Discrimination is discrimination...

...regardless of the reasoning behind the discrimination.

Via Jackart, I've happened upon Karl Winn, an angry man ranting about (not) employing those who have been in the Armed Forces:

Anybody who has been in the pay of such a military force, and by their silence and complicity has condoned such illegal and immoral actions while accepting a monthly blood-stained pay-packet, certainly will not be considered for employment by us!

What this would appear to suggest is that simply being in the army is reason enough to assume someone is guilty of criminal actions - even if there is nothing to suggest that they actually are. It is the sort of sweeping generalisation that can only really be made by someone truly ignorant. You simply cannot make this sort of blanket assertion without ending up with egg on your face. It is like saying everyone who has ever been in the Labour party supported the Iraq War - it is palpable nonsense.

Winn has clarified his position on his own website:

...we are not talking about people who do their duty. Nobody is going to condemn any service man or woman for that. What I'm referring to is the unwillingness of far too many service men and women to give evidence against those who commit criminal offences. .. I'm not talking about incidents that happen in the heat of battle against armed combatants, but actions, that by any standard, amount to murder, or other such crimes against a civilian population. However, I accept we'll never agree on this. Your allegiance is to the British Military - mine is on the side of its victims.

Which seems to indicate that he has realised that he has gone too far - that his sweeping generalisation was simply not fair. But unfortunately for Winn, the first comment shows that he was talking about people who do their duty - "anyone who has been in the pay of such a military force" - and his back-tracking is nothing other than the desperate panic of an arrogant man who has put his foot firmly in his mouth. He is condemning those who have done their duty.

See, what Winn is advocating is discrimination - nothing more, nothing less. He is going to discriminate against all people who have been in the Armed Forces based on the actions of a few. When you think about it, it is just as ignorant as refusing to employ all people from an ethnic minority because a few members of that ethnic minority have committed crimes in the past.

I have no particular desire to defend the Armed Forces, and have no time any more to support the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq in any way. But Winn's discriminatory comments aggravate me because he denies the concept of individuality, and assumes guilt not based on individual actions, but on his own crude understanding of a world he stands on the outside of.