u/Capital_Resident_872

"Shortly after Tr*mp's announcement about sending a hospital ship to Greenland, the military explored the possibility of chartering a private ship."

I have no words for how embarrassing this is.

Also apparently you now have to censor Tr*mp here. Edit: In posts!

French Army Corporal Anicet Girardin was recently killed while serving UNIFIL in Lebanon. His K9, Ros, survived the attack and was decorated and retired at his handler's memorial ceremony. Ros will live with Corporal Girardin's family.

Morten Kromann is a Danish Afghanistan veteran and in my opinion writes some of the finest political commentary in the country. I saw this one today and it seemed relevant regardless of country.

Translation:

Veteran to Friis Bach: Is your legacy more important than the soldiers you sent to war?

Politicians are demanding the right to erase themselves from the history they wrote when they sent us to war. Consideration for their legacy obviously weighs more heavily than responsibility for 44 fallen Danes and thousands of injured veterans, writes Morten Kromann.

A thousand-page report on Denmark's 20-year efforts in Afghanistan has been ready for over a year.

The work was commissioned by the Danish Parliament in 2021, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has assessed that nothing in the material compromises the security of the kingdom. Yet it has not been published.

That in itself is objectionable. But what is worse is that the politicians on the Foreign Policy Committee demand the right to delete their own names and statements from the history they themselves wrote when they sent Danish soldiers – like me – to war.

Four prime ministers, nine foreign ministers and ten defense ministers – as well as a large number of members of the Foreign Policy Committee – can redact their role.

Søren Gade (V), who was Minister of Defense when the Helmand decision was made, will – for a while yet – lead the Presidium of the Danish Parliament, which must approve the report.

Christian Friis Bach (V), former chairman of the Foreign Policy Committee, has himself proposed the model: Politicians must be able to approve any quote in which they are mentioned by name.

He defends the scheme in an interview with defense media OLFI on 23 April.

Christian Friis Bach's central argument is that the statements of politicians in the Foreign Policy Committee are protected by a guarantee of confidentiality, and that this guarantee must be respected. It is an argument that can be discussed. But he goes significantly further.

In the interview, the former chairman of the board draws an analogy between the politician's statements behind closed doors and the veteran who, in a confidential room, provides information to a caseworker about serious challenges from his deployment. Information about health, psyche, conscience.

Asked by OLFI's journalist whether the comparison with veterans' health information holds, Christian Friis Bach replied:

"That comparison is 100 percent transferable. It's about experiences in the participation you had in Afghanistan."

The journalist insists: Surely there is a world of difference between the individual veteran and the political decision-makers?

"There's not a world of difference at all," answers Christian Friis Bach.

Yes, Christian Friis Bach. It's there. I can promise you that.

I was in Helmand. Christian Friis Bach was in a meeting room at Christiansborg Palace. These are two very different rooms, two very different roles, two very different forms of responsibility. That he still puts himself and the rest of us in the same category – as if the decision to send soldiers to war can be equated with being a soldier – is completely crazy.

Think of the veteran who came home from Helmand but never quite came back as himself.

Who sleeps four hours at a time if it's a good night.

Who can't go to the supermarket without scanning every corner for enemies.

Who has lost their job, their family, their grip on the everyday life that the rest of us take for granted.

His life was shattered by the war that politicians sent him into. Now he must fight to have that damage recognized.

Christian Friis Bach himself chose the analogy. So let's see what's going on in that room.

The veteran starts with a military psychiatrist. Then the Veterans Center. Then the Labor Market Insurance. Then the municipal social services. Then the job center.

Every single time: a new face, the same story. The worst he has ever experienced, brought out and laid out in front of strangers he has never met before. Again. And again. And again.

And if he says no? If he says he can't do it anymore – that it's too private, too painful?

Then his work injury cannot be recognized. He will receive no compensation. No help.

Consent is not a real right for the veteran. It is the price of even moving forward. Over and over again.

It costs them nothing if the politicians say no. They don't have to justify it. They don't even have to admit that they did it. They can disappear from history without leaving a trace.

This is the comparison that Friis Bach calls "100 percent transferable".

The politicians in the Foreign Policy Committee were at work in the meetings. They exercised the most serious form of public authority a democracy knows. They decided whether Denmark should send soldiers to war.

It's not a personal experience. It's the exercise of power. And the exercise of power demands responsibility afterwards. Even when it hurts. Even when twenty years have passed.

The confidentiality rules in the Foreign Policy Committee were not introduced to protect politicians' personal experience of having participated in decisions about war. They protect information about Denmark's security. Moving that protection from state secrets to political legacy is simply unethical.

Responsibility is heavy. But the decision to send others to war cannot be equated with the experience of being in it yourself. The politicians have chosen an office where they seek responsibility – that is the very premise of the mandate. Soldiers who failed in Afghanistan have been prosecuted . There was nothing to hide behind. There was only responsibility.

Christian Friis Bach otherwise assures that "nothing is being hidden". But in the same interview he admits that a majority of the board was ready to completely block the use of the material if they were not given the opportunity to write themselves out.

"The choice was between nothing being used or quoted, or the politicians individually making commitments."

It's not a compromise. It's blackmail. The politicians are taking the investigation that the Folketing (Danish Parliament) itself ordered as hostage. The ransom is the right to erase themselves from history.

The model has a broader reach than those who use it. Politicians who have sat in on the meetings without being quoted risk being made suspicious – because no one from the outside can tell the difference between the one who is not quoted and the one who has deleted their quote. The least one can ask is that those quoted stand by the fact that they said something that the researchers found relevant.

The journalist presses Christian Friis Bach on the crucial point: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already assessed that the material can be published. The security argument is gone. What is left, other than a self-serving desire to protect oneself?

"There is the very simple reason that you need to have a board that works," he answers.

In other words: The future must be protected from the past. Consideration for future board meetings weighs more heavily than consideration for 44 fallen Danes and thousands of injured veterans who never had a real choice about whether their most private suffering should be shared with one public office after another.

Responsibility is not a principle that you turn off when it gets uncomfortable. Responsibility is absolute. Politicians will be held accountable on their own terms. But it is the veterans and the survivors who have paid the price – without conditions, without consent. Norwegian politicians have taken responsibility. They call Afghanistan a " defeat ".

That is the difference that Christian Friis Bach does not dare to acknowledge. It is not easy to overlook.

Informative article about the current situation in Greenland. Very much worth the read for people who might not follow Danish/Greenlandic news daily.

TLDR: It's a clusterfuck. Everyone knows the Danish troop buildup in Greenland is due to the US, half of the people pretend it's due to Russia, some Greenlandic parties abuse the situation to push a very anti-Danish narrative and while all this is going on we're negotiating with the US about more US bases on the island. :D