On the one hand, his unit is deploying and he wants to be with his men. Duty calls, and he understandably doesn’t want to be a toffee-nosed git and receive special kid-glove treatment. On the other hand, the insurgents are going to be looking for him and may even step up attacks on all British troops in the hopes of bagging him, so his presence could endanger others.
I think he should go, and do his job as best he can. What do you think?
I don’t understand why they allowed him to be (or why he chose to be) a tank commander in the first place, it doesn’t seem like this problem was unforseeable by any means. Sending him to Iraq puts not only himself, but also other soilders in his unit at future risk and is also no doubt an extra headache for the various commanding officers in that country, who probably aren’t experiencing a shortage of things to worry about.
If he wanted to serve in the military, it seems easy enough to limit him to the airforce or navy (like his uncle), where he can serve without being an obvious target rolling around the streets of Basra or being limited to a desk job to keep him out of harms way.
That said, they did agree to allow him to serve in his current capacity, and now that he’s gone through the training and everything, it seems a little late to decide that he won’t actually be allowed to do anything. Mind as well send him out and hope he keeps his head down in that tank.
every terrorist in Iraq will be looking for the honor of killing prince harry-the imams are probably promising and EXTRA load of virgins to whomever can blow himself up 9taking harry with him). As said, this makes his unit a special target too-harry should serve somewhere else-not where his death could provide a propaganda victory.
Thing is, if Harry really is a lightning rod that provokes extra attacks, well, what’s so bad about that? The insurgents were going to be attacking someone somewhere, the only difference now is that they’re choosing someone else somewhere else. If the insurgents spend extra effort targeting specific military units that’s GOOD, because military units can fight back. Better them plotting how to take out Harry than blowing up funerals and marketplaces.
And Harry is the spare, not the heir. And the whole point of an aristocracy is that they go off on adventures whacking the heads off of evildoers, or getting their own heads whacked off. Er, chopped off. Anyway, Harry’s no more indispensible than any other young man. If they didn’t want him going to Iraq they should have thought of that before they sent troops to Iraq. Harry is a dispensible person. The fact that he’s third in line for the throne is irrelevant, because the minute Harry gets blown up the guy who’s now fourth in line moves up to third in line. “The third in line is dead! Long live the third in line!”
Blah blah blah virgins blah blah blah bad moozlims. Is this really useful insight?
What conceivable benefit is there to any given insurgent force to killing Harry? It might likely piss the British off and make them actually more supportive of the war, when the primary insurgent intent (with regards to foreign troops) is to make them leave.
Or it might likely create a public backlash against the government to pull out quicker. Given the choice between the government falling and abandoning Iraq, I believe the Brits will protect their political power at home, and let the Yanks deal with the Mess O’ Potamia.
If you’re going to enlist and train these people. then they should be deployed like anyone else. Otherwise, just let them be parade officers, and let the thing be honestly fake. There is a long tradition of the royals actually serving.
Whatever the hell anyone else thinks, as long as Harry is able, the choice is his. He should be able to make the same choices that every other British citizen should expect to make.
That’s true, but he enlisted. At that point, he’s under orders, like everyone else in service. I don’t see the others getting any options, and, to his credit, I don’t see him asking for any.
Sure, but the consequences are disproportionately likely to fall on other people, i.e., the soldiers who will be incidentally targeted by every insurgent in the area on the off chance that one of them might be the prince. I don’t suppose anyone has asked for their (honest) opinions on the matter, or whether the Windsors intend to do anything for the families of the soldiers who will quite likely be killed or maimed as a result of Harry’s adolescent-existential showboating.
As has already been mentioned - this is something that should have been addressed when he first enlisted. It wasn’t, and now things are where they are.
I don’t think Prince Harry is “showboating” any more than one of our own troops.
LilShieste
Sure, it would have been nice if somebody in charge of this disaster had asked some difficult hypothetical questions several years ago. But that didn’t happen. And sadly, that prevents us from asking such questions now, when those questions are no longer hypothetical. Or something like that.
I’m tempted to ask how many many billionaires with paprarazzi and parental issues happen to be junior officers in the U.S. military, but that would be uncouth.
No, he isn’t. British royalty don’t do that anymore. Rather a pity, in a way. Given his name, I can’t help thrilling to the image of Prince Harry rallying his unit with, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends! Once more!” or “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers!”
Well, I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t “ask such questions now” - in fact, we should, so we can better prepare for when this happens again in the future. I think we’re past the point of offering feasible objections for this situation, though.
It’d be a strawman, too. His high social status doesn’t automatically deem everything he does as “showboating”, does it?
Besides - not that it matters - I don’t remember hearing a lot of people claiming that Pat Tillman was showboating his military service.
LilShieste
The spare heir quite often sees combat. Harry’s uncle Andrew was a helicopter pilot during the Falklands conflict, and King George VI (who at the time was the spare) served as a turret officer during the Battle of Jutland. The only difference with Harry is that he, being in the Army, is going to be a tad more readily identifiable.
I think that after last month’s hostage fiasco, the British military would be wise to make some sort of gesture showing the world that they still have a bit of their old panache. Sending Harry to the front is both brave enough and stupid enough to fill the bill.
Harry should go and be allowed to do what he was trained for.
As third in line to the throne in all likelihood he’ll never sit on it.
Left to his own devices he has a habit of getting trolleyed and living up to the “Hooray Henry” stereotype.
If this guy is never required to take responsibility over anything in his life he’ll carry on down the same road. Joining a long line of royal lushes who never had the responsibility for the throne but had the money all the same.
Harry joined the Army to fight for his country when it was at war. That is a pretty impressive move by someone who could have just partied his life away.
As for the danger to his fellow troops.
Harry would be commanding 4 AFVs on patrol or recce.
If the insurgents choose to go for Harry and his tank squad then that would actually make the average infantry man on patrol safer.
All ambushes would be directed at tracked vehicals which by there very nature are built like brick out houses.
What would these “concerned troops” prefer, an IED detonating next to there land rover as has been going on since deployment. Or the aggression turned against the tracked vehicals where survivablitity is a 10 fold increase.
I don’t accept the soldiers view that Harry should be responsible for an increase threat to his unit. It’s a bloody tank patrol.
If the insurgents get hold of a few T-72s then ‘maybe’ that has credence.
