We know from Iraq that those with responsibility for 20 years of strategic disaster won’t actually be held responsible
On the morning of 14 March 1757, one of the Royal Navy’s most senior serving admirals, John Byng, was marched on to the deck of the warship HMS Monarch, forced to kneel and shot by a firing squad of marines. At the time, during the Seven Years’ War, the execution divided the establishment and the country. But he had failed “to do his utmost” to comply with his instructions to take the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean, and during a global war that was not good enough.
