Friday, May 18, 2007

An uncertain future for Prince Harry

Prince Harry

The British Army general who has pulled Prince Harry back from active service in war-ravaged Iraq may or may not have saved his life and the lives of others who would have been in his unit, but he has destroyed the ambitious young man’s career for sure. The decision makes sense from a tactical point of view, but it plays very badly in all other respects. Yes, it’s a victory of sorts for the insurgency, but more significantly for Harry, he will never now carry the gravitas to command troops anywhere at any time.
As a future commander there will forever be the lingering stain on his reputation that he was given preferential treatment and kept out of harm’s way on account of his family background. This is terribly unfair to the young Prince, whom Phaedrus believes to be a genuinely decent and courageous young man whose desire to show his mettle has been cruelly thwarted by circumstance. But any men under his future command simply won’t regard him with any real respect of the kind that is only granted to those who’ve been up to their necks in muck and flying bullets. He should now seriously consider his position.