[b]Maintaining peace

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