Soldiers' families suing the UK government? Wow!
 

BBC News - Iraq damages cases: Supreme Court rules families can sue
I'm not sure how I feel about this. As an Irish person I have no direct stake in this action or decision, but I'd say if this sets a precedents families of soliders killed in combat all over the world are going to be taking cases. Surely a landmark ruling? What do yaz think?

It comes under the UK's obsession with the "Duty of Care" law and in this respect it's aimed at the military not providing soldiers with adequately armoured vehicles. Whilst I see the validity of the debate, the whole thing seems quite bizarre considering those in question are based in a warzone.

Yeah that's what I thought. I mean, surely this is literally "something you sign up for"? Nobody ever said "Join the army and fight in a foreign land but you won't be hurt?" I'm all for helping the families but it just seems like stretching it a little. I really don't know, but I imagine as I say once that genie is out of the bottle...

Wars have historically been won or lost due to the ability of its soldiers and generals, but modern warfare has a far greater emphasis on military equipment than probably ever before, so today you can literally out blast your opponent depending on the circumstances of the terrain etc and generally win.

So if we now have soldiers' families wanting to sue the military because of faulty equipment where does it end. I mean if somebody's tank blows up in a warzone who's to blame, who's to blame if somebody's parachute doesn't open, who's to blame if somebody's vehicle goes over a mine and even more importantly those that die from friendly fire?

When you therefore start adding "Duty of Care" into all this, the whole thing becomes a farce and makes you realize that these troops should've stayed at home in the first place.

Perhaps the sanest words I have heard this year.

Something like this isn't that easy to quantify though. Sure, our soldiers basically sign their lives away when they join up but at the same time they expect the military to provide them with the resources and dedication required to ensure the maximum possiblity of their survival in warzones. If negligence from higher command, insufficient supplies or low quality equipment cause a soldier's death then I'm fully behind his family being able to demand compensation for it.

Yeah, I can sympathise with the families of the soldiers killed, my brother was in the army for something like 13 years and was in the first Gulf War, he said he was glad it went through.

Still I was actually shocked it was passed. You can't put a price on human life but even so what do the troops and their families expect? These soldiers are in an active warzone and have been since they arrived, only the warzone became less predictable and more dangerous after Sadam fell and we claimed "victory." The MOD and the Government are complete and utter bastards, that much I can agree with, I'm just not so sure that "if I travelled in car A instead of B I would still be alive and dandy" is justifiable in such situations. It will set an interesting precedent for the future in any case.

But mistakes happen in war. That's just reality. If commanders are caught up with worrying about getting the army sued, then they will basically be hamstrung and who knows how many soldiers might die while they're paralyzed by indecision over questions of liability? Within reason of course, but in general, if you signed your life away to the military, making a caveat that this only applies so long as it can't be proved in a court of law that your death was caused by garden variety bungling is unreasonable.

If this doesn't appeal to you, then don't join the military and don't go around saying that, "Someone needs to do something" everytime something terrible happens in the world (i.e. Syria, Lybia, Mali, etc). Not that that applies to you, but it's just a pet peeve of mine.

Why are you so defensive? First world nation, has excellent military technology, uses force.....but they shouldn't be held responsible for their **** ups? Why are you treating a materialistic, morally bankrupt nation like it's a ****ing person?

Defensive? You're the one who changed her post after basically accusing me of being a neo-con.

Within reason, sure. But, if you signed up for the military, you literally signed your life away. People dying, even through human error, is sort of expected.

What does that even mean? And you're acting like I'm defending a country. I've already stated that I have no particular love for this country. I don't know if you've forgotten that, or just ignored it because it interfered with your self-righteous ranting.

And calling this country morally bankrupt is silly. We're doing nothing that any other nation with half a chance wouldn't do themselves. When one country has strength, it uses it to exploit weaker nations. Pretty? No. Fair? No. Reality? Yes. So implying that this country is somehow particularly bad is silly. We're as self-serving and pragmatic as any other country. You might as well just say that our genes are wrong, or the fluoride in the water is rotting our moral centers away.

You are mixing up two different things though. Sure, people may die through human error as far as like friendly fire and things of that nature but dying over shitty equipment is the fucking worse. Just because you signed your life away doesn't mean that you should be given shit gear and thrown to the wolves. I'm not saying it has to be top of the line gear because the government is cheap and likes to cut costs but certain things shouldn't be better than the bare minimum if it can protect a life. They end up just paying out more money anyways with life insurance to the family members.

As much as I disagree with the soldiers being there in the first place, I do think that once they're there the government should be responsible for their well-being as much as possible and if that involves having their equipment maintained to the highest standards then so be it. I think that what The Batlord is saying and I also agree with, is that it's actually nigh on impossible at times though to monitor these things in a warzone and even harder to maintain certain standards in a warzone as well. Therefore whilst I agree with the principal of soldier protection, the reality of the warzone actually makes it much harder to control.

To a degree when you sign up to the army you are signing your life away, as the government has carte blanche to send to you anywhere they see fit, after all the soldier has signed up for it willingly and knows what he's going to face.

Who says we're talking about faulty equipment? We're talking about equipment that was designed to do a specific thing. We're not talking about tanks (except for one case of a Challenger tank), we're talking about the Snatch Land Rover...

http://www.warwheels.net/images/Land...MITH%20(4).JPG


It doesn't need to be negligence for that thing to be destroyed by an IUD. It's a glorified Jeep. It's not meant to stand up to an atom bomb. It looks like it's meant to transport people and be fast. That's it.

The faulty equipment that I was talking about is in regards to a different story that could possibly be considered within the guidelines of this same ruling.

Well, I guess that would depend. It's sort of unreasonable to expect that every piece of equipment in the military is gonna be up to spec. If there's evidence that the military was actively cutting corners and putting soldier's lives in danger though, then yeah, they should be liable for that.

This isn't about the equipment the soldiers were using; it's about the British public being indecisive. You can't constantly support cutting military spending for decades on end and then act surprised when it turns out the equipment isn't state of the art - at least with any measure of credibility.

http://www.heritage.org/static/repor...C2E9BCBFCB.jpg

Well of course it's been cut, Britain isn't a superpower anymore.
They had an empire to look after back then, now they don't.

I think he's pointing out that Britain can't have its cake and eat it too. If you wanna cut back on military spending, don't be surprised when your military suffers as a result. Not that I think Britain should raise its military spending, but consequences are consequences. Maybe this just goes to show that Britain shouldn't jump every time America decides to invade some country or another.

Any wars that Britain gets into is because of little man syndrome in Whitehall, these old farts who can't handle the fact Britian isn't as important as it used to be.
Britain doesn't need a big army, It doesn't need to be getting mixed up in every war around the globe (Apart from Argentina, that's personal). And it certainly doesn't need to fork out £100bn on Trident.

Not really. There are a few dominate political ideas in Britain;

(1) A general belief in equality which extends beyond political boundaries (e.g., an immigrant is just as British as ______ )
(2) A strong feeling that the government can and should intervene to prevent excessive inequality (whatever that is)
(3) A general feeling that the plight of the poor is largely the fault of the rich, not the poor themselves

Is it really very difficult to see how this manifests itself in an interventionist foreign policy? If the general dialogue in Britain is one that the Government is both obligated to and capable of bringing about greater equality, that the political divisions which separate people are (or should be) meaningless, and that the Top 1% is responsible for the problems of the Bottom 50%, then how can you not have lapses into neo-liberal "humanitarian interventions"?

edit: seriously, I'd love to hear how you can square the above with a position that's against, say, nation building in Aghanistan?

This is not strictly true. Most immigrants here are free to maintain their own culture, identity and language and it's up to them as to how far they immerse themselves into British culture. They are seen as British subjects and treated as such and given the same benefits as those born here. It's largely upto the immigrant whether they see themselves as British or not and not the politicians really.

The UK is a welfare state and welfare states are like so. I see no reason why the UK should ever adopt a strict 'laissez-faire' belief in such matters.

This is only a Socialist viewpoint and not held by the majority here.

Now you're agreeing with Urban's 'little man mentality in Whitehall' because it's the politicians in Whitehall that decide on these interventionist policies and those that follow these viewpoints. The average Brit doesn't really care what goes on on the other side of the world, but does care about its military once there.

You've made this final paragraph far more complicated than it should be, but as I've stated the general belief apart from the politicians and old school traditionalists, is one that the average Brit has no real interest in most external affairs and only really has an interest in greater equality at home.

The humanitarian interventions that you speak of, are really the sphere of the UN, but I'll admit that is a difficult subject to nail down.

I for one, see most of these countries as far from democracy and nation building (as we see it here in the west) about as far as you can get. I see no point in promoting the concept of democracy for example in Afghanistan etc in states that have no real idea of the concept in the first place.

Truer words...I get tired of the conservative traditionalist v hippy pussio arguments on Trident. It's all down to a British Government never having the balls to kick the habit. Too obsessed with clinging on to some sense of former glory and maintaining that seat on the security council. Balls to it all, cut trident and use the money to import hotties from the continent using Ali G's immigration policy and we'll all be happy scandinavians, just like we were meant to be. Bloody Alfred the Great.

If the mods want to split this question into another thread then feel free, but I'm far too lazy.

What exactly is the point of the Security Council anyway, besides giving the major powers unfair control of the UN? And why should France, among others, be on it? Since when has France been anything but a middling power after WWII?

They were largely a waste of space in WWII as well, caved in when the krauts went around the Maginot Line. Then they formed Vichy France in the south thinking the Nazis were going to win and got that wrong as well.

I guess everyone just felt too bad to tell the French, "Hey, France, go kick rocks. The rest of us powerful countries need to discuss things."

I completely agree. I've also heard they're sending jeeps out that aren't armoured as heavily as they say they are. Which is completely wrong. I also do not know if this is fact or not but I wouldn't be surprised.

It's all good and well saying that they knew the risks when they were signing up but unfortunately it is not as simple as that. I dont know what its like where you stay but quite a large amount of people here sign up to the army because they have no other options and have a family to support and with such little job opportunities the army is an excellent wage at the end of every month.

Hell I've even considered joining up because I've been so broke.

Well the European Axis powers were really only defeated thanks to the US and the Soviet Union, with the UK just hanging in there to help out.

To be fair though, before the conflict they were the biggest army in Western Europe and had done themselves proud in WWI, but they were caught totally unawares when they were struck by the German 'Blitzkrieg'.

Joining the army is a great, as long as you have the option not to get into any nasty conflicts.

It's a jeep. It's not supposed to be an armored vehicle. It's designed to transport people from place to place quickly, something that would be undermined by extra armor. The idea that a jeep should be some kind of fortress is an idea that has been planted in people's minds by the same fear-mongering media that has inflamed Islamaphobia.


It's the military. If you don't want to die in some ****hole, then don't join the military. I know that plenty of people do it for money reasons, but the military doesn't exist to subsidize your education. It exists to kill people. If you take the money and then complain about the risks, then it's sort of a case of too-damn-bad.

Even by the end of World War 2 us Brits and the French were still convinced that we had a place on the world power stage. The point where everyone finally opened our eyes and realised that we were America's bitches for life is generally accepted to be the Suez Crisis and by then we'd already secured places on the Security Council and built up our nuclear programmes for good. Although even by modern standards I'm not sure if the Security Council would change its format that much. If you're going by standards of how badly a country could mess up another country the UK and France would probably still deserve spots on it.

This. I agree that too many people seem to think the military is an easy/the only option to get out of whatver ****hole they're in, but if you do that then you have to realise that the possibility of dying or at best being badly wounded, either physically or emotionally, is something that comes with the turf. It's sort of like saying I want to do this for the benefits but I don't accept the consequences. You can't have it both ways.

I think it was just that post-war they were seen as a vital player on the continent, nobody wanted yet another war with Germany and everyone knew -esp Britain and the USSR that France would be the "best" buffer. They could also keep an eye on the pesky fascist/marxist movements for the rest of the council, especially in Italy and Spain. Although if Roosevelt had lived a little longer who knows? Maybe us and the french would have been cast off.

?

The U.N. wasn't created to be "fair" and it certainly wasn't supposed to be a Democracy. This is why H.G. Wells was among those who helped draft the founding documents of the organization.