The media has had the unfortunate task over the past nine years of reporting death after death. International conflict has taken many lives during of the so called "fight against terror" and though we hear of soldiers being flown back to Woolton Basset, their coffins draped in the Union Flag, we rarely hear of the injured. The hero's who fight for our country, in a war born from an alliance to America and George W Bush.
The UK currently have 9,500 troops "fighting the war against terror" in Afghanistan. A war which was waged by an obsolete government. Neither the US nor the UK can boast a Republican or Labour government any more, so surely it is time to bring the fighting to an end?
Launched in response to 9/11, it was said that the aim of the invasion was to find Osama bin Laden, and yet today we are still fighting for this; to find the man who destroyed the World Trade Centre and killed thousands.
After Saddam Hussein was captured and hanged in 2006, it sparked a new lease of life in the fight against terror. It seemed then that the possibility of capturing bin Laden drove the government to push our troops harder with little to show for it four years on.
Now, I've always understood that there are various reasons for our presence in Afghanistan, but I am questioning the rationality of it all today. There are several aspects keeping troops in the country, and many argue that withdrawing troops now will mean in excess of 3
00 British soldiers who've lost their lives in the past nine years will have died in vein. But the question I ask these people is; how long to we let the killing continue before we realise that there are no winners in war? Both sides in any conflict suffer losses, so at the end of the day it isn't who won the most, it's who lost the least. And the only way to do this is to put an end to the insanity.
As of 2009, 14,000 British soldiers had been injured in the line of duty in Afghanistan. Today, 18-year-old Tom Coleridge from Warrington is being flown back to Selly Oak hospital in Birmingham after he was shot in the abdomen causing serious injury to his liver,
kidney and possibly his spine.
I find myself asking the question 'why are we not hearing of the brave men and women who are fighting in an archaic war and being injured doing so?' It isn't right that we only hear of the fallen, many lives have been catastrophically shattered because of injury in the line of duty, we should hear of those hero's too (and I don't mean the ones who are grazed by a piece of shrapnel and back on duty after three stitches, and still milk it for all it's worth).
Although Tom and I weren't close, we knew each other for a brief time in Cheshire Army Cadet Force. Were were in the same company however opposing detachments, always fighting to be better at what we did whether it be drill competitions, field craft exercises or company weekends. He took cadets very seriously and decided he wanted to join the armed forces, the military has been his life for six or so years now, so surely something you've had such dedication to shouldn't destroy you?
"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason." - Ernest Hemmingway
I wish Tom a speedy recovery from the bottom of my heart, he is a true hero who has put his life on the line in the name of his country.
