THE DESCENDANTS OF COLONEL BLIMP

Conduct unbecoming (Bruce Anderson, The Spectator, November 19th, 2005)

...When Britain signed up to the ICC, there were assurances that British soldiers would never appear in front of it. It would only act in countries which refused to mount proper investigations of their own. But senior officers have now been warned that the ICC would not regard the chain of command as an adequate legal procedure. So methods which have been tried and tested over the decades would not prevent foreign lawyers from putting British soldiers on a par with Milosevic: more of the yoke.

The generals alone cannot solve the problem of the ICC. But one might expect some resistance. Instead, senior figures have made love to their employment as lawyers’ pimps. A brigadier working directly for General Sir Michael Jackson wrote as follows: ‘Do you have any evidence of officer misbehaviour in Iraq which I could use?’

The cold, callous tone of that missive could have come from some satirists’ version of the château-generals in the first world war. The satirists were writing fiction. That brigadier’s letter encouraged the prosecution of Colonel Jorge Mendonca, DSO, an outstanding soldier. A country which can treat Colonel Mendonca like this ought to be ashamed of itself. As for the brigadier, better men have shot themselves for worse reasons. Around Mike Jackson, however, they are beyond shame.

Mike Jackson: corruptio optimi pessima. Everything about the outward man inspires respect. He looks like a mensch: a fighting soldier, a soldier’s soldier, the last commander on earth to be seduced by the politicians. He has force of personality, reinforced by a hint of menace. If he had been willing to stand up to the politicians, they would never have dared to stand up to him.

But all his supposed strengths were a sham. It was said of the great Slim that he had the brains of a Field Marshal and the heart of a private soldier. Mike Jackson has the heart of a toy poodle. His career as Chief of the General Staff is a study in moral failure.

In combat zones, soldiers invariably ask one question of senior visitors: is the country behind them? They desperately want to hear a yes. But how can today’s soldiers believe that when the lawyers are allowed to run amok? Throughout the services, there are problems with recruitment and retention. Mr Blair wants to use the army more and more. The way the ministers and generals are acting, there will be less and less to use. What happened to joined-up government?

What has happened to duty, honour, patriotism — to common decency? What has happened to this country when brave colonels are prosecuted while generals — full of rank and titles, wearing resplendent uniforms, by all appearances worthy successors to their illustrious forebears — fail in their most basic duty to the men under their command?

Opponents of the ICC tend to envisage a resentful, hamstrung military subservient and united in opposition to foreign supervision and sanction, but that simplistic scenario fails to take the nature of bureaucracy, even military bureaucracy, into account and misses the real danger. The Anglo-American tradition of complete deference to civil authority is a bedrock of freedom, but it also means that our elected leaders have little difficulty in peopling senior ranks with those willing and eager to do their bidding. If a government of the day rules that gender equality and international peacekeeping are the number one priorities, then soon the military will shed the dissenters and be run by generals who build careers on promoting those objectives. If the chain of command loses ultimate authority over enforcing the rules of war, a few old salts may resign in loud protest, but they will soon be replaced by a high command that, far from lamenting the loss of responsibility and sovereignty or worrying much about duty and morale, will enthusiastically cooperate with the new order and look down the ranks for examples to shop to the insatiable appetite of international law.