The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #155997 Message #3676654
Posted By: Teribus
12-Nov-14 - 09:06 AM
Thread Name: No man's land protest
Subject: RE: No man's land protest
GUEST,Rahere
"You obviously didn't live in the UK in the 1950s/60s."
Oh yes I did.
Harry Enfield/Public Service; Captain Mainwaring - Impressed over much by television programmes are you? Perhaps you think that "Oh what a lovely war" and "Blackadder goes forth" are actual historical works - if so then more fool you.
If you were in training at RMA Sandhurst in the 1960s or 1970s then we are of the same vintage although I was not Army. So the people we would have encountered across a broad spectrum of civilian life would have been much of a muchness - I can't remember coming across the types you describe, in fact most WWII veterans tended to be very self-effacing and humble and quiet about their war service
By the way those "old timers" you came across in training that you are so ready to disparage were the ones who taught Frank Kitson his trade in Malaya and in Kenya. They were also the ones that US General David Petraeus's Australian counter-insurgency Guru Lt-Col David Kilcullen studied and learned from. In fact during the "Cold War" those old timers didn't do too badly:
Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, Kuwait, Suez, Aden, Dhofar, Borneo, Northern Ireland, Falklands, etc, etc.
Involved in any of those were you Rahere? Or was your mention of the Duke of Westminster evidence of the fact that you were a TA Occifer? or possibly a sidelined regular?
The Irish Bombing campaign if I remember correctly only really succeeded in killing innocent civilians - the very civilians that they swore they never targeted and were fighting to protect - I'd have told them to F**K Off and protect someone else.
The tenor of this entire posting of yours screams of "chippiness" and "failure" liberally laced with envy - what happened did someone catch you putting the milk in first?
"The military in every democracy have a fine line to walk between guarding the Nation and bullying it."
Where on earth do you get this crap from? The military in the British isles only ever bullied the nation or the people once and that was back in the time of Cromwell - that is why it remains to this day Parliament's Army by the Sovereign's Royal Navy - Since that time the British Army has always experienced a bit of distrust of it on the part of the civilian population - not so the Navy, the Navy protected and promoted trade and made the country money - which was spent ashore.
"who is the nation?"
Today? Good question, perhaps you could tell us, after you have first told us what nation.
"We have eased their grip - but what we must beware of is allowing them to impose it again."
Who is the "WE" Chippy.
"jiddery=pokery??" Jiggery-pokery surely.