, given that although Blair has been almost indecently keen to deploy troops, sailors and airmen to various theatres of operations, he has not backed this up with a corresponding deployment of resources.
As a minimal statist rather than an anarcho-capitalist libertarian, I accept that providing for the defence of this country is a basic task of the state, but that of course leaves wide open how exactly that task is carried out, by whom, and at what cost. Does it mean things like standing armies, or navies, or large airforces, or anti-missile batteries dotting the coasts? Does it mean an armed citizenry called upon to defend the nation at short notice? Does it mean getting into alliances with other powers to share this role, or focusing entirely on one’s own resources?
It is Friday and we like a good debate ahead of the weekend. Let the comments fly! Try not to get hurt.
The occasions where I am prepared to wade in on the side of a bunch of a civil servants are as rare as hen’s teeth but this one is truly no contest:
THE Ministry of Defence has banned Britain’s biggest commercial news broadcaster from frontline access to the nation’s forces, The Times has learnt.
In an unprecedented move that risks accusations of censorship, the Government has withdrawn co-operation from ITV News in warzones after accusing it of inaccurate and intrusive reports about the fate of wounded soldiers…
“As bad a hatchet-job as I’ve seen in years. Cheap shots all over the place, no context, no reasonable explanation…”
In other words, the standard operating procedure of the MSM. The stink is now so bad that it is finally getting in to some very lofty nostrils.
And the reason? Simple, the USA has banned Vegemite! I expect to see RAAF strikes on US targets by late this evening and Aussie SAS teams boarding US shipping and dumping cargoes of Skippy Peanut Butter into the sea.
More seriously, it is just preposterous that the state interferes in the most picayune aspects of life. Next time I am in the US I intend to smuggle a jar in disguised as Marmite and smear it over the door handles of the first US federal government building to see.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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