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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Mon. 03/24/03 08:54:48 PM
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Battlefield Speech by Col. Collins Nobility flowers in the desert where it is least expected, and most needed. The address given by Lt. Col. Tim Collins to the 800 men of the First Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment, Mar. 19. + + + + + The enemy should be in no doubt that we are his Nemesis and that we are bringing about his rightful destruction. There are many regional commanders who have stains on their souls and they are stoking the fires of Hell for Saddam. As they die they will know their deeds have brought them to this place. Show them no pity. But those who do not wish to go on that journey, we will not send. As for the others, I expect you to rock their world. We go to liberate, not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people, and the only flag that will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Don't treat them as refugees, for they are in their own country. I know men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts. They live with the mark of Cain upon them. If someone surrenders to you, then remember they have that right in international law, and ensure that one day they go home to their family. The ones who wish to fight, well, we aim to please. If there are casualties of war, then remember, when they woke up and got dressed in the morning they did not plan to die this day. Allow them dignity in death. Bury them properly, and mark their graves. You will be shunned unless your conduct is of the highest, for your deeds will follow you down history. Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood, and the birth of Abraham. Tread lightly there. You will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people than the Iraqis. You will be embarrassed by their hospitality, even though they have nothing... There may be people among us who will not see the end of this campaign. We will put them in their sleeping bags and send them back. There will be no time for sorrow. Let's leave Iraq a better place for us having been there. Our business now, is north. + + + + + (Source.) Sarah Oliver reported from "Fort Blair Mayne on the Iraqi border" in The London Telegraph, Mar. 20: .... In an emotionally charged rallying address that reduced many of Britain's toughest infantry troops to tears, the CO told his men he would tolerate neither cowardice nor a killing spree but that they should show no mercy to forces who remained loyal to Saddam Hussein. He also declared that any Iraqi troops who declared a truce in the face of the advancing Allies would be embraced by the coalition and permitted to fight for regime change in their own nation.... Adam Nicolson penned a tribute to the colonel's words, in the same publication, Mar. 25: I didn't expect to be moved by anything an allied commander said to his troops on going into battle against the Iraqis. Nothing in the months and years of the build-up to this war has been remotely moving. The political arguments both for and against it have, thankfully, been cold enough. Would war be an effective thing to do? Are the costs, risks and benefits truly understood? Is American domestic policy driving a foreign adventure? Is this risk real? And does it have to be addressed now? Those questions, properly and prosaically, have confronted the current situation. Now, though, someone has stepped beyond that. The speech made last week by Lt Col Tim Collins to the 800 men of the 1st Bn Royal Irish Regiment, whom he leads in southern Iraq, spoke about this war in a way that addressed the pain, pity and purpose of war itself. And in that effortless universalising of one of the root human experiences, I found his speech extraordinarly moving, as if someone for the first time had managed to put into words the life-and-death realities of this moment.... Ben MacIntyre, too, has praised the speech, in the London Times, Mar. 22: .... The words of Colonel Collins will long survive this war, for in their raw clarity, they capture its essence, and a military sensibility that is peculiar to our time. In sharp contrast to the gusts of war rhetoric from politicians we have been hearing for the past month, Collins spoke of history, family, respect, dignity, and the individual moral choice between killing justly, and just killing. Saddam may merit the fires of Hell, but Collins’s men will also remember the ordinary man who got dressed this morning in tattered Iraqi uniform, with a culture older than ours.... And what, Faithful Reader, does the other side of the debate have to offer? When they can get past "Bush = Hitler", they usually wind up parroting Marxoid lingo like "hegemony" and "imperialism". Assuming, of course, that they can actually get beyond puke and poop. [Follow-up: A Colonel's Address.] Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 03/24/03 08:54:48 PM |
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