{"id":181,"date":"2006-07-26T21:23:59","date_gmt":"2006-07-26T17:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=181"},"modified":"2006-07-26T21:45:32","modified_gmt":"2006-07-26T17:45:32","slug":"modern-battlefield-protocol-stay-observe-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/181\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern Battlefield Protocol: Stay, Observe, Die"},"content":{"rendered":"

This\u00a0battle that is raging in Lebanon is at times taking on the appearance of a parody of warfare.\u00a0 Take for example the bombing of the UN outpost<\/a>, as reported by the BBC:<\/p>\n

\n

UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon contacted Israeli troops 10 times before an Israeli bomb killed four of them, an initial UN report says.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The UN report says each time the UN contacted Israeli forces, they were assured the firing would stop.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This could have been\u00a0lifted straight from the pages of Catch-22<\/em>.\u00a0 Here we have an all-out war between a well equipped and agressive army and a well armed and ruthless militia, and in the middle we have what their commanders are laughably calling peacekeepers<\/em> making observations.<\/p>\n

When in the history of warfare has any neutral bystander deliberately stayed put in no-man’s land when two armies clash in a pitched battle, much less for the purposes of keeping the peace some 12 days after hostilities began?\u00a0 Of all the numerous examples of battlefield idiocy that history keeps for us, this must surely rank up there with the practice of marching slowly in a straight line towards massed cannon.<\/p>\n

And when did it become acceptable practice for a neutral observer to telephone one of the\u00a0battlefield commanders and ask him to cease fire?\u00a0 The Israeli commander who took the request must have thought his UN interlocutor had taken leave of his senses.\u00a0 Can you imagine Wellington at Waterloo receiving a note asking him to lay off the Frenchies for a while because some dickheads in the middle were getting hit with grapeshot?\u00a0 I mean, take this for example:<\/p>\n

\n

A senior Irish soldier working for the UN forces had warned the Israelis six times that their bombardment was endangering the lives of UN staff, Ireland’s foreign ministry said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s no wonder the Irish practice strict neutrality if that’s the kind of soldier they\u00a0are putting into the field.\u00a0 Does he not realise that by keeping his staff in situ during a bombardment he is endangering their lives?\u00a0 Any soldier worth his salt who is not\u00a0involved in the battle would have high-tailed it out of there after seeing his first request go unheeded by the Israelis, and this chap should have done the same.\u00a0 But he kept them there even though he had asked no less than six times and each time his plea had been ignored!\u00a0 Did our hero not get an inkling after the second or third request that the bombardment was going to continue and he really should get his men the fuck out of there?<\/p>\n

Jeez, it’s no wonder\u00a0foreigners’ armies send their best to Sandhurst for training.\u00a0 If standing around\u00a0in the middle of a battlefield waiting to get hit is now considered sensible military practice, I’m\u00a0mighty glad I’m not\u00a0a conscript in their army.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This\u00a0battle that is raging in Lebanon is at times taking on the appearance of a parody of warfare.\u00a0 Take for example the bombing of the UN outpost, as reported by the BBC: UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon contacted Israeli troops … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,40],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}