19.00 hrs Thursday 19th June 2008
The death of Cpl Sarah Bryant in
Afghanistan
has again thrown the Armed Forces' policy of allowing women to serve in action into stark relief.
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, said tonight:
'It has been rightly said that any country which asks its women to fight for it is not worth fighting for. It was bad enough that hundreds of young British men have been sacrificed to be killed or maimed in
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
, but now a young wife has had her life taken.
'If we have some strategic interest in
Afghanistan
, let the politicians tell us what it is. If it is an oil pipeline, let's hear it. And if bringing 'Democracy' to far-away places with strange-sounding names is in our strategic interest, why don't they explain how, exactly?
'If it is just 'Democracy' for its own sake, why aren't we extending our generosity to Zimbabwe, a Commonwealth country where we actually have friends and relations? In fact, why don't we deploy all the troops at present being viewed as an occupying army in Iraq and Afghanistan into Zimbabwe, where they would be rightly seen as liberators?'
ENDS
