PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Well done to UK senior officers!
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Old 23rd Mar 2003, 22:06
  #13 (permalink)  
Jackonicko
 
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Just behind the back of beyond....
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G Khan,

I quite understand what goes on. You seem not to. Blood curdling screams like those of the Highlanders and Gurkhas (with the specific purpose of undermining enemy morale) as you charge are one thing while whoops of triumph (especially when you know there's a news camera rolling) as you destroy an enemy target some distance away are quite another. Yes they are entirely natural, and yes they are entirely understandable, but so is shooting prisoners in revenge after a battle. Our natural and understandable instincts are perhaps sometimes best repressed.

There is a particular imperative for the military to act appropriately in the media-covered total wars which we now undertake, in which civilian support is so vital. Coalition warfare makes things even more complex, since I suspect that public reaction to the footage in question would be very different in the US and in the UK.

And it's interesting that US troops and personnel seem so prone to such displays of exhuberance and hyped up emotion when UK forces seem to react more calmly. Listening to the difference between US and RAF RT in action over the Balkans showed some very stark differences, and made me wonder if these differences contributed to what made the recent F-16/Canadian blue on blue more likely.
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