They Hate Sergeant Blackman

          These wonderful people are the only reason that Sgt Blackman's case is being reviewed

A lot about the Sergeant Blackman case is seemingly inexplicable:

Why did the Army prevent serving officers from giving vital mitigating evidence?

Why was no mention made in Blackman’s trial of the overwhelming extenuating circumstances?

How could the Judge Advocate General himself have made such a basic error as to not even consider a verdict of manslaughter?

Why did the seven Navy and Marines officers salute a disgraced ex-marine, perjurer, and convicted murderer?

Why did they later send their apologies for the length of his sentence?

Why was ‘very considerable pressure’ put on the members of the court martial to bring the ‘right’ verdict?

And why was the prosecution run by such a high-flying QC?

And why did the Royal Marines abandon their own man to be defended by a pathetic shower of bargain-basement legal aid incompetents?

Any one of these facts casts doubt on the fairness of the judicial process that doomed Sgt Blackman. But together they are utterly damning and point to just one conclusion. A good man that had loyally served his country and the Royal Marines, a man that had faced countless privations, dangers and unbearable stress was betrayed by those who owed him the most.

By the senior officers who failed in their sacred duty to reciprocate his loyalty to them.

By the politicians who had sent him to fight their war with inadequate resources and support and then kept silent or connived in the injustice of his court martial.

By the Marine and Navy officers who cravenly submitted to the ‘very considerable pressure’ to reach the ‘right’ verdict.

And last but definitely not least by the very representative of blindfolded-justice herself, chief kangaroo, Jeff Blackett, the Judge Advocate General who presided over the vicious farce that was Sgt Blackman’s court martial.

Why?

First off, very senior arses had to be covered. Important officers, decorated, lionised and promoted for their service in Afghanistan, had in fact screwed up. To admit that Sgt Blackman’s unit had been given combat tasks far beyond the possibilities of their numbers and that they had been abandoned in an impossible position was too embarrassing and damaging; much better by far to betray their sacred duty and throw one of their own to the wolves.

Then as Al Blackman himself says there was the desire “to show the world how politically correct we are”. And how better to do that than to treat the killing of a Taliban enemy (or the shooting of an enemy corpse) in a war-zone the same as a murder in a British street. ‘Murder is murder’ as the chief of the British Armed Forces, Staff General Sir Nicholas Houghton pompously put it when people called for leniency for Blackman.

But political correctness is always a lie. Sometimes it’s motivated by an almost harmless desire to avoid hurting somebody’s feelings. In this case, though, it’s a lie that destroyed a man’s life. Pretending that the shooting of a dead or an almost dead enemy in the context of Sgt Blackman’s situation in Helmand province is the same as the premeditated murder of a stranger on a London street is a lie. It’s an evil lie and a disgusting betrayal because Sir Nicholas Houghton must know that it’s an evil lie.

And yet that is not sufficient to explain the treatment of Sgt Blackman.

There has to be another motivating factor to explain why so many connived in this disgusting injustice. And my view is that they did it because they didn’t think it was a disgusting injustice. And they didn’t think it was a disgusting injustice because as caring, multicultural liberals they hate Sgt Blackman and everything he stands for.

What else could explain what they did?

What else could explain what they are doing to so many hundreds of our soldiers that served so loyally in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan?


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