New evidence that the state of after-service care for military personnel is extremely poor is damning. But hardly a surprise.
The numbers involved are shocking, with 13,000 discharged for injuries ranging from amputations to joint and ligament damage.
It's depressing reading and the future for what has been rather over-dramatically called the “Warrior Generation” of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans looks bleak.
Needless to say many will return to Civvy Street at the bottom end of a broken economy and will find themselves relying on an NHS which, despite being a proud legacy of the demands of returning WW2 veterans, is being destroyed in detail.
To add to that I have spent the last few days seeing the faces of several young men I knew who lost their lives in Afghanistan reproduced across major news outlets to mark the withdrawal from Camp Bastion.
The clamouring which has accompanied the new revelations and the Afghan withdrawal and, indeed, Remembrance, says at least as much as the reports themselves.
Militaristic nationalism has been on the rise here for some time as part of a conscious top down effort. The decision to try and re-popularise the military was one taken by the last Labour government. These and other factors appear to have combined into a perfect tornado of gung ho jibber-jabber, the idiot power of which threatens to engulf us.
Few commentators on the new after care scandal have overcome to the urge to make like a long-range patriot and squawk the lame old buzzwords used to garnish Willfred Owen's Old Lie: “Sacrifice”, they say, “courage, bravery, service, and heroism!”. Naturally the politicians among them also saw fit to blame on the other side. Yet again the veteran serves as both football and punch-bag.
I've heard all this waffle so many times that I consider myself a leading, if amateur, jingologist. I feel qualified to tell you that all this misty-eyed war-talk is smoke and mirrors, or to use army parlance, bullshit.
I know now, as countless old soldiers have before me, that there are only three times politicians truly love a soldier. When the war is on or barely over, in the run up to elections and once a year for ten minutes or so around Remembrance Sunday. It was ever thus. And every one of those godforsaken boxes is ticked now.
Read more:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/just-like-after-the-great-war-britain-is-celebrating-the-soldiers-who-died-and-neglecting-those-who-survived-9826243.html
