Occam said:
Yet the terminally ill are forced to live out their last days while enduring insufferable pain, or drugged up beyond comprehension. Something just isn't right there...
You never know how families will react to an Expected Death outside the hospital until it happens. Sometimes they hand you the DNR Order, then a minute later rescind it and tell you to save them. Or, some of them are telling you to save him, and others are telling you to stop.
Peter Worthington on the case:
"Semrau a scapegoat?
Century-old Breaker Morant case echoes current court martial":
http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/peter_worthington/2010/01/21/12562536.html
The court martial of Capt. Robert Semrau begins Monday in Gatineau, a few miles on the Quebec side of Ottawa, on charges that he shot and killed a wounded Taliban insurgent who ambushed his patrol in Afghanistan in 2008.
In some ways, Semrau’s case has disquieting relevance to the movie Breaker Morant — based on the true story of Australian soldiers in the Boer War, scapegoated by the British in the name of political expediency. Anyone interested in this trial and Afghanistan might find it instructional to rent and watch the movie.
The Canadian government has prorogued Parliament in part to delay and perhaps escape the consequences of Canadian soldiers accused of turning over Taliban prisoners to Afghan authorities to be mistreated and tortured. Unlike our troops in Somalia in 1993, there are no allegations that Canadians in Afghanistan have tortured anyone.
Generals say they knew nothing about torture. The PM and defence minister plead ignorance and lack of proof or evidence, dissing a diplomat (Richard Colvin) who insists his warnings of torture (which he didn’t witness) were ignored. Meanwhile, a respected Canadian officer faces court martial, accused of murdering a wounded Taliban insurgent on the battlefield. Capt. Semrau and his military lawyer might check the Breaker Morant movie and relate it to their own situation.
In the movie version (replete with poetic licence), Breaker Morant and two fellow officers were in the Bushveldt Carbineers (BVC) — a counter-insurgency unit formed at the orders of Lord Kitchener to combat Boer (Afrikaner) “commandos” who wore no uniforms and waged a merciless and effective guerrilla war against the British.
The Bushveldt Carbineers took few prisoners and were as rough as Afrikaner commandos. When Morant’s friend, Capt. Hunt, was wounded, captured, tortured to death and his body mutilated, Morant and his unit captured the perpetrators and shot them.
The resulting court martial was more a kangaroo court. Two of the three officers were sentenced to death. The war was ending and Kitchener denied the policy of executing prisoners. Morant and Lt. Handcock were executed by a firing squad in 1902. Outrage at the injustice reverberates in Australia to this day.
While atrocities were rampant on both sides, the Brits generally resented the “colonial” Aussies (“They only salute officers they like,” complained a Brit). There’s little question that the trial was a travesty with political ramifications.
Fast forward to the present: Why is Canada so immersed in worrying about what Afghans do to their Afghan enemies? Afghanistan is not our country. Canadian soldiers are not abusing prisoners. So why the pretence that we care?
As for Capt. Semrau,
he is the first Canadian ever to be charged with murdering an enemy on the battlefield in war. Why now? Is this another ploy to enhance political correctness? Is Semrau being scapegoated? In past wars, such incidents were ignored.
In Canada, it’s traditional that the military is a fall guy when it’s convenient to trim the budget or take pressure off the political process (“It’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ chuck him out, the brute!”).
While most Canadians relish our soldiers being professional and competent, others are embarrassed that we are good at soldiering, and would prefer our soldiers not be so adept at their chosen trade.
In short, Breaker Morant seems alive and well in Canada.
