Is there any point in having Armed Forces?

On 1 July 1916, in addition to the wounded, 19,240 British soldiers were killed. They achieved nothing. Only the French achieved their objectives in the southern sector of the Somme. And in contrast with the British experience, French women weren't engaged in a bitter power struggle with the men. In 1914 and 1939 Britain declared war on Germany. On both occasions the Germans didn't want it. German diplomats tried to prevent it. Britain killed thousands of Germans. We regard our "killers" as heroes. Rightly so, in my opinion, because they were doing their duty. War is described as politics by other means; immigration control can be said to be war by peaceful means. Immigration control is genuinely about preventing these islands being occupied by other peoples, while, as pointed out above, in 1914 and 1939 the Germans didn't want to occupy the UK. These days we have a formidable arsenal of weapons. The occupation of other people's territory is mainly driven by men. And the obvious main loophole open to foreigners who want to get around the usual visa constraints is marriage. Mrs Thatcher promised to close this loophole when she was first elected Prime Minister back in 1979, but she didn't. The contrast between British servicemen risking their lives while foreign men occupy the UK was starkly revealed on 12 May 1982 when the European Commission of Human Rights determined in favour of three women whose husbands weren't allowed to live in the UK. The Falklands Conflict was at its height; and those three women weren't even British. They had British residency, which meant they could live in their own countries (Malawi, Egypt, The Philippines) and the UK, and - if their husbands were of different nationality - their husband's country. So, with a possibility they could live in three different countries, what gave those women the "right" to complain? And surely, since the European Convention on Human Rights was set up in response to the atrocious treatment of minorities during the Second World War, the European Commission of Human Rights was wrong to support them to live in the UK. Meanwhile 255 British servicemen were killed on and near the Falklands, and a similar number, we are told, subsequently committed suicide. Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights says "Everyone's right to life shall be protected by law." (!) So, no armed forces, then? A present-day recruitment ad. for the Royal Navy shows it helping ferry Africans across the Mediterranean. If they were returned to Africa that would be all well and good. But they aren't. Bringing them to Europe, where they are welcomed by an army of lawyers, makes a nonsense of having armed forces. When conscription ended in the early 1960s it seemed good for young British men, but an unforeseen outcome is that young foreign men see Britain as a desirable destination in which to live in order to avoid conscription in their own countries. While they are doing that, young patriotic British men join our armed forces... This is a lunatic scenario which supposedly protects our shores. Amend (or just end) asylum laws! Patricia Hewitt, Tony Blair's Equality Minister, campaigned successfully against Mrs Thatcher's 1979 policy. In her 1982 book "The Abuse of Power" she compared it with women's struggle for the vote. This was called a war. Therefore the roughly 400,000 foreign men who have used marriage to live in these islands since 1979 are here as a result of a war.