“Rehearsed in the media?” What has that to do with this story? The media reported this, it has gone for publication; it didn’t report the destruction of villages when it was told that the army was helping with reconstruction and it didn’t say much about the number of civilian dead – don’t know about you but if I had been the army doing something I didn’t want reporting I’d keep the media away from the area the story is taking place and feed them happy smiles too.
Maybe what you were thinking of was another book that the MoD spent a lot of money buying up and pulping to save face:
The row echoes an incident three years ago in which Sunday Times journalist Toby Harnden had his book, an account of a British deployment to Helmand, pulped because of MoD objections.
The MoD bought up the entire first run of Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain’s War in Afghanistan and pulped it. After minor amendments, it was reprinted.
Writing in the Telegraph at the time, Harnden said: “The truth is that the MoD was really motivated by politics and by embarrassment.”
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/09/territorial-soldier-resigns-book-afghanistan
As I recall they changes were exceedingly minor, more along the lines of some petty civil servant not backing down over something that had already been given the nod, putting his foot down and costing the taxpayer a great deal of money just to prove he had the power to do it.
Get it straight in your mind – the media is not always the enemy.
Maybe, just maybe, there was a screw up with intelligence which was perpetuated, leading to our troops going in like legalised hooligans and getting hated by the locals with a memory for history – at least, all the locals who didn’t have an axe to grind and a target in mind. Remember, this story came from an observing TA officer who was tasked with telling the recent history of Afghanistan and not some scribbler out for a sensational splash that would be the talk of the chattering classes for…oh, two or three days at best.
Do you remember the army recruiting poster about officers taking off their sunglasses before talking with locals/natives/distressed peoples? We lost that advantage in Afghanistan so we lost respect.
Legacy? We are pulling out of Afghanistan shortly, and when we go there will still be murder on the streets, women will still be targeted for wanting to be educated, people will still be vilified for associating with outsiders and adopting western affectations – all in the name of religion. And all we seem to focus on is that our troops are pulling out.
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