SAS soldiers resign over war crime ‘witch hunts’

SAS soldiers resign over war crime ‘witch hunts’. By Tom Cotterill in The Telegraph.

[UK] Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers are resigning in significant numbers over fears they will be subjected to “witch hunts” by human rights lawyers. …

Several SAS sources described the losses as significant and a “threat to national security”.

Insiders say the resignations have been driven by outrage over recent war crime investigations into Afghanistan and Syria, which have been described as “witch hunts”.

The treatment of elderly Northern Ireland veterans who served in the SAS has also contributed, insiders say. They are viewed as having been hounded through the courts on vexatious claims, some of which have been described as “ludicrous” by a judge. …

Last month it was revealed that 242 special forces troops, including 120 serving troops, were being hounded by lawyers as part of £1m-a-month human rights inquiries. …

George Simm, a former regimental sergeant major of 22 SAS, … said laws such as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) were being applied to war zones and that the right to life for “armed terrorists and murderers” now outweighed that of the special forces troops sent to stop them from committing atrocities. …

Lt Col Richard Williams, a former commanding officer of 22 SAS, told The Telegraph: “The SAS, like all involved in UK defence today, is being hit with the Labour Party’s unique, toxic, double whammy of lawfare persecution and budget cuts….

In an open letter to Sir Keir, they … warned: “Today every British soldier deployed must consider not only the enemy in front of them but the lawyer behind them. Make no mistake, our closest allies are watching uneasily, and our enemies will be rubbing their hands.” …

Maybe this is the point:

“A democracy that won’t back its warriors won’t long endure.”

The Army has shrunk from more than 100,000 around 2010 to just over 70,000 fully trained soldiers now, its smallest since before the Napoleonic War.

The Navy, once the jewel of Britain’s military, is now at its smallest size in living memory, with only seven frigates and six destroyers in the fleet and two aircraft carriers. Of the six Astute-class nuclear attack submarines, only one is at sea.

Northern Barbarian:

Another battlefield in the ongoing war against men.

When you relentlessly attack the people, ok, let’s just call them men, who fight the wars, drive the ships and trucks, drill the oil, build the stuff, etc., you’ll find you’re losing wars, and can’t have the stuff that didn’t arrive. Plus the lights go out.

Could the UK’s armed forces be overwhelmed by the military age Islamic males now in the UK? Quite possibly, if not now then soon:

SPAIN: Pakistani migrants are rushing to the consulate in Barcelona for their paperwork, as the government plans to regularize 500,000 illegals.

Notice they are all military-aged men, no women or children. They will soon be able to move freely across Europe. This won’t end well.

 

Corey Walker:

As Noah Smith said, Islamism is the future of American liberalism, and it will consume the Democratic Party like it has European left-wing parties.

This sucks, and I’m not looking forward to Democrats defending terrorists.

Commenters:

Islam is the muscle to over throw the government. Leftists think they will be the brains. But they are short on reality based observation. They are pawns. …

They’ve been defending terrorists ever since Obama became president. The main reason I regret voting for him is that he was not willing to say terrorist each time an islamic terrorist committed an obvious terror attack. Even when they literally yelled out that’s what it was. …

Because they’ve made it an unpardonable sin to criticise their party faithful, there is no way for rational centre-left liberals to try to guide them back. It can only go one way. With the end of criticism comes the collapse of reason. …

The issue isn’t the rise of Islamism. It’s the rise of stupidity on both sides. The reality is rational thought is losing to stupidity and has been for the last 15 years.