Posts Tagged ‘Prince Harry’
A reflection on the Prince’s (Harry) version of a boy’s own adventure in Afghanistan
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 20, 2018
Winter has come and over the last few days leading figures in the War on Terror, unwilling to wait for Season Three of Game of Thrones to hit screens, have been re-watching past episodes to the point that it’s colored their rhetoric.
Between Cameron’s assurances of a war against sundry evil-doers that will last ‘decades’ and French Defence Minister Le Driand’s frankly crackpot calls for a ‘total reconquest’ of Mali, the only question is: how long until we replace drones with halberds?
Joe Glenton published in The Independent on Jan. 22, 2013 under “Prince Harry was positively tame when talking about the brutal reality of war in Afghanistan”
Martial cant
The latest bit of martial cant has come from one dashing Captain Harry Wales; fighter, lover, occasional exhibitionist and warrior-prince of the House of Saxe-Gotha-Coburg.
Having had his first tour of Afghanistan cut short, he has just finished his latest stint, where he has been fighting astride Apache helicopters: the British Army’s multi-million pound engines of destruction.
The poor lad’s been having a hard time, even Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar – a man whose admirable turn of phrase just can’t make up for his human rights records – called him a ‘shameless, drunken jackal’ recently.
In all honesty, and I include a younger version of myself in this, that’s not a completely inaccurate description for young soldiers out on the town: hit the bars and clubs of Colchester on a Saturday night if you doubt me.
We didn’t generally take our disco-dancing shoes on operational tour, and Harry doesn’t kill Afghans while intoxicated as Hekmatyar suggested.
Apaches are too precious and expensive to be flown by drunkards, regardless of their pedigree. In fact, given that we aren’t doing at all well in Afghanistan, even with our potent technology, Apache may be even more of a burden on taxpayers then Harry himself.
While a number of Household Cavalry veterans have informed me that young Mr Wales was okay ‘as officers go’, which is a pretty glowing assessment in soldier-speak, his latest public comments do make him sound for the all the world like a gun-horny adolescent playing a pricey version of Call of Duty.
Mind you that squaddie culture and humour is close to the bone because the tasks soldiers are given are the grimmest imaginable and are often carried out, as in Afghanistan, without a mandate and with little public support.
Brutal humour is often the only kind of armour a soldier can get hold of easily, I recall an expression brought back from Bosnia by older members of my own unit that seems to capture it: If you don’t laugh you’ll only cry.
Captain Wales does come across as fairly casual when he talks about taking lives to save lives, stopping people doing ‘bad stuff’ and ‘taking people out of the game’.
In his defence though, and given his much publicized record as the royal social hand grenade, he may be politically naïve, or it could be that he’s a young man who’s been strapped into an attack helicopter for 20 weeks.
One of the best arguments against war is the effects it has on the people fighting – though clearly Harry is, unlike many of the infantrymen he’s supporting, a soldier by way of choice not economics, I would not wish sleepless nights on anyone, even as a republican.
Just a job
This trivialisation of violence is not new thing; it is part of the process of dehumanisation which is central to modern warfare. It seems to have taken on new forms in the post 9/11 campaigns.
During his short-lived first tour as a tactical air controller – calling in air strikes – Wales and his colleagues watched the bombs hit from their bunker on a live-feed monitor nicknamed ‘Kill TV’.
This notion of a kind of professional distance from the killing you are involved in is also expressed in the US military term for an Afghan, Pakistani or whoever is killed by a drone strike; a kill is referred to humorously – and officially – as a ‘bugsplat’ after a children’s computer game.
Harry’s comments are hardly revelatory and are tame compared to those I’ve heard from soldiers away from the media. To operate against and kill other humans, it helps to view this process as simply a job, however intellectually dishonest that is.
Military training is sophisticated social engineering and wartime experience has the effect of ingraining a certain type of callousness.
While war is a toxic institution, for a few of those who conduct it, particularly privileged young princes who find themselves in the vanguard of US power, it can appear to be a latter-day boy’s own adventure.
The author refused to serve a second tour in Afghanistan on legal and moral grounds, later spending five months in military prison. His book, ‘Soldier Box‘, is published by Verso in May
Note: Prince Harry married lately. He seems more at peace with himself and very well liked in Britain
You need to live in London once: 101 Reasons…
Tempted to move to London when you graduate? We tell you why it’ll be the best decision you ever make…
Deciding what to do with your life is tough. Apparently professional bed tester jobs are few and far between, and very few people are lucky enough to leave university with the small fortune you need to go travelling.
Robin Edds posted on May 13, 2013
101 reasons you need to live in London once
You’ve probably got one of three options. Stay in your uni town and get a job. Move home and get a job. Or follow the yellow brick road (or grey tarmac motorway) to London… and get a job.
It’s big. It’s busy. It’s loud.
It’s without doubt the most fun place for someone in their twenties to spend the last few care-free years of their lives before things like matrimony, mortgages and *whispers* children are thrown into the equation.
It’s not for everyone, but you owe it to yourself to find out.
Here are 101 reasons why everyone needs to live in London once…
1. You feel really smooth when you use your Oyster
2. You WILL bump into people more than you think…
3. …and when you do it feels like the greatest thing ever

4. When you understand the tube map you’ll realise how painfully simple it is
5. Everyone knows someone who lives there
6. Online dating is totally acceptable
7. No matter what you want to do with your career, you can do it in London
8. The Natural History Museum is totally free
9. As is the Science Museum
10. And the British Musem
11. And the Tate
12. And the Tate Modern
13. OK, naming all of them would probably be cheating – but there are a whole world of free galleries and museums
14. There are 4500 pubs & bars
15. Sitting in the park on a summer’s day
16. You don’t have to be nice to strangers
17. There are hundreds of thousands of single people
18. You see famous people all the time

19. You feel really smug when you go back home and tell your friends about London life
20. It’s one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world
21. Whatever type of food you want, you’ll find it
22. Your commute will take you past some of the most famous landmarks in the world
23. It rains a lot less than it does in the north
24. The view from Waterloo bridge looking east
25. The view from Waterloo bridge looking west
26. Drinking by the Thames
27. It’s more expensive, but you’ll earn more there than anywhere else
28. Topshop on Oxford Street
29. Westfield Stratford is the largest urban shopping centre in the EU
30. The Olympics showed that all Londoners can be nice when they want to be
31. Miss the countryside? There are urban farms
32. Once you know you way around, there is no greater feeling than a tourist asking you for directions and you actually knowing the answer
33. The fancy double doors on the Jubilee Line

34. So many Markets
35. London gets less rain per year than anywhere else in the UK – just 700mm, compared to 1200mm in Cardiff
36. People who live in London live 5 years longer than the national average
37. Every band who tours plays in London
38. You can just hop on a train to Paris when you get bored
39. It’s home to some of the most famous sporting venues in the world – Wembley, Twickenham, Lords, Wimbledon…
40. Home is always just a few hours away
41. You can never be bored with TimeOut telling you what to do
42. Nightbuses. You can always get home thanks to nightbuses
43. The top deck on nightbuses: the party continues
44. Stunning views from The Shard, The London Eye and Primrose Hill
45. EVERYONE goes for drinks after work
46. You can always drink without worrying about how you’re going to get home. NO ONE drives
47. Want to still feel like a student? Move to Clapham
48. Infernos

49. When it rains it never lasts that long
50. Running along the river makes running much less depressing
51. When you watch the Apprentice you’ll be able to recognise everywhere they go
52. If leaving uni is making you feel old, moving to London will make you feel young again
53. There are a seemingly endless number of high-end burger restaurants
54. Getting angry at tourists who are getting in your way is weirdly liberating
55. Boris
56. Curries on Brick Lane
57. Laughing at the word ‘Cockfosters‘
58. In depth conversations with taxi drivers
59. Warehouse parties where no one looks twice if you enter wearing a horse’s head
60. You’re always going to meet someone who is stranger than you
61. Free gigs – up and coming bands that can either be sh*t or become mega superstars
62. Sample sales
63. Vintage markets
64. Boris bikes

65. There are endless exercise fads for people who hate the gym – e.g. sober disco dancing
66. It’s a great place to be single
67. It’s a great place to be in a relationship
68. Musicals
69. Fringe theatre/ performance art: where else can you see a woman crack an egg using her lady parts? OK, maybe Bangkok.
70. When you live here, you can do all the tourist things during off-peak times
71. Retrace favourite film character’s steps: Notting Hill, 28 Days Later, Harry Potter…
72. Christmas markets the size of your uni town
73. Top hairdressing schools = free hair cuts galore
74. Book exchanges = free books
75. People back home will think you’re really tough for living in London
76. Museum Lates – you can get drunk AND learn
77. Zoo Lates – you can get drunk AND look at animals

78. You can watch a play at the Globe for a fiver
79. There’s always a house party
80. There’s always an after party
81. There’s always a new street, a new park , a new pub to discover
82. Love hipsters? East London is your Mecca
83. Hate hipsters? Move to South London. They’re too scared to cross the river
84. When friends visit you, feel really smug about how scared they are
85. The Queen lives here
86. You’ll almost certainly bump into Prince Harry on a night out
87. When you leave work, your town is coming alive not winding down
88. There are outdoor swimming pools all over the city
89. 14.5 million tourists visited London in 2010, ranking London the most visited of all European cities. They can’t all be wrong
90. Wherever you go on holiday it will feel cheap by comparison
91. We have buildings called things like the Gherkin, the Shard, the Cheesegrater and the Walkie Talkie
92. The circle line pub crawl has 27 pubs
93. We throw a great party…

94. You’ll fall in love on the tube around 17 times a day
95. Everyone passes through London at some point, so you don’t have to visit anyone
96. You can go out on any night of the week
97. In the summer it’s always hotter in London than anywhere else in the country
98. THERE IS GOING TO BE A CAT CAFE
99. There are more hot people here than anywhere else
100. There are a LOT of airports if you need to get away
101. studentbeans.com is based here – feel free to drop by and say hello, or Like us on Facebook and we’ll say hello to you with more lovely articles like this!