How 9/11 Changed the British Military

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

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Summary

It’s been a long time since the sun set on the British Empire and many institutions in British society have changed a great deal. In some ways, the British Army is the exception - a living linkage between imperial great power status and the current post-colonial European nation. In other ways, like the US military, the British Army has been comprehensively transformed by the long campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11.

The way the British Army has altered - and also failed to react - over the last two decades is the subject of the new book The Changing of the Guard: The British Army Since 9/11. Here to talk about it is the book’s author Simon Akam. Akam is a journalist whose work has appeared basically everywhere, including Reuters, the Economist, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Outside, Bloomberg Businessweek and GQ.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Love this podcast support this show through the a cast supporter feature
0:05.1	It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. I write in the book as well about Ali, so the British Army's culture of cool,
0:22.0	which I think is the closest analogy to that.
0:24.0	And again, this is, I was unable to work out where the origin of this word came from.
0:27.8	The best approximation I got was it was from aluminium because airborne troops got lightweight mess mess terms but there's also a possibility
0:34.3	that it's been given to me that it comes from an Arabic word meaning shade because in Oman in the
0:39.0	60s that people the parachute regiment bent their barriers of their eyes.
0:42.6	But that, I think, is closely related that.
0:45.2	And that was about looking like an operator.
0:47.6	And what's fascinating for the British
0:49.2	is that was reflected in a manifesto, particularly in YouTube films.
0:52.0	But it also, it really came to an end because
0:54.5	a US, supposedly a US commander arrived at the British outpost in Afghanistan and said you look
0:59.4	like our army at the end of Vietnam.
1:08.0	One day, all of the facts in about 30 years time will be published.
1:15.0	When genocide has been carried out in this country almost with impunity, and when it is near to completion,
1:18.0	people talk about intervention. You don't get freedom people.
1:25.0	Freedom is never safeguarded peacefully.
1:30.0	Anyone who is surprising you of freedom isn't deserving of a
1:36.0	peaceful approach. So, It's been a long time since the sun set on the British Empire and many institutions in British society have changed
2:04.6	a great deal.
2:05.6	In some ways, the British Army is the exception, a living linkage between Imperial
	...

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