Let’s just simmer down about Prince Harry, at least when it comes to his comments about the Taliban. In his memoir Spare, released this week, the Prince writes that he killed 25 people in Afghanistan and thought of ‘Taliban fighters not as people but as chess pieces.’
This wasn’t the best choice of words. He shouldn’t have given a precise tally of the enemy dead – it goes against the unwritten and fragile code of the battlefield. And it fell short of ‘showing decency and respect for the lives you have taken,’ as former army officer and MP Adam Holloway has noted.
The ‘othering’ that Harry talks about is the only way an enemy can be killed
But, at the same time, it’s worth pointing out that most of the people currently criticising Harry didn’t serve in Afghanistan. Most won’t have any idea about what happened in the hellhole that was Helmand province.
For me, it is refreshing to hear someone talking about what it was like in Afghanistan and being listened to for once.
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