Maintaining peace in hostile places

The letter by David Jardine (The Jakarta Post, April 30), triggered some thoughts that have been haunting me for a few years. What I feel is that while there are both good and bad soldiers, what is crystal-clear is that the job they are entrusted to do while dealing with civilians is unenviable and most difficult. For one thing, they may face rebels who outnumber them many times over, irrespective of whether you choose to call them terrorists or freedom-fighters, depending on which side of the fence you are. The soldiers may have superior weapons, but unlike in a war, they do not know whom to aim these weapons at! The rebels may kill thousands of innocent people and get away with it, but let a soldier kill one single innocent person and the media will descend on him like a ton of bricks! On top of that, they are always susceptible to attack and to being killed by a sniper choosing to shoot from behind an innocent pedestrian! So when a soldier doesn't know how long he has before his life could be snuffed out and makes some mistakes by way of knee-jerk reactions, that deserves some sympathetic consideration. These knee-jerk reactions occur without the knowledge of their top commanders because most of the time they aren't there and there is simply no time to communicate with them! What is shown on TV or what is published in the print media as part of news coverage may be part of the truth, but not the whole truth, because when one talks of "press freedom", it generally refers to the "freedom of press barons" or editors and not freedom of reporters, whose convictions or sympathies may or may not be the same as those of the owners of a particular TV channel or newspaper. The history of mankind is largely written by the victors. One should have no doubt about what the story of the Second World War would have been had Hitler won it. Or who would have been tried and convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials. In my opinion, while armchair theorization is fine, the reality of life and death faced by the soldiers in very hostile civilian environments should not be overlooked and their actions should be viewed in a more comprehensive way. K. B. KALEJakarta