Dying for new roads?

newsed1

"in the highest reaches of the British military establishment it is actually forbidden to use the word ‘war’ about Afghanistan at all. It is instead a ‘campaign’ – to win hearts and minds. The aim apparently is to build roads and usher little girls to school – nothing so, um, unpleasant as actually killing anyone, good heavens, no, no; only good, positive, uplifting, optimistic things."

Is that a surprise? have you seen the recent TV ads for the army? It makes it look like Oxfam in combat trousers.

Remember that up until the 1990s, the liberal establishment did not have its hands on the Police or Armed Forces. The ludicrous Stephen Lawrence enquiry (his murderers will never be brought to justice because their 'defence' would expose things the liberals don't want exposed) finally allowed the Police to be brought under the liberal heel.

They've had less success with the armed forces, but they've still managed to make invent very 'senior' status for civvy-street women in PA roles (to use one example) as well spinning the armed forces as a kind of militarised North London social services division.

And Old Labour Brown can't stand the military and all those toff officers, so he cut their money.

Rhoda Klapp

Military success is not about body count or even ground taken. It is measured by the achievement of political ends.

Imagine if we were crowing about the numbers of Muslims we had killed. Do we separate the Taliban from the non-combatants? Or do we do it vietnam-style, count all the dead as VC? There's no mileage in it.

I take a little exception, as one who is against the war as currently constituted, that I haven't had it explained to me correctly. I understand it all right, I just do not believe we can fix that place. I do not believe our enemy is the 'Taliban' and no-one else. I do not believe that Al Q lives in Afg, and has no alternative. It's a stupid war, wrong time, wrong place, wrong enemy. Under-resourced and ill-defined. I don't need re-education, I reject it completely, having heard the case hundreds of times.

Phil Ed

Also, why on earth do we tell the enemy exactly where and when we'll be attacking them? All they have to do is tune in to the BBC's World Service. We even kindly let them know how many of our forces will be involved. Awfully decent of us don't you think?

alan stoddart

The Left are quite happy to tell you that body counts are not a measure of success...but are also quite happy to tell you that a count of British bodies is a measure of failure...every dead soldier has a currency to them...they are quite happy to use the soldier's coffins as a soapbox to pronounce their anti-war rhetoric from....happy to use grieving families as evidence of the tragedy of it all...and yet not really caring a damn about the soldiers, or even their families, in reality.

The war is militarily pointless. It would have been far better to use the billons on intelligence and security...but we are here now and the politics mean we cannot withdraw as this will give a victory to Al Qaeda who will then use that to encourage further such wars nearer to home. Fight it to the finish in Afghanistan or endure further wars elsewhere and in your own countries....or surrender and live under sharia.

Robbit

Brilliant expose, Melanie.

Yet again.

John Edwards

In Hugh Kennedy's excellent book on the Great Arab Conquests he describes how the Muslim armies swept across modern Syria and Palestine,Iraq and Iran before receiving their first significant military setback in the year 698. Where did this defeat take place? the Helmand and Kandahar provinces of modern Afganistan.

Tom Durkin

Newsed1:
"The ludicrous Stephen Lawrence enquiry (his murderers will never be brought to justice because their 'defence' would expose things the liberals don't want exposed) finally allowed the Police to be brought under the liberal heel."

care to elaborate?
i have had a few discussions with people on this blog about stephen lawrence, where their opinions could have easily come from an stormfront chat room...
your opinion on the face of it seems different given you mention the dreaded 'liberals' so i would certainly be interested to hear more??

jonnyjackhammer

Well Mel. You'd best properly spell it out to me too cos I'm not convinced! I know the "Nukes and Taliban in Pakistan" argument, but somehow I can't get very worked up about a conjecture based on a psycho/domino theory, wrapped up in a lot of imponderables. I know one thing for sure – it’s costing many young soldiers lives and I’m still not sure what victory looks like. My hunch, in any event, is that a military victory is impossible regardless of how many Taliban are killed or however many Afghanistani policemen and soldiers are trained. We urgently need an exit strategy. As for Pakistan – start with the Madras schools of indoctrination and help the Government of Pakistan do something about them. If we have learnt anything from History it is that Generals often fight the current war using the technology and strategy of the previous one. I suspect this "campaign" is a case in point. Perhaps we should concentrate our efforts on rethinking how we mount a sustained ideological offensive against a jihadist culture and the uncompromising religious fundamentalists behind it.

James Skinner

Nice to see you back Melanie, excellent QT appearence the other day. The British public generally have no clue as to what the Iraq war or Afghanistan were really about. All they know is "Blair lied". Keep up the good work.

Ray

Be careful what you wish for, Mel. Taliban casualty statistics would probably end up becoming like NHS statistics: the Government would find some cunning way of fiddling or spinning them.

Edward McLaughlin

Excellent point raised. We are involved in a war and the total absence of any appraisal of the effect our troops are having on the enemy, has been and is, a very revealing insight into the mindset of the media, and it would seem, the high end MoD.

Our public are shoved the daily despondency of Wooton Basset only. This is of course a necessary and rightful part of what we need to see, but this is all we are offered and the effect of its drip feed is inevitable - the motivation of its purveyors, obvious.

A mire is portrayed, and through this relentlessly negative coverage, feelings are cultivated, of inevitable defeat. Various flabby comparisons are made with previous wars which bore little resemblance to this one. We must fail - so the threnody goes - because others failed centuries ago or thousands of miles distant from Helmand.

Tet-Elphinstone Syndrome.

Derek BLADES

The UK government is very wise not to publish statistics on Taliban deaths. No doubt British soldiers kill a lot of Afghans but it is virtually impossible to determine whether the dead were Taliban resistance fighter or just Afghan men going about their normal business. . This is a lawless part of the world, Ms Phillips, and most Afghan men carry weapons. Boasting about the numbers of dead Afghans will not win hearts and minds.

Does anybody still remember the disastrous “body counts” and “kill ratios” so popular during the Vietnam war? Any corpse with the right skin colour was put down as a Viet Cong – and that regardless of age or gender. How quickly memories fade!

alan stoddart

Ainsworth can't tell the truth because he might end up in court like Geert Wilders:

http://www.wildersontrial.com/

Who said the truth will set you free? Guess they didn't live in Holland.

Adam B.

Derek Blades, the Taleban are not "resistance fighters".

Linda Smith

Presumably, like Hamas, Taleban do not wear uniforms, live amongst civilians, and glory in their deaths as "martyrs".

Presumably we do not hear how many "Taleban" as opposed to civilians are being killed because that would expose our Government to the same criticism as Israel gets - and similar calls for prosecution for war crimes for killing civilians.

Carl

Adam B - you say that the Taliban are not Resistance Fighters. What are they doing then other than trying to rid Afghanistan of a force they see as nothing more than occupiers. I can tell you for a fact, and indeed seeing how you don't understand, I need to, that to the average "Taliban", the US, British and French are no different to the Russians

J Evans

Perhaps someone can answer why our troops are invariably killed 'whilst on foot patrol' This seems to me exactly the same as cannon fodder in WW1 . In that case they were sent 'over the top', for pity's sake stop them going out on foot patrols

steve

Britain is involved in waging a counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan the same way that one was waged in Iraq. And the strategy they’re following is straight out of the playbook of that far left socialist General David Petraeus. Perhaps he reads the Guardian and listens to the BBC. Clearly, we'd be better off with Melanie Phillips in charge.

Derek BLADES

Linda Smith's unhealthy fixation with Hamas is warping her judgement.

Of course Taliban fighters blend in with local population and disguise themselves. That is what members of any resistance movement do. Think French or Norwegian resistance, Linda. Do you think they were cheating and should have worn special uniforms and lived in separate camps so as not to confuse the German occupiers?

St Bruno

This will possibly be that last traditional war Britain will fight major land battles with troops on the ground in trenches. Where is all the high tech stuff? Safe in American hands no doubt like Cadbury chocs. In the Gulf war the Brits were called the ‘Borrowers’ by the Yanks, I wonder why? Situation seems not to have changed.
What a lovely war it has been so far. Every day it is discussed in the media, every day the enemy is told our plans even when and where the next battle is to be fought. Wounded and dead soldiers paraded in the streets. Morale is low at the home-front , the enemy is all about us, security state high. Constant propaganda on the BBC, Sky, CNN, etc political point scoring gone bonkers.

What an utter shambles. Major General on last Sunday TV walking with his hands in his pockets, must have done the PR course, can’t even speak without uming and ahing. Did not give me confidence, but who am I to criticise,

My TA niece will undoubtedly be going out soon, don’t know when but all their mobile number have been checked.

Chris R

Anyone see the ['Behind Enemy Lines' programme on More4 the other day? We are so going to lose this war. We've been invading Afghanistan off and on since 1805. When are we ever going to grow up?

Shane

Only in Britain in 2010 would a Defence Secretary feel the need to tell people that in a major offensive in Afghanistan against the Taliban in which 4,000 British soldiers are taking part, that it is highly likely that there will be quite a few British casualties as a result.
We are getting nauseatingly sentimental about our Armed Forces in this country. Whenever a soldier is killed it's the same old thing splashed all over the Sun: eulogies for another dead "hero", pictures of weeping widows, mothers and friends, columns about what a beautiful man or woman the deceased was, columns about the inhumanity of the enemy. Serving soldiers going on Britain's Got Talent (shouldn't they be doing their job instead of looking for sympathy?), and don't even get me started on those frivolous "Millies" that now happen every year thanks to the Sun.
The purpose of the Army is to fight whoever its told to fight. The purpose of a soldier in war is to kill the enemy or be killed. The soldiers of this country are not armed social workers or missionaries and it's about time that people stopped being so stupidly sentimental, wake up to the real world and just recognise them for what they are, along with the reality that the enemy are not the legions of Hell.

Banksy

"of course Mcchrystal's strategy is about winning hearts and minds." How? This current operation will follow the same pattern as the 'liberation' of Fallujah in Iraq. A couple of days of massive US/Nato bombardment followed by the troops and tanks storming in. The area will be declared a free fire zone - meaning they can shoot anyone that moves - even if , as in Falluljah, men, women and children were fleeing for their lives or lying wounded in the street. Those that haven't been bombed or shot will then be required to wear US-approved security badges to be worn at all times on pain of death. All this happened in Fallujah and will happen again in Helmand. So if their hearts and brains haven't being eaten by ravenous dogs, I guess the locals will be will be won over.

Linda Smith

Derek Blades confirms my contention that, as it is difficult to distinguish embedded and un-uniformed Taleban (like Hamas) from “civilians”, if our government were to publish numbers killed, they would be exposed to the same criticism as Israel gets - and similar calls for prosecution for war crimes for killing civilians.

Dixon

This is all of course about the touchy-feely world of "caring" in which kitsch of pseudo-reason Western culture is sinking. Drowning in its own emotional gunk.

Alexander of Macedon dominated the entire region, much larger than present day Afghanistan, in three years, and it remained utterly under the rule of his successors. He did that with no weapons more sophisticated than had his opponents and with far fewer men ( although twenty times as many as NATO has there ), albeit immensely trained and disciplined. How could he do that when we cannot, with all the devastating firepower and communications at our disposal? Its very simple, people of the 4th Century BC were not afraid of being seen actually killing their enemies. Which they did without quarter, slaughtering at least 200,000 ancestors of todays Afghans.

Grab them by the testicles and their hearts and minds will follow.

Dixon

...before Im accused of underhanded exaggeration, Ill admit, yep, "twenty times" is a considerable exageration! Which only makes the comparison I drew more striking.

Philo

Dixon
February 9th, 2010 5:56pm
"This is all of course about the touchy-feely world of "caring" in which kitsch of pseudo-reason Western culture is sinking. Drowning in its own emotional gunk."

The "schoolboy goth" soldiers on.

Ronnie

Linda Smith.

You might send them a few quid to allow them to buy some nice uniforms, in the interest of making them easier to kill. Nice red tunics with white pith helmets.

Dog Snob

Chris R

When are you going to mature to the stage where you base your comments on more than one programme on more4?

You are so not aware of things sweety.

Graeme Thompson

Absolutely fantastic point Melanie. If we conduct wars with the purpose of preempting propaganda attacks by our 5th Column what hope is there?

As you mentioned in your previous entry, 'core-conservaties' have noone to vote for this election.

Please give us something to vote for, not just read and listen to.

I know that UKIP is an option, especially now Lord Pearson has vowed to increase military spending by 40% and to ban the burqa (I'm not without reservations on this), but at the end of the day its still a one issue party (as vital as that one issue is). A provisional party you set up to kick the Tories and any other takers back into gear would get the support of 'core-conservatives' and others in a shot.