GI Joe

Is it only me...but are we a nation of men or mice?

No doubt like you would have been appalled by the story of one of Uncle Sam’s finest who ran amok with his gun in the badlands of Afghanistan killing 16 innocent Afghan women and children. Their only crime, I think, though in that country you can never be too sure, was to be Afghan and in the wrong place at the wrong time just as GI Joe was letting rip with his Tommy Gun.

While not making any excuses, I suppose that these things happen in time of war, and no matter how well trained our fighting folk might be, war can do strange things to even the most resilient man or woman wearing a uniform and carrying a gun when most of us just carry a briefcase or Radley.

But you should be equally appalled that Uncle Sam refused to hand over GI Joe to the Afghans and to allow the Afghan courts to try him for this heinous crime. There is no excuse for this. Can you just imagine what would have happened if some Afghan or anyone else for that matter had even bruised someone carrying a US passport? Do you think Mr Obama would allow a third party, i.e. a non US court, to try the perpetrators? No way, Jose.

There is also every chance that should a US citizen break as much as a nail while abroad, anyone within touching distance of the broken nail would not just be tried in the Land of the Free but first would be taken on a tour of third world prisons and experience the delights of water boarding.

Now compare the actions of Uncle Sam whisking an alleged mass murderer back home, with the cases of Chris Tappin and Richard O’Dwyer. These are two Brits alleged to have broken US law on relatively minor offences, who were recently frogmarched out of the country manacled and shackled by US law enforcement officers to face the might of the US legal system. Not one shred of evidence has been placed before a UK court. Not one UK law has been broken. Not one piece of information has been provided to show that the person might have committed the offence. For unlike us, the Yanks are not required to do this. They protect their citizens.

It might just be me but the balance of power here is all wrong and what is sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander.

I know Mr Tony thought he was Dubya’s lackey and that is why such an inequitable and unbalanced law was drafted and accepted by our legislators but Bush and Blair are now footnotes in the history books. Now it’s time for us to decide if we are mice or men and for us to protect and look after our citizens as well as the Yanks look after theirs. It is time for us to leverage our Special Relationship with them, and what a trite phase that is, and for us to show that we are men not mice nor Mr Obama’s lackeys.

Send us back Tappin and O’Dywer until you can prove in our courts that they have done wrong. And it would be nice if GI Joe was sent back to be dealt with by the Afghans.

As someone else one said ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal....’ Oh yes it was the framers of the American Declaration of Independence. I have checked but at no point did they claim that Yanks were more equal or superior and everyone else inferior with lesser rights.

It is time for those on the other side of the Pond to remember that.

Have a great week.

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Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.