I'm with the unpopular position on this. What is so special about them ? So they put themselves at risk in their career, join the queue. Don't give me this defending liberty horseshit either, its a career choice. The armed forces themselves are selling it that way in their advertisements for recruits.
There is some sort of collective guilt being manufactured in this country about the loss of life being experienced by our soldiers in the far east. While I agree its tragic that lives are being lost, we are involved in a conflict and that is an unfortunate bi-product of such an event. It seems that the British public want to see measures taken in parts of the world that are volatile but are not willing to accept any loss on our part. So to balance up the guilt that we feel for this we have to over-compensate by treating the vehicles of for this action as some sort of special group.
Its a knee-jerk, guilt ridden decision being made to appease public opinion and its myopic and inconsistent. Still, if it boosts the crowd on a Saturday then yee-ha. Get them in