This isn't a surprise. James Cowan - the author of this sycophantic exercise in doublethink and CEO of the HALO Trust - is a complete ghoul and (I have it on at least one person's impression who met him while working with another NGO in that orbit) a "total fucking prick".

He's a privately educated posh boy who signed up with the Ulster Defence Regiment in order to carry out occupationist violence against Irish catholics, before taking a break to get a cushy ride at Oxford in return. His career in Afghanistan and Iraq, for which he recieved most of his honours and press contacts, were some of the most spectacular failures in both wars, including the experiment to retake Marjah and install a new government there that was a huge embarrasment and barely lasted two months. He also ran an infantry batallion in Iraq that got caught numerous times lying about successes, including claiming that one assualt on a small town was big military win because they found 1.5 tonnes of poppy seeds and bomb making equipment. When investigated later it turned out to be mostly piecemeal bits of ordinary electronics and 1.3 tonnes of mungo beans, not poppy seed at all (or alternatively, that was what was handed over for verification).

He was the head of the counter-terrorism task force surrounding the London olympics too. A task force that pushed (successfully) for the government to round up and imprison hundreds of people without due process or cause, on the basis that they were 'known activists' who might protest. I personally know that at least one of these people was an animal rights activist who had attended anti-monarchy protests in the past. They spent 48 hours in a police station after their flat was raided in the early hours of the morning, being treated as though they had some secret plan to attack the Olympics and then were continuously and intimidatingly 'surveilled' afterward.

This was also the task force that treated poorer London neighbourhoods like Republican Irish ones, as an occupying force, the biggest scandal that made the press being forcibly placing missile batteries on the roofs of public housing. The military had originally promised consultations but pulled out of the first public meeting at the last minute when they heard the decision was unpopular with local people. Their position then became, 'this is important, you're not' essentially. The same person who called him a "total fucking prick" said he had it on good authority that Cowan held a grudge about the fact that they weren't going to be greeted with a heroes welcome at that meeting. One of the buildings organised a legal challenge, taking the government to court over it, in part arguing that they had chosen to make their private residences at target for the terrorism the military was supposedly trying to prevent. They lost in court, with the government simply shouting 'terrorism' over and over again at a friendly judge. But that didn't stop Cowan using his friendly media contacts to do PR for the unpopular decision, including inviting a friendly Telegraph reporter to come and LARP with one before writing articles that not-so-subtly implied that residents kicking up a fuss about their homes coming under military occupation and stacked with high explosive were somehow unpatriotic or possibly even useful idiots helping terrorists.

HALO Trust does some good work, but it's also rotten with types like Cowan who have come with an agressively political agenda and seem to use it as much to further their own social climbing and image as promote the organisation.

In short, Cowan is a fucking snake of the military/media/state establishment ladder. His concern over the lasting damage and legacy of war didn't extend to Ireland, it didn't extend to Afghanistan, it didn't extend to Iraq, and it's no surprise it doesn't really extend to Ukraine either. He's an idealogue ghoul, run through with ambitious narcissism.