By Carol Gould
FrontPage Magazine
LONDON -- A disturbing debate has erupted here in Britain over the appalling manner in which British servicemen and women are treated upon their return from Iraq and Afghanistan.
A recent news story reported that Lord Bramall, a former Chief of Staff, is dismayed by the news of a British paratrooper being verbally threatened by a Muslim visitor to a public ward in a Birmingham hospital. Many of these men fear for their lives as they lie helpless in their beds with serious wounds and illnesses.
The intruder at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham had more than once been seen harassing civilian and military personnel at the hospital. Various reports indicate that the problem arises from the lack of facilities in Britain for returning and long-term injured veterans. One soldier is quoted as saying that British troops pray that they are sent to Ramstein, which they describe as the “outstanding American facility” in Germany. In Britain, they complain, they are forced to endure a “a mental health patient on one side and an incontinent geriatric on the other.”
But instead of prompting a debate on the failures of British veterans’ services, this has triggered one of the British media world’s predicable bouts of anti-Americanism. Writing on October 4 in London’s Evening Standard, for example, commentator Nick Cohen made the bizarre observation that American troops also have a miserable time when they return home because George W. Bush provides tax cuts to the wealthy.
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