FIONA Bruce has come under fire for interrupting a heartfelt speech by a Question Time audience member recounting her experience in Afganistan.
Identified only as the "woman in the red T-shirt" by Bruce, the audience member spoke about her experiences being deployed with the British military in Afghanistan in 2017 and 2018.
She said she saw "firsthand some of the benefits of us being there and some of the negatives".
She continued: "At the time we knew that we weren't there to make a radical change to the situation in Afghanistan, but I think we could all at least hold our heads up high and say that we were seeing green shoots emerging. Be that women's education, be that people in Afghanistan being able to live a peaceful, secure and prosperous life.
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"With the recent events - that I don't think have particularly come as a shock - those green shoots are now stone dead. The Afghans that I supported, I've heard, have been executed in cold blood.
"The people that I served with and who served on previous tours who have lost friends, brothers, sons, sisters are now seriously questioning what it was all for.
"The only way I can feel like I cannot be utterly embarrassed or humiliated about my service is that if we, as a democratic nation, hold those responsible for this to account and have a full parliamentary inquiry, which Boris Johnson is trying to weasel out of having, trying to pretend that we don't need one where it holds to account both some of the political decisions but also the military hierarchy who are responsible for strategic and operational decisions that have led to failure."
No words needed. Just watch….
— Brexitshambles (@brexit_sham) August 18, 2021
pic.twitter.com/3bstJy43oA
The recounting of her time in Afghanistan and thoughts on what needs to happen in the wake of the crisis was listened to attentively by the entire panel as well as the rest of the audience with only a couple of voiced agreements from British-American filmmaker and broadcaster Mehdi Hasan.
She added that Nick Carter (above), who is head of the British Army, had been making media rounds yesterday morning as MPs were set to debate the Afghanistan crisis at a recalled House of Commons.
Bruce interrupted to offer viewers Carter's title as Army chief, saying: "Brigadier Nick Carter, yeah" but was corrected by the audience member who gave him his official title of "General".
The interruption was described as "patronising" with many on social media praising the "moving, powerful, articulate and heartfelt" speech.
Twitter user @D_Raval said that the veteran "nails the core question in the aftermath of the Afghanistan defeat".
Others questioned why Bruce thought that it was important to interrupt the speech and still get the rank wrong.
Another described the issue as not just one for the BBC, but for the wider society. User @acrs_h added: "Attempts to quash valid points and silence normal people using archaic formalities and systems is just the establishment's way of maintaining control via the class system."
The audience member decried the fact that Carter is "quibbling whether the Taliban are even the enemy", when he was talking about engaging with the insurgent group.
READ MORE: Dominic Raab 'unavailable' for key call with Afghan official as Taliban took over
She called on Carter to accept responsibility for military failures, for Britain to accept as a nation that it has been defeated, and the generals responsible for that defeat "need to be held to account".
She asked James Cleverly, UK Government minister for the Middle East and North Africa, to assure her to hold these generals to be held to account so she and other veterans can feel the country has learned something - and other generations do not need to go under the same process.
Cleverly was not able to commit to a full inquiry on the programme.
The BBC was contacted for comment.
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