Court-martial

- So, you were responsible of the HMS Victoria and eventually there happened a little incident and the battleship sank and 357 of our brave British sailors perished at sea. Certainly you're innocent but yet, we'd like to hear from you what went wrong.

This question could have been asked to George Tryon, just he drowned with the ship. Too bad but yet, had he survived, one may imagine he would have had to face a court-martial upon his return from the shores off Lebanon.

The interesting thing (among others) with the military is the notion that every man is accountable for his conduct and for the consequences of his decisions.

A warship costs a certain amount of money and the loss of the sailors, regardless of the sensitive aspect of things, also is a loss for the military institution.

When one considers how the military, whatever the nationality, handles this concept of personal accountability when the occasion arises in the real world, one cannot fail to wonder if the military institution isn't a model of morality when compared to the world of politicians .

I've been told about a president who deliberately lied to his country and engaged the military he's the commander in chief into two wars which finally cost the lives of over 6.400  of his countrymen soldiers, notwithstanding the soldiers of his allies, let alone the lives of over 100.000 civilians of the countries he attacked 

Of course, the financial impact on the economy of his country of such foolish and criminal misconduct can be counted by the billions of € (I chose this currency as a red herring so that the person I’m thinking of eludes the guessing game).

And the same goes of course for a certain Prime Minister, his accomplice who would also be held for a war criminal if he had been captured by the Brits or the Americans, should he'd been on the ennemy's side.

As a matter of fact, this also works for all the politicians who betrayed their own country's interests and people such as Havel, Berlusconi, Aznar and the entire clique.

But the total and absolute unaccountability of politicians goes far beyond their bellicose proclivity and extends to about all the fields of their activity.

They can behave like plunderers and profiteers like Sarkozy and his gang have been acting for the last five years, leave the country on its knees and on the verge of bankruptcy, no matter what, they will always be immune of any questioning, let alone the slightest reprimand, and there always will be millions of voters ready to vote them again in office.

The tragedy is twofold here: The simple fact that this state of affairs is commonplace in "democracies" and also that next to everybody simply takes it for granted that politicians are above any trivial interrogation and accountability the sort of the military demands from its members.

Les tribunaux militaires certainement n'inspirent pas plus confiance que les tribunaux civils but yet, the notion of personal accountability seems not to be a completely unheard of concept.

Who would have though the military institution was the last guardian of morality?

(ps: The HMS Victoria and George Tryon aren't the examples I wanted to use but I can't remember the details of something similar which happened in the North Sea during naval manoeuvres - perhaps with the Tsarist marine- at the beginning of the XXth century.)