Brown’s Afghanistan speech was encouraging, but the strategy's still flawed

RobertD

Why not learn from some sucessful countries (try USA and Germany for example) and accept that local loyalties are stronger than those to a central authority in a country that has only ever existed as lines on a map. Go for a federal structure with control over day to day living at the provincial / tribal level and a federal government that only manages those functions that are essential to the survival of the whole area. (Protecting the borders, international relations, top level legal system, top level economic management etc) and let the provinces run themselves in a plurailty of different ways acceptable to their local populations. If some of those don't work in the same way as a western state then so be it. Looking for a "strong man" to run the country in the West's interest is doomed to fail.

C

I think the problem is Brown isn't a strong enough leader and lacks the clarity of thought to explain that the stability of Afghanistan, whether as a single nation state or otherwise, is critical to establishing regional security and will significantly enhance greater international security. Hence he, and his ministers, confuse the British public - terrorism one day, narcotics the next, allowing girls to go to school on another. All admirable intentions but these are all things that contribute to the desired end state and not the clear "why" that the government needs to sell the campaign to the British public.

Clarity, commitment (political and military), leadership and determination are required to win a foreign campaign like this and the current government doesn't seem to be able to provide that. Will the next lot be any better? That remains to be seen but they can't be any worse.

Einy Shah

I found Brown speech very robotic and rehearsed, it didn't sound convincing at all

www.einyshah.blogspot.com

LarryG

hello. i agree this gentleman is only saying these things because it is his job to do so. absurd foreign aid at the point of a gun, certainly bespeaks ulterior motives, and as a citizen of America: i am in no fear of horse and camel jockeys storming over the mountains: attacking America. it is fine to give them farming equipment, technology, irrigation; whatever will help them in their poppy production, when the fools go home: will improve their lives. you do not need to do that at the point of a gun.i read the Russians want to advise us now, about how to help them get their pipeline built. push the bad guys into Pakistan, so we can continue the military machine there. we have new weapons to test. ignore the dead people. shareholders call them collateral damage.

Cogito Ergosum

Brown said we were fighting "because it is right". That is not the way to fight: if we as a democratic peaceful nation are fighting it should be because we have to, because we are desperate, because there is no alternative.

So we are not really really fighting, and it shows. Brown still runs this war like an accountant.

Given that, the sooner we quit the better.

Steve.W

“but there is still no overarching sense of what the ‘Afghan mission’ hopes to achieve”

Daniel Korski @12.03pm seems to 'know'.

Austin Barry

David Blackburn

I have a horrible feeling you may be completely barmy.

Listen up, as our American chums say:

Afghanistan 101:

Afghanistan is a tribal, muslim society and will kill foreign infidel invaders however good their intentions. We are crusaders and as such must be killed. End of story.

So let's just leave the Afghans to their medieval life style and return home to beer and skittles. The coming battleground with the Islamists is green and pleasant and I fear that the Adlestrop of old England will ring with the screams of the dying rather than birdsong.

Kalvis Jansons

Mr Brown has lost the trust of the people. I think most of us feel, if Mr Brown thinks it is a good idea to continue, it is probably a bad idea:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/

Fred

The definition of what we are there was was incoherent. We are there "to do a job". But what is the job?

Luddite

It's wrong to be in Afghanistan!!
If the Afgans wish to lead medieval lives it's initially their choice and of no concern of ours, if then want to beat their women and throw homosexual of high building so be it, and to you white middle-class feminist who find these comments offensive may i suggest you send your sons and your daughters, better still go yourselves. The war in Aghanistan is a liberal-left inspired conflit not a right-wing one and fought for all the wrong reasons.

drakes drum

Perhaps readers would like to visit the excellent blog Anna Raccoon, and read the article entitled
"The Sick Man of Europe
by Anna Raccoon on September 4, 2009

ESTABLISHMENT ‘COLLUDING IN PLIGHT OF SICK MAN BROWN’

Read more: http://www.annaraccoon.com/#ixzz0QDQ9E99X

Titus Aduxas

All this - in spite of Gordon Brown and ZaNu Labour, just think what could be achieved if there was a UK Government that actually supported British troops.

The Laughing Cavalier

This war is not going to be prosecuted successfully as long as Labout continue to beleve that the Army is the military wing of Oxfam and DFID.

john problem

The main feature on French TV News last night was the death of a French soldier in Afghanistan - the 30th. We were told that 315 foreign soldiers have now died there. Brown's keeping that quiet - the fact that of 315 dead soldiers, 212 are Brits.

Irene

Encouraging? in what way?

JONNY

I honestly have no idea what we think we're doing.
Mucking around in some one else's country.

Tiberius

Next Friday sees the 8th anniversary of the day the world (certainly for the West) changed fundamentally for the forseeable future.

The invasion of Afghanistan succeeded in removing the training camps from which the jihadists graduated. Bill Clinton avoided dealing with them, and Dubya had to face the consequences of that. To have left them intact after 9/11 would have been to replicate Clinton's mistake.

The invasion also enacted one of the Bush doctrine's more successful tenets, namely to take this fight to the enemy on their territory. Closing the curtains at home and hoping that the petrol bomb doesn't come through the window would have been a wrong alternative policy. So the troops haven't died in vain. They have saved civilian lives at home.

None of this deals with the basic home-grown terrorist problem, nor the basket-case of Pakistan. But it does reduce the threat in the round by some measure. If the forces' sacrifices are compromised in some way, it is in the area of the Establishment's response to Islamism, with the shameful policy of appeasement practised by the Church, the government, and the judiciary amongst others.

TrevorsDen

"Afghanistan is a tribal, muslim society and will kill foreign infidel invaders however good their intentions" --- Where do you get that from? What passes for your knowledge of history comes from thick TV presenters.
Afghanistan has a history of a central govt and of dealing with foreigners. It does not have a history of 'taliban'.

Most of the 'taliban' are in fact foreign fighters.

The reality is the Afghans hate the taliban and want us to throw them out. They also want an honest not a corrupt govt. That is the failure of our policy - but given the dubious way even we are being governed right now, what more can we or they expect?.

Hysteria

What Tiberius and Trevors said - and Rhuaridh on the other thread.

Right fight, being fought wrong.

Augustus

Oh yes, the war can be fought more effectively and more intelligently, but it does have to be fought and won - they say.
But the obvious parallel is Vietnam. Nato versus the Taliban and their fanatical supporters worldwide, fighting on their chosen ground, is unwinnable. Maybe the US will eventually realize this, but not until many more fine young men are needlessly killed.