British Inquest Says Soldier "Unlawfully Killed"

Just when I think the Orwellian mindset that seems to have possessed the thinking of supposedly learned people in positions of public trust in regards to the global war on terrorism has reached the absolute depths of stupidity along comes another story to prove me wrong.

This time it is from the country formerly known as Great Britain. It is yet another example of what happens when lawyers get involved in what happens on the battlefield instead of sticking what they do best which is normally suing some large corporation to pad their bank account.

A Devon Territorial Army soldier who died when his vehicle hit a landmine in Afghanistan was unlawfully killed, an inquest has ruled.

I kid you not, that is what they said, unlawfully killed. Here is a clue for the good lawyers, the whole purpose of waging war is to kill the other guy. You purposely hit the weak points of your enemy. To try and blame the vehicle that this guy was riding in is ridiculous. Would he have been "lawfully killed" if he had been walking?

Reading the account of the fight, we have a term for that type of engagement. It is called an ambush. It is not the fault of the vehicle that this trooper was killed, it was the actions of the enemy who lured them into the minefield.

This is just so ridiculous and it points to the civilian mindset that somehow you can wage a bloodless war where only the bad guys get killed.

If this soldier was "unlawfully killed", does that same line of reasoning apply to all the Taliban that have been killed because they didn't possess the same equipment as we do?

I don't know how this type of thinking came into being, and certainly back when I was serving and the only thing between me and a bullet was a button on my BDU's, I don't recall a whole lot of concern about soldiers being invulnerable. There is no way to eliminate loss of life on the battlefield. The whole nature of warfare is such that when one side develops a weapon or tactic the other side immediately goes to work on a way to defeat such a weapon or tactic. Knowing your enemies weaknesses is part of the process also.

What you have no way of knowing from this story is how many hardened vehicles did these Taliban fighters allow to pass before attacking this one?