This man is a hero. Credit: Nowzad.com.
RIP Geronimo. We heard the news of his passing yesterday, and so, today, a nation mourns.
Except, of course, it doesn’t. We’re not nearly so crackers about animals as we’re supposed to be. In fact, the real delusion is among those who believe that the beastly British have lost their tiny minds.
Take the other zoological saga of the last few days — Pen Farthing and Operation Ark. Did we really leave people behind in Kabul so that a bunch of cats and dogs could be airlifted to safety? If we did, then that would indeed be an outrage.
But as far as we know, what actually happened was rather different. The aircraft was a private charter. The animals were in the hold. And human beings took the seats. That’s a net gain for Homo sapiens.
It does seem that a Special Advisor in Whitehall was spoken to rudely, but Farthing has apologised for that. Meanwhile an “MoD source” has said that any assistance given was not at the expense of the official evacuation effort.
What intrigues me is the reaction of the commentariat. It’s not the criticism of Operation Ark (or the British Government) that stands out, but a deep unease at what this affair reveals about the British and our moral priorities.
“I don’t like it,” said Charlotte Ivers in the Sunday Times, “I don’t like it at all. And I really don’t like what it says about our country.” For the Spectator, Sam Ashworth-Hayes concluded that “Britain chose the picture of the sad puppy over people fearing for their lives.”
“What a story to tell the world about ourselves,” laments Gaby Hinsliff in the Guardian. And even Henry Hill — who is never knowingly under-patriotic — condemned “our weird attitude to animals” on UnHerd.
A new poll from YouGov provides apparent proof. Asked a question about the value of lives, only 49% of those asked said that “human lives are worth more than animal lives”. Meanwhile, 40% said that “human lives are worth the same as animal lives.” 3% said “human lives are worth less than animal lives” and the rest didn’t know.
So there you go: half the country is nuts. How can any self-respecting “voice of reason” stay silent about that?
What’s more, some parts of society are nuttier than others. Among those most likely to say that human and animal lives are worth the same are Leave voters, northerners and blue-collar workers. So for metropolitan types who believe the Brexit British have gone mad, this looks like further confirmation. More generally, this is a great issue on which to signal one’s superior rationality: I am humane; you are sentimental; she is a mad cat lady.
But opinion polls are not to be taken too literally. Public answers to pollsters’ questions should be interpreted as an opportunity to make a point. So when people say that humans and animals are of equal value, what are they really saying? In all likelihood, most of them are making the point that animal lives matter as well as human lives — but not, in fact, as much.
After all, if people really did believe that “animals are people too” then they’d stop eating them. Or, if already vegetarian, they wouldn’t be so relaxed about other people eating them. I don’t eat meat (for animal welfare reasons), but I’m a lot less upset by my meat-eating friends than I would be if they took up cannibalism.
Here’s another example. In 2001, the Labour government dealt with the foot-and-mouth outbreak by ordering a mass slaughter of livestock. Across the country, millions of dead farm animals were incinerated on flaming pyres. The nation was horrified — and yet in the subsequent general election the politicians responsible were returned to power with a thumping majority.
Now can you imagine the current government using similar tactics to halt spread of Covid? Obviously, it’s unthinkable. And that’s because, whatever people might say in polls, they recognise the vast gulf between man and beast.
But that being the case, how does one explain or justify the existence of animal welfare charities? Why are there so many of them in this country, when so much human need is still unmet?
The first thing to say is that, contrary to popular opinion, charitable giving in this country isn’t dominated by donkey sanctuaries. In fact, less than one donated pound in every ten goes to a charity that primarily benefits animals.
Nevertheless, there are those who resent the very existence of charitable juggernauts like the RSPCA. It was founded in 1824 as the plain old Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — the first animal welfare charity anywhere in the world. In 1840 it added the R to its initials after Queen Victoria became a patron.
But this is a long running bone of contention. Why is the RSPCA “Royal” and the NSPCC merely “National”? Doesn’t this show that the British accord a higher value to preventing cruelty to animals than to children? It’s a fatuous comparison, of course — an accident of history that says nothing about the overall allocation of money and status in our society.
Still the essential problem remains. Why should animals get any help at all, when people need it too?
The reason why the Operation Ark story made such an impact is that — as perceived by the critics — it symbolised this moral dilemma. Spaces on a plane are limited, but so are other resources — from money given by donors to time given by volunteers. Shouldn’t it all be allocated according to rational priorities?
Then again, why limit this question to charitable work? It surely also applies to spending on pets — which currently runs at £8 billion a year in the UK. In fact, never mind the animals, there’s a hierarchy of need among human beings too. Does your child really need that new bicycle when the money could go to Afghan children? Or what about the fripperies you buy for yourself — couldn’t those resources be better allocated?
If Pen Farthing didn’t exist, then, for the sake of our troubled consciences, it would be necessary to invent him. Indeed the entire charitable sector provides a convenient distraction from the spending decisions we make in our own lives.
We’re losing sight of the true meaning of charity, which transcends the merely rational. The concept of “effective altruism” — that is, methodically working out where philanthropic resources can be most productively allocated — has its place; but we need to remember that compassion is also about the relationship between the helper and the helped. The word literally means “to suffer with”.
A compassionate act is, therefore, good in and of itself. It cannot be dispassionately judged on the basis of outcome alone — still less as a comparison of theoretical outcomes.
Compassion brings the strong down to the level of the weak, the rich to the poor, the healthy to the sick, the happy to the sad. And because it does so without coercion, it is profoundly humanising, even when the recipient is an animal.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeBetrayal of trust, rewarding loyalty with deception, hits hard at the image of our better selves. Treating children and animals badly, is brutalising and we are aware of this at a very fundamental level.
I can supply two anecdotes, told by my maternal grandfather and my father.
During the great war, my grandfather was in an artillery regiment, he had a horse, which was blind in one eye. He loved this horse. During the later part of the conflict he had some overdue leave.He informed his replacement about the horse’s disability and to be careful riding him. When he got back, the horse was dead. He had been run onto barbed wire on his blind side. He told me, he wanted to shoot himself for ever taking leave and that for him, it had been the worse incident of the war and indeed his life.
Similarly my Father had to have his Border Collie put down during the blitz, when it went mad. The worst of it was, the dog wagged his tail all the way through the process. My Father fought throughout the conflict, yet confessed it was one of the worst and most shameful moments of his life. He felt he had betrayed the love and trust of his dog. The tears still flowed when he was in his eighties.
I cannot see how the loyalty shown by Pen Fathing to his people and to his animals is misplaced. In the army, the motto was, men first, animals second, self last. If the animals were transported in the hold and didn’t take the place of civilians, then fine.As for Geronimo, the owner will feel utterly devastated, having had to put down several dogs, the loss never leaves you. Plenty of people dislike domestic animals and fear giving way to sentiment, as intellectual weakness. It depends on how highly you regard your own intellect in relation to your emotional self, the two needn’t be exclusive.
Your comments makes are far more thought provoking than the article itself. We have a border collie and have looked after a horse so I understand completely.
Thank you Stephen for writing a comment that is far more relevant than this badly constructed article.
Perhaps I’m one of the 3%. Because 65 years on this planet have taught me that human animals are not the ‘crown of creation’ at all.
So preferring animals to humans seems, to me, perfectly logical.
I’m afraid I can’t disagree with that, unpopular as that opinion may be among self-regarding humans, a rather nasty species imo.
I remember my late mother in law telling me that she didn’t like animals because she loved children more.
To me , that is not a rational statement, bit like saying you love chips because you hate fried fish!
I think you will find the order was: horses first, soldiers second, yourself last. Nothing has changed, simply because an animal can’t take care of itself.
I cannot explain how I feel about this all, but the suffering in this world is so wearing to me now..
I have killed a great many creatures, I grew up hunting, I have commercial fished, and I have euthanized many things too – and I am not bothered by a creature’s death much. Animals are innocent, they have no knowledge of good and evil, and of free will, as it is too high a concept for them. To me this means they die and just go from the world without baggage of Karma. It is when they suffer I cannot bear it, not their clean death.
And so killing the alpaca is not a problem to me as there is a reason for it. But leaving the pets in Afghanistan, after they have been taken in and shown affection – that would be terrible betrayal to me, and I could not accept that. If they were euthanized I could be Ok with it, if it was a zero sum game – but I am glad it worked as it did. I am disappointed at the people outraged by their rescue. We each have to do what we have to do – and that guy had his responsibility to the animals…
Like Jesus said – the poor will always be suffering, we cannot save them. We can save an individual, but not all. I think it was Mother Theresa who once said her most important work was not just in helping the destitute die in safety – but also in providing an opportunity for well off to be moved by her story, and so for people to give charity, and so be blessed. You can’t save everyone, so you just have to do what you can – and for him it was the dogs, I understand that.
Well said.
A fair point, although I would not completely agree. But that’s the great thing about this site — we don’t have to completely agree about everything. We’re not Communists.
Sanford, the US military left K-9s behind in crates… my heart is broken.
Did they? Where is the evidence for that?
It is in the news.
For heaven’s sake, call them what they are – dogs, not “K-9s”.
To call them K-9s does them a disservice, as it makes them less than alive and sentient, just a collection of letters and numbers. I hate this Americanism (amongst many others).
Get a grip. K-9 is the term used for the military working dogs. As opposed to the other dogs running around. Maybe you wanted me to type out the full explanation for you the first time?
I know what it’s supposed to mean, thanks. It only started being used in that context following the usage for a mechanical dog in “Doctor Who”. Hardly decent provenance.
This hurts me so much I could not bear to read that article – I had to scroll past, and the image still haunts me – I kept hoping it was staged, but that made me so angry, such betryal, I have to not think of it it hurts me so much….
the picture is in yesterdays Daily Mail – looking at it will not do you any good…
I saw on Russia Today that gives a different angle, that they were let out before the last soldiers took off and were running all over the airport. Now The Taliban are supposedly going to use them. I have no faith.
Organiser dog fights are popular in Pakistan .Use them for what ?
An interesting argument, strangly reminiscent of the much reviled Victorians. A number of legal cases decided by their hard-headed judges revolving around bequests to animal charities are important precedents in the law of inheritance. The pattern would be along the lines of Auntie Doris leaving all her money to the dogs and cats home and some greedy relative objecting. The bequests were usually upheld, but for an interesting reason — being kind to animals engendered gentleness and compassion in human society. It had nothing to do with the animals themselves. In a curious way, the Victorians were the last proper humans.
Nice comment, Francis. The idea that the Victorians were perhaps the last proper humans is a very thought-provoking idea.
Good grief .Surely Edward the Seventh wasn’t that bad an example when he became king !
It was not so much the death of the Alpaca that was a disgrace, but the manner of its death. Dragged from a field, surrounded by a baying mob, incredibly frightened and distressed.
A bit of thought by the DEFRA people was required. They gave it none.
This animal was a domestic pet. It had a horrible end. The people responsible are thoughtless jerks.
Yes!
It was the baying mob trying to prevent a diseased animal being put down that made the situation worse. The supposedly caring owner did nothing to make the animals end as stress free as possible, DEFEA had little option but to get the animal out of the way as quickly as possible
Had the alpaca’s owner been less narcissistic & cared more for the animal than the publicity, there would have been no spectacle. She should have stayed with the animal & led it quietly onto the trailer away from the crowd.
This is a very interesting article and a subject that gave me a few very interesting weeks back at university as part of my law degree.
However, when it comes to issues like Geronimo and Operation Ark, I have my doubts about how many people are really considering their own responses in a structured, rational or critical way. I think that the response is largely emotional and unstructured and based on feelings in the moment.
Which brings me to one of my hobby horses: the argument that schools need to be providing pupils with the intellectual tools to approach issues like this in a mature and rational manner. Otherwise, we end up with a society of emotional incontinence and instinctive reaction, with a dearth of logical or sustained thought.
I feel this is NOT the thing schools should teach. Schools do not need to teach How to feel, or What to feel. They need to lay on an education and not brainwash – do you actually trust your standard, Union, Lefty, teachers to be ethical and moral and emotional guides? I do not. That is the entire CRT debate – brainwashing, warping the young minds with fake and twisted emotions and theories.
I’m fairness, Katherine Eyre was advocating children being given ‘intellectual tools to tackle such issues’, which I would say means teaching them how to think about emotive issues, not teaching them how to feel.
Exactly – however it seems that the ‘dominant wisdom’ has dictated that there shall be no more real challenging in our education system lest some sensitive souls ‘feel bad ‘ – -tragically that means that the next generations will be stuck in a ‘sensitive limbo” with little ability to assess anything important.
It makes me sad about the current state of things. In my opinion (that’s it. It’s just an opinion) the fondness for pets is connected to an increasing anti-humanism. I declare myself an Anglophile with one important caveat, I don’t get your love for pets. I have nothing against cats and dogs, I’m a cat person. But pets aren’t people, not even close. I’m convinced that if the grooming gangs were involved in illegal dogfighting, it would have lasted 5 seconds, helas! it was girls, worst even, “white trash girls” or their brown-skinned equivalent.
The more westerners lose their humanity and put less emphasis on child-rearing they open their hearts to pets. Pets will never disappoint us.
The animals Pen Farthing brought out of that hell hole were NOT PETS.
If they weren’t pets then that’s even worse. Time and effort spent saving animals that could have gone towards getting allies out of that hellhole is immoral in my opinion.
As a follow up question, where do people on here defending the decision to bring back the animals draw the line. Are goats deserving of the same treatment, or mice? What makes a dogs life more deserving than that of other animals?
Unfortunately there is a very large dog fighting underworld in this country, and much like the grooming gangs, it does not get reported on and rarely prosecuted.
I lived remote for years, mostly without company other than one person, often alone. Then all day I would work off alone a great deal. I had a dog with me always, they were my main companion. Out in the bush it is so cold, compassionless, one is weighted down by the solitude. That dog and I formed a bond as strong as ever has been formed – later when I left the remote places to work in cities my dog always went to work with me (I have almost always been self employed, actually about 1/3 of my work was in commercial buildings and the dog could not come, but the rest of my work it did)., 24 hours a day the dog was within 20 foot of me.
Laying at my feet is my mini-dachshund and long haired terrier, they shadow me all day, sleep on the bed at night. I work alone mostly still – and a dog is always there, hanging out with me. When I am in my truck dogs are always in with me. When I am waking my woods, or fishing (which I do a great deal of – I have to have interaction with nature, I do not commercial fish anymore, but keep my family and people fed with fish – my family (4) eat very little meat, and a great deal of fish), the dogs go along, and they love their fish after we have ours….
But then I have led a very weird life with a great number of years in solitude – and as I always moved I never had a ‘community’. When I move on I let the past go – I do not keep up with people in my past, so I never really had the normal persons life of community, working with people you know, and so on. I have dogs though, good dogs as I train them, and by being out with me all day they learn to be very well behaved.
An interesting thing of dogs – domesticating them was one of mankind’s great technological leaps forward (40,000 years ago), like fire and the wheel. It multiplied hunting success, gave warnings, later caught vermin and protected the other domestic animals, also was food and good fur itself, and greatly predates any other animal being domesticated. Dogs were one of our greatest inventions, and without them we would not be nearly as advanced as we are.
But this commensal relationship made dogs unique among animals. They genetically seek a human to love and obey. Their mind is unique in how it understands language – dogs naturally understand spoken, body, and emotional language of humans. No other animal has nearly this ability to have abstract thought – they feel guilt, love, duty, complex emotions – they evolved to be a human’s extension of themselves.
When I had covid last year, the three days I spent wiped out with high fever my terrier laied against my shoulder the entire time. It would barely eat – going outside it would relieve its self fast and be right back by my shoulder – It just lay there and would not leave. The only thing in the world it cared about was me getting better.
Thank you for a very interesting post. I like your phrase that dogs were our ‘invention’. I think that’s true as we have changed their nature from wolves over a long long period of time. The loyalty and friendship of a dog is a priceless thing.
I read somewhere that cats domesticated themselves. My two definitely aren’t standoffish (with us) and all of my cats have had different personalities.
Great story! I had dogs when I lived in the country. I’m well aware of their loyalty. I’m also aware of Men’s cruelty (all my dogs were at one point poisoned). But this is the difference, you can treat a dog like crap, beat him up and mistreat him and you will get loyalty in return. Try to do that with a wife, a son, a friend. People demand more work than a meal a day and moderate beatings. The speech about “dogs are better than people” denounces a childish mind. A very low standard regarding relating with other beings.
It would be a strange world where we all wanted just one thing, let alone the same thing. So we give to charities that buy up forests to stop them being destroyed, as well as animal charities because we don’t want animals to suffer, as well as the Salvos etc. etc.
Exactly it is not an either/or argument as so many would like one to believe.
The truth is we do value some animals higher than some humans. I’m not ashamed to admit that while I’d sacrifice my dogs to save my husband or son I I value their lives higher than the average random stranger. I would certainly rather a dog from Afghanistan came to the UK than an economic migrant – nevermind a jihadi.
Spot on.
Well…that’s a false dichotomy. I believe there’s more than one choice, Terrorist or dog. Orphan girl or dog for instance.
Sometimes the optics are more important than reality. Even if the British public doesn’t actually value animal lives as much as human ones, Britain will still be remembered escorting pets to the airport in front of thousands of despairing Afghans left to their fate. It is not the impact on the evacuation that matters, but the image given to the world.
I couldn’t care less what the world thinks about it.
It wasn’t the aircraft space, it was the paperwork and resources absorbed by this issue which could have been better used saving more of those brave people who actually helped the Western forces.
People give to animal charities because animals are powerless and it is unreasonable to expect their well-being to be prioritised by government policy. Humans are not powerless and have the ability to earn their own living and make provision for the time when they cannot. It is the government’s job to facilitate that. Giving to charities for humans lets the government off the hook.
It is reasonable to expect charities to provide for animals. It is not reasonable to expect them to be needed by humans.
An article designed to get people’s backs up. Poorly constructed and littered with unsubstantiated claims.
The day that humankind wakes up to the fact that we must live in harmony with the animal kingdom, rather than dominating it, will be the day the world becomes a better place.
So those people who already respect animals and don’t assume mankind’s superiority are already advancing on this path. It is not sentimentalism. We are but one of the animal species on this planet, time to balance our needs with those of all species.
Well said. When it comes to it, we are all part of the animal world, and it’s not just our planet. Live and let live.
It’s not the either/or choice of bringing out animals or people that concerns me, but the waste of energy and time importing unwanted animals from Afghanistan to a country where many animal rescue centres are bulging at the seams. We have no shortage of unwanted animals and the absurd obsession with not euthanising them means that more and more are condemned to be kept in cages for months or years on end.
I understand that offers to home these animals exceed the number of animals. Agreed, that would be partly down to the publicity, but they have also come from an existing charity.
I always look askance at poll results because they depend entirely on the weighting of the question. For example, should human life be prioritised over animal life sounds simple enough (yes, it should) but in reality it isn’t. If I am a conservationist and wild life ranger dedicated to protecting endangered species such as the rhinoceros and I come across poachers tracking one I know that it is a choice between the rhinoceros’s life or the poacher’s. For me that is a no-brainer – the poacher goes, especially as if I am spotted I am likely to be killed too, along with the rhinoceros. . Am I wrong?
As far as Pen Farthing is concerned, it wasn’t a question of choice simply because no humans were left behind in order to save an animal. The animals were just saved as well and there is nothing at all wrong with that. Handled better, Operation Ark could have been one of the few good news stories to come out of the whole debacle – a “free” plane loaded with both animals and people – he offered the spare seats remember – all flown to safety. What’s not to like?
The response to this whole episode on Unherd is becoming a bit weird. On another thread (Henry Hill’s article on The Post) I suggested that even animal lovers like me understand the moral imperative of protecting human lives above animal lives, and most of the other commentators on that thread seemed to agree. On this thread, the trend seems to have been reversed.
The media tends to enter a silly-season at this time of year when Parliament is dissolved and political commentators are relatively thin on the ground. The print media then has to ramp-up an issue to stir-up public opinion, make some headlines and sell newspapers, and I originally got the impression that this what was what happening with the Pen Farthing story (though I don’t understand why they would have to do this when the whole debacle of the Afghan withdrawal was such big news in any case).
I still can’t decide whether the Peter Franklin article above was a silly-season comment piece or whether he has hit a nerve that requires serious debate. There are so many twists and turns in the argument that I suspect the latter – to incite debate – though resolution of that debate would require some serious philosophical thinking about the rights of humans versus those of animals. Taking on that debate would be a huge task.
I still maintain that the majority of the UK public, even animal lovers like me, put the protection of humans above the protection of animals.
I am reading Caravans again – James Michener’s book on Afghanistan.
A timely extract “They love their scrawny dogs, he assured me. Kill an Afghan’s dog and he’ll track you through the Hindu Kush”.
If many Afghan’s still hold these values, I am impressed.
They do not love the dog which is not theirs though. And they do not really make pets of their own dogs.
Are you saying the Michener is playing make believe, or that they stopped making pets of their dogs?
I stand to be corrected but I understand that among the Arabs at least, the saluki was the only dog allowed to live in the tent with the women and not regarded as unclean, since its speed and hunting prowess in the days before firearms were used was the difference between having meat or starving. It could be that the Afghan’s regard for his hunting dogs is or was similar.
Some more reading is required!
I have just read Caravans too, little has changed!
Thank you to Peter Franklin for making such a well reasoned argument – one which I was clumsily trying to make yesterday. Human beings have self-determination and self-awareness and as we continue to ruin natural habitats and to farm meat on a larger and larger scale, human beings become more and more responsible for animals and their welfare.
Is there some confusion in the poll question? When it says animals are the answers regarding wild animals, domesticated or both? Is a rat as valuable as a human? Would you allow snakes to breed below your floorboards? The answers display our disassociation from the real world in which many live and was our ancestors’ experience.
Reading the account yesterday, I wonder if it has already infected the other alpacas in the adjoining paddock which would be the final irony of the whole sentimental circus.
I don’t think you understand the thrust of the article at all.
I’d be happy to be educated in that then, Lesley, if you have time.
On Spiked on line , Brendan O’Neill said it best:
“One Afghan human being is worth more than a million Afghan dogs“
I love my animals, and sometimes I even love my humans. Animals love unconditionally, without prejudice, without exception. Rule of thumb, if your dog dislikes someone , take heed.
Equally, if your dog, or indeed your cat, likes someone take heed as well 🙂
there’s a lot of people on this board and the operation Ark article attempting (and failing) to rationalise misanthropy and a psychopathic preference for animals life’s over humans life’s by covering it in a cloak of compassion or empathy for the suffering of animals. You people are mental. Resources were diverted from evacuating human beings from a warzone to save dogs, all your magical thinking and public whining enabled this obscene decision. Human beings who had a right to be evacuated have been left stranded in Kabul, some of these people will be tortured and killed by the Taliban.
F%$k your performative compassion for dogs.
None of you could answer this on the operation ark article, what justifies saving a dogs life over a human beings ?
just that you personally like dogs better, can any one of you answer here, why is a dog life more worthy than an Afghan humans beings life?
Well George, it’s like this. Some people don’t hold humankind in high esteem nor buy into the accepted myth that humans are more important than anything else.
i already said that ~ misanthropy and a psychopathic preference for animals life’s over humans life’s covered in a cloak of compassion for animals.
You are only enabled to even have this view because you write it from a comfortable seat in-front of a computer and your not standing on the tarmac of Kabul airport, valid paperwork inhand, but there wasn’t time for another flight for you and your family because a slot on the runway programme was made for a flight for dogs.
sorry that was mean spirited, this topic is pissing me off,
what im trying to understand is as yoouve said elsewhere…
“So preferring animals to humans seems, to me, perfectly logical.”
how is this judgement arrived at ? do you need to know the character of the dogs, what if they are “bad” dogs, is a bad dog more worthy of saving than a good human. are all dogs more preferable than any human. how are you deciding that animals are preferable to humans?
…as well as, not instead of. And the flight in question provided seats for people that would not otherwise have been available…because the organisation that provided them would not have existed, and the cash to pay for them would nor have been raised. And I believe anyone who could get to the Airport and through Taliban “security” got out…arrangements are being made to try to help those who couldn’t…and the only way to avoid the whole disgraceful debacle would have been for Biden not to start the stampede in the first place, or for the UK and Europe not to have reduced defence expenditure so much that we could not do it alone.
We’d need to double HMAF to operate at the same level per capita as the USA…an outcome I’d personally welcome…would you?
instead of. this was a private chartering ( by a US based millionaire) of a boeing passenger plane, animals were in the hold were people cannot be transported. it holds about 260 seated passengers assuming it was full. A US C-17 globe master left with 820 passengers. that private charter slot could have been used for a US C17. 560 more people could have been evacuated, that’s the lost opportunity cost of the dog flight. Are 560 Afghan lives worth the lifes of 170 dogs / cats?
…I’ve seen no evidence that this slot displaced another flight, nor indeed that people who got to the tarmac under either US or UK auspices with paperwork were not flown out…all I’ve seen suggests that issues arose getting within the cordon, or safely getting to it…not getting out once through it…is there evidence of people being refused access to flights on the tarmac? If not, that is just a heart-rending supposition, not an actual event…and the dogs and cats were accompanied by 260 live people, including (I assume) Afghans…
…and I should add that the only way to resolve that would have been a much bigger deployment to secure a large exit zone, running from Kabul through Bagram to Northern Alliance territory, where antipathy to the Taliban is apparently quite widespread…
…and then making it clear it would be kept secure by overwhelming force if necessary. Again, I would have liked to see that…but Biden chose not to do it, and because of the purblind stupidity of the “Peace Dividend” we couldn’t…
i don’t know what to tell you R S Foster, there’s none so blind as those who will not see. The Taliban’s not going to be kicking down your door or mine in the coming days, there was a flight slot here that could have evacuated 500 more human beings but instead dogs were. you can rationalise it. I find it obscene. You didnt order the MOD to facilitate this, its done now.
…you are assuming a flight for people was lost, and ignoring the people who got out on one that would not otherwise have happened. And asserting that people with papers who were through the cordon were left on the tarmac in consequence. I’m interested in your evidence, no more and no less…
You personally like some people (not the human terrorists who blew up those people at Kabul airport, right?) better than animals. Some people like animals better than some people. The same argument. You use it to call “mental” and dismiss the “people” who disagree, as people are entitled to do. Which sounds a lot like misanthropy to me.
Where do we get off deciding what life is more valuable? The ego of us is quite astounding. Nearly always non-human animals are suffering because of human action and we have a responsibility to do something to rectify that. The worst thing is they don’t even know why; whenever there is a fire or a war or an oil slick or whatever I think of the animals… confused, afraid, dying and in pain because of our actions.
“Compassion brings the strong [human] down to the level of the weak, the rich [human] to the poor, the healthy [human] to the sick, the happy [human] to the sad. And because it does so without coercion, it is profoundly humanising, [maybe] even [but possible not] when the recipient is an animal.”
Peni5 Farting.
there’s a lot of people on this board and the operation Ark article attempting to rationalise misanthropy and a psychopathic preference for animals life’s over humans life’s by covering it in a cloak of compassion or empathy for the suffering of animals. You people are mental. Resources were diverted from evacuating human beings from a warzone to save dogs, all your magical thinking and public whining enabled this obscene decision. Human beings who had a right to be evacuated have been left stranded in Kabul, some of these people will be tortured and killed by the Taliban.
F%$k your performative compassion for dogs.
None of them could answer on the operation ark article, what justifies saving a dogs life over a human beings other than that you personally like dogs better, can any one of you answer here, why is a dog life more worthy than an Afghan humans beings life?
Er … Why are you attacking me? I agree with you.
sorry Drahcir posted as a reply to you by mistake I meant to put in main chat, your the only commentator on this board making any sense
No problem.
“Peni5 farting” makes sense?