Although I am not in favour of expressing political views on this board, I should elaborate on this issue a bit more because it really hurts my belief in politics and justice.
I am usually proud of my nation but things like this make me sick of politicians.
First of all, I made a mistake in my previous message.
The matter occured in Iraq in 2015, not in Syria.
After extensive surveillance and Intell, it was decided that a certain complex in the town of Hawija was a meeting point of terrorists and had to be taken out by a precision strike.
Dutch F-16's were tasked on that mission and dropped their bombs after having made certain that no collateral damage would occur. NATO is very strict on that issue.
FYI, nowadays the whole chain of Command and Control can exactly watch what's happening on the ground as well, prior giving permission to drop a weapon.
As it turned out, the same complex was used to manufacture explosives by the terrorists. This was not known, however.
Due to secondary explosions by these munitions, the result and effect of the strike was much larger than anticipated and caused 74 casualties in the surroundings of the complex.
Dutch media found out about this issue in 2019 and started raising questions about killing innocent people and warcrimes. As a result, the government was forced to answer associated questions in parliament.
During this meeting, F-16 pilots were called murderers in parliament and later in the media.
This is not the first time our soldiers had to stand trial in the Netherlands because of what happened as a result of their split second operational decisions when being shot at.
After court proceedings which almost lasted 2 years (!) the soldier in question on this other occasion was found not guilty and was acquitted.
Being victimized for such a long time. Imagine what a thing like that does to moral and believe in serving a just cause. Who needs enemies when all your actions are subject to extensive legal hair splitting afterwards.
This reminds me of the first Gulf war. Beancounters in the UK decided to take away the flying pay from downed British pilots who were held prisoner on the ground.
I don't know what the world is coming to, but it sounds insane.
Political correctness.
My country, as all countries in Europe, are flooded by (mostly illegal) immigrants.
When these people apply for asylum, the immigration service starts to investigate if they have a right to do so, or not. This is hard because most of these people throw away their passports and any other means of identification on purpose.
When many people apply for asylum, the immigration service becomes overloaded and it takes more time to determine whether someone is a true refugee or an economical migrant.
At the same time they get a free lawyer who assists them in their legal proceedings.
Now these lawyers have found a way to sue the government for not granting the refugees their official status within 6 months.
As a result, our government is legally bound to pay these (fake) refugees a considerable amount of money plus $1500 for each extra day after the 6 month period.
This added up to almost $100 million of tax payers money in 2019.
I can go on and on like this, but I think you get the message.
You people in the US should remember
