Prince Harry has revealed in an interview that he killed 25 Taliban fighters when he was a British soldier in Afghanistan. He says he didn’t feel any shame about it, but the military community calls it a betrayal.
Pen Farthing has had to flee Kabul over fear of attack
The royal family’s youngest son, Prince Harry, has been in the news lately for several reasons. He’s been making waves with his new book, which is a revelation about his time in the armed forces. But his claims that he killed more insurgents than any other British soldier in Afghanistan are drawing a lot of attention, and not always in a good way.
Prince Harry’s book was released last week in Spain. In it, he reveals his location in Afghanistan and how many insurgents he personally killed while serving in the army. However, it’s the claims of his kill count that have drawn the most criticism from military experts and veterans. Some have called it “irresponsible” to reveal his own kill count.
One of the most notable claims that Harry made in his book was that he flew an Apache attack helicopter while on duty in Afghanistan. While in the armed forces, Harry operated a pair of Apache sensors and weapons systems. However, the aircraft isn’t actually a weapon, but a military transport.
Another claim that Harry made was that he was able to kill 25 Taliban members, while in the armed forces. This number isn’t accurate, however. According to a leaked Foreign Office email, the PM signed off on the move.
Prince Harry’s claim that he flew an Apache helicopter while on duty in Afghanistan reportedly enraged the Taliban. They are so angry about his claims that they are calling for him to be tried for war crimes. His frank admissions have reportedly made him a dangerous figure to Westerners in Kabul.
Other claims that the Royal Navy’s newest member has made include flying an Apache attack helicopter and claiming to have killed a plethora of insurgents. Although the claim has garnered a bit of controversy, it is a fact that he was a member of the 16th Air Assault Brigade in Afghanistan. So, he may have done something, but he hasn’t said how many insurgents he killed in the army.
One of the most interesting claims that Harry made was that he flew an Apache attack jet while in the armed forces. The RAF has yet to leave the Kabul airport in the era of the Taliban, and there’s no word on when it will. That means the UK doesn’t have the resources to evacuate its citizens from the country.
The claims that the Royal Navy’s newest members have made are a little less than impressive. They’re also not the only ones. A former British commander in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, argued that the claims attributed to Prince Harry were “overblown.” Kemp’s chief of staff, Colonel Tim Collins, pointed out that the claim was “the largest and most expensively constructed ‘wonder of the world’ that the UK has produced.”
The ominous, the sexiest, and the best are not the same thing. While the Prince of Wales’ wacky claim about flying an Apache has garnered some media attention, the real scandal is that he’s revealed that he did something that would be unwise for anyone to do.
The prince says he doesn’t feel any shame about his actions
The Duke of Sussex has come under fire for admitting he killed 25 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, according to his autobiography, Spare. However, he says he has no regrets or shame over the killings.
Prince Harry served in Afghanistan twice during the eight years the US was in the country. He was a forward air controller in 2007-2008 and a co-pilot gunner and Apache helicopter pilot during 2012-2013. He was awarded a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order honor by the Queen in 2015.
It is believed tens of thousands of Afghans were killed during the war, but the country has yet to recover from the violence. The Taliban has been accused of war crimes, and some veterans have criticised the Duke of Sussex’s claim. They say he has jeopardized the security of Britain’s Armed Forces by admitting his part in a deadly conflict.
Some high profile British veterans have criticized the Duke of Sussex’s claim that he killed 25 Taliban soldiers. One former military officer told CNN he felt the revelations would increase risks for members of the British Armed Forces. Another, Lord Kim Darroch, warned that the revelations could lead to a greater risk of attacks against the royal family.
During a recent interview on BBC’s This Morning, Prince Harry said that killing people is not cool. But he also revealed that he took cocaine and mushrooms when he was a teenager. And that he had hallucinated talking to a toilet after using mushrooms. Despite this, he is still a working member of the royal family. In 2015, Prince Harry was given a medal for his tour of Afghanistan.
Although the United States has been accused of war crimes during the war, the UK has not been as harshly criticized. Some of the criticism of Harry’s comments came from the Taliban, who denounced him as a war criminal. Others, including the Taliban’s leader Anas Haqqani, called for him to face a trial.
As a member of the royal family, Prince Harry has long been viewed as a potential terrorist target. When he fought in Afghanistan, the British government sought to protect him. However, he lost taxpayer-funded security when he and his wife, Meghan, stepped down from their royal duties in 2020.
As a result, he has lost his police protection when he visits Britain. And his barrister claims that his client “does not feel safe” while in the country. His claims, however, have not been addressed by the Defense Department. A Pentagon spokesman has not responded to questions about his remarks, and he has referred questions to British military officials.
On Tuesday, Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, will be released in the U.S. In it, the prince describes his time in Afghanistan and his role as a helicopter pilot. However, the book has been heavily criticized by veterans. According to a retired British Army colonel, his kill-count talk is “crass.” He has defended his actions, saying, “It’s not as if the enemy was chess pieces.”
A US military officer said it is not hard to believe an Apache helicopter gunner like Harry could kill that many enemy troops. Veterans also said it made the British military look bad.
The military community calls his comments a ‘betrayal’
It is difficult to miss the fury that the UK military community has displayed when the Duke of Sussex made a series of comments in his latest book about his time in Afghanistan. Prince Harry has been accused of betraying the military, putting soldiers’ lives in danger, and misstating the truth about his career in the British Army. The military community has criticized Harry for his controversial statements and even called him Dirty Harry. Despite this, he remains popular with the general public, and the book is gaining steam.
In a series of tweets, the Taliban responded to Prince Harry’s sweeping claims. A senior member of the Taliban government, Anas Haqqani, wrote that Prince Harry’s victims were humans and that “no leader had ever done what Prince Harry did.” As the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Kemp warned that the jihadists would exploit Prince Harry’s comments. He also wrote that Harry had been naive to publish details of his two tours in the country.
During his tour, Prince Harry served as a forward air controller, a mission commander, an Apache attack helicopter pilot, and an Apache gunner. He also operated a number of other weapons systems. One of the most controversial comments in the book is the claim that he killed 25 people in Afghanistan.
While the Associated Press, the Daily Record, and the Scottish Daily Mail reported on this fact, no one actually verified the statistic. This is not surprising, considering that the British Army has never boasted about killings. Those who have participated in war know the statistics. Still, Prince Harry’s statements have caused the military community to take a hard look at their own training.
Several veterans, including retired British army colonel Richard Kemp, have reacted with outrage to Prince Harry’s remarks. Kemp reprimanded Harry for his statements, saying that his claims were “unjust” and that they “painted a bad picture of the British Army”. Although Kemp has retired, he has been credited with being the first to command British forces in Afghanistan.
Some of the most interesting parts of Harry’s new book include the story of his relationship with his brother and his grandmother. The memoir also focuses on his life as a prince, his time in the Army, and his marriage to Meghan Markle.
Other notable aspects of the book are the royal family’s relationship with Harry, his childhood, and his parents’ marriage. His statements about his experiences in the military have raised some eyebrows, but they have also boosted the ego of members of the military. Those who knew Harry felt that his comments broke the unwritten code. For example, in one interview, Harry compared control of a weapon system to playing a video game.
In addition to the above-mentioned, the book also contains a number of other notable feats. The duke reportedly trained to fly a front-seat Apache assault helicopter, and was an Apache gunner and an Apache weapons systems operator.
Read more
According to reports from smuggled copies, Prince Harry claimed in his biography Spare that he killed 25 Taliban militants, drawing ire from the military community and others.
The 38-year-old also discussed his ten years of service in the British army, during which he was in charge of firing missiles from an Apache attack helicopter. In addition to other shocking allegations, such as the claim that his brother, Prince William, knocked him to the ground during a dispute, the man also mentioned other embarrassing details.
The Duke of Sussex claimed that during his two tours of Afghanistan, he killed 25 alleged Taliban fighters. He reportedly stated that he was neither “pleased” nor “embarrassed” by the reality, according to allegations from the stolen copy.Actually, if you treat people like people, you can’t injure them, Harry said. “Bad guys were eliminated before they killed good guys; they were chess pieces taken off the board. They did a good job of training me to “other” them.
It’s possible that this is the only significant finding from Spare with obvious applications outside of the global sport of royal viewing. Former British military officers have blasted Harry for disclosing the information. However, analysts assert that Prince Harry’s remarks also touch on a deeper issue of how service members cope with the atrocities they witness during combat.
British military leaders like Richard Kemp, a retired colonel in the British Army, condemned Prince Harry’s remarks and warned that they could “provoke” the Taliban and their adherents to “carry out attacks against the UK.”
The Taliban responded right away. The Haqqani Network, which the United States and the United Kingdom classify as a terrorist group, member and senior member of the Taliban administration Anas Haqqani tweeted, “The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their homecoming.”
Admiral Lord West, a former chief of the Royal Navy, told the UK Sunday Mirror that Harry was endangering the safety of the Invictus Games, a sporting event he founded that highlights wounded and injured veterans, and he called his release of his military deeds “extremely dumb.”
In addition, Tobias Ellwood, a former British army captain and the head of the Defense Select Committee in the UK Parliament, informed the press that “there is the unwritten expectation that nobody openly talks kill counts for the primary reason that it can have security repercussions.”
Larger issues
However, according to Jessica Wolfendale, a philosophy professor with Case Western Reserve University’s Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence, such accusations are probably exaggerated. At terms of putting British forces in danger, I don’t really believe they are bad. If it is assumed that his attitude is reflective of the British forces, they could be destructive in the sense of inciting enmity toward them.
Instead, she and other professionals tell TIME, Prince Harry’s statement raises a crucial query about the kind of training service members get in order to be able to perform their duty in the military. According to Wolfendale, increasing one’s physical and mental distance from one’s combat deeds can aid military personnel in overcoming their innate aversion to murder.
She continues by saying that despite the detailed memoirs of special operations veterans about their time in battle, some of which, like American Sniper, have been made into Hollywood blockbusters, the issue with Harry’s language is more due to the way he speaks.
Wolfendale says TIME, “It’s not so much the fact that he talks about having killed but the attitude that he seems to exhibit in the way he talks about it.
Harry’s remarks are also reminiscent of a different controversy from a 2013 interview in which he linked playing PlayStation and Xbox to controlling the weapons system as a “pleasure,” according to the Guardian.
Director of Religious and Catholic Ethics and Campus Ethics Programs at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics David DeCosse said, “I do hear that as literally objectifying something that is fundamentally human with huge moral implications linked to it.” I find that terminology regretful; in a way, it dehumanizes these people.
