Forgive me for starting with a harsh point, but it needs to be said that the fact that 229 British servicemen have been killed in Afghanistan is not an argument for ending the war. There is a tendency at present to exploit people's admiration for the soldiers' courage as a means not of advancing the Allied campaign, but of trying to stop it.
Such arguments have much more force with a conscript army, but ours is a professional one. Men volunteer to fight and they know that when you fight, you may die. The death of 229 such professionals over the course of eight years is not, by the standard of most wars, a high number. Tomorrow, the nation remembers wars where that number of dead per day was commonplace. The recent losses are extremely sad, but not shocking or even surprising. In themselves, they tell you nothing about whether the war is right or wrong.
It is, therefore, a bad idea for Gordon Brown's public interventions on the subject of Afghanistan to be responses to particular deaths. Yesterday, he spoke in the wake of the murder of five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman. One feels that his timing, though not his content, was tacitly rebuked by General Nick Parker, the new British commander in theatre, who said: "I hope we don't make strategic decisions on the basis of this low-level, terrible action."
The actual words which Mr Brown used supported the Afghan campaign, but their psychological undertow was less encouraging: "Oh dear, oh dear. Don't panic! Don't panic!"
Mr Brown is well known for being an intensely political politician, forever calculating electoral advantage, but he does not understand the political effect of wars. His original hope in Afghanistan seems to have been that people somehow would not notice it much. He was not exactly against it, but he has never, as people say nowadays, taken "ownership" of it. This is a war: why has he never set up a war cabinet?
The Prime Minister constantly resisted generals' advice to reinforce. Even today, his increases are more apparent than real. When, for example, are the promised 500 extra men actually going to arrive? His sense is that British deaths are unacceptable to the British public, and therefore he must save the military from incurring more of them by pressing too fiercely forward.
He is wrong on two counts. In the first place, deaths are more likely if our forces cannot act decisively than if they can. You do not win by holding back.
In the second place, he is wrong about public attitudes. In well-run wars, people tend to see their side's deaths as arguments for victory, because they focus on what the fighting is for. I remember, during the Falklands Conflict how the BBC grotesquely miscalculated the public reaction to the sinking of HMS Sheffield, thinking that it would produce pressure for a peace deal. It did the opposite. If men were to die, people felt, their cause must prevail: men did not go to the bottom of the ocean so that diplomats could sleep soundly in their beds.
The strongest argument against any war is this: if it is not necessary, then it is unnecessary, and unnecessary war is immoral. Mr Brown maintains that this war is necessary – "We cannot, we must not and we will not walk away." But if he is right, as he is, that the safety of the streets of Britain is at stake in this fight, why are we not pushing
By Charles Moore Published: 7:18PM GMT 06 Nov 2009
Comments 44 | Comment on this article
Forgive me for starting with a harsh point, but it needs to be said that the fact that 229 British servicemen have been killed in Afghanistan is not an argument for ending the war. There is a tendency at present to exploit people's admiration for the soldiers' courage as a means not of advancing the Allied campaign, but of trying to stop it.
Such arguments have much more force with a conscript army, but ours is a professional one. Men volunteer to fight and they know that when you fight, you may die. The death of 229 such professionals over the course of eight years is not, by the standard of most wars, a high number. Tomorrow, the nation remembers wars where that number of dead per day was commonplace. The recent losses are extremely sad, but not shocking or even surprising. In themselves, they tell you nothing about whether the war is right or wrong.
It is, therefore, a bad idea for Gordon Brown's public interventions on the subject of Afghanistan to be responses to particular deaths. Yesterday, he spoke in the wake of the murder of five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman. One feels that his timing, though not his content, was tacitly rebuked by General Nick Parker, the new British commander in theatre, who said: "I hope we don't make strategic decisions on the basis of this low-level, terrible action."
The actual words which Mr Brown used supported the Afghan campaign, but their psychological undertow was less encouraging: "Oh dear, oh dear. Don't panic! Don't panic!"
Mr Brown is well known for being an intensely political politician, forever calculating electoral advantage, but he does not understand the political effect of wars. His original hope in Afghanistan seems to have been that people somehow would not notice it much. He was not exactly against it, but he has never, as people say nowadays, taken "ownership" of it. This is a war: why has he never set up a war cabinet?
The Prime Minister constantly resisted generals' advice to reinforce. Even today, his increases are more apparent than real. When, for example, are the promised 500 extra men actually going to arrive? His sense is that British deaths are unacceptable to the British public, and therefore he must save the military from incurring more of them by pressing too fiercely forward.
He is wrong on two counts. In the first place, deaths are more likely if our forces cannot act decisively than if they can. You do not win by holding back.
In the second place, he is wrong about public attitudes. In well-run wars, people tend to see their side's deaths as arguments for victory, because they focus on what the fighting is for. I remember, during the Falklands Conflict how the BBC grotesquely miscalculated the public reaction to the sinking of HMS Sheffield, thinking that it would produce pressure for a peace deal. It did the opposite. If men were to die, people felt, their cause must prevail: men did not go to the bottom of the ocean so that diplomats could sleep soundly in their beds.
The strongest argument against any war is this: if it is not necessary, then it is unnecessary, and unnecessary war is immoral. Mr Brown maintains that this war is necessary – "We cannot, we must not and we will not walk away." But if he is right, as he is, that the safety of the streets of Britain is at stake in this fight, why are we not pushing much harder for victory? Where is the urgency about trying to get this right? After all, the news is bad. The presidential election has been unhappy, to put it mildly, and no one really believes in President Karzai's government. It is, as Mr Brown boldly said, "a byword for corruption".The Afghan police, even without murdering its British allies, does not work.
Nor does the UN mission. Nor does the military alliance which is supposed to sustain the whole thing. It is surprising that Mr Brown does not use the word "Nato" more. That alliance, which has secured the Western world since the end of the Second World War, agreed to take on the Afghan task five years ago. Some – the Americans, of course, ourselves, the Danes, Dutch, Canadians, Australians and plucky little Estonians – have done their duty. But others have been contemptible. It turned out that the Italians were bribing the Taliban not to attack them. As for the Germans, I gather that one of their forces' biggest problems is obesity, because they hardly dare leave their Afghan base.
In Barack Obama, the continentals have at last got the US President of whom they dreamed, but they have almost completely failed to help him. He says the Afghan campaign is his foreign-policy priority, but where are the propaganda shots of gallant Jean and Fritz and Mario all assisting GI Joe's great task? Where are the common sacrifices and the common successes? The most testing military mission that Nato has undertaken is the one its members are least ready to support. "In the end," Mr Brown said, in a phrase which confirms his gloomy psychology, "we will succeed or fail together." It is almost as if some members would be happy with failure.
As for President Obama, he has a general in the field whom he appointed. General Stanley McChrystal duly tells Mr Obama what he needs – 40,000 more troops and a surge in Kandahar – but the President's favourite response is to set up a professorial working group and argue the case round Washington for months. And Pakistan remains in chaos. Our leaders maintain the rhetoric, but not the aim, the momentum, the will.
Because our leaders let the Afghan issue go to sleep politically, they are unnerved now that it has woken up. The critics sense this. The anti-war television coverage is emboldened; the families of those killed or wounded are pumped for condemnations of the fighting; the poll numbers for withdrawal creep higher. And politicians thinking of elections hedge their bets.
If we truly want to win the war in Afghanistan, we need to challenge its opponents much more fiercely. Politicians such as Nick Clegg, who congratulate themselves on asking the necessary, awkward questions, need to be interrogated about what they actually want. Do they want the first defeat of the most powerful military alliance in history at the hands of a small band of fanatics armed with little more than rifles and IEDs? Do they have any conception of what such a defeat would mean for the world order, for the stability of countries in the region, or for civil peace in every European city? Do they not understand that this fight will be seen all over the world not as a battle for control of some jagged mountains, but between values, and that, if our values do not win, they will lose?
Comments: 44
500 troops? You complain about 500 troops not being sent? You sir, are utterly clueless. You would need to send 50,000 troops and the USA would need to send 400,000 troops. This is not my estimate, but the estimate of the CIA station chief in Pakistan. Afghanistan is an almost impossible problem, and the public has rightfully seen it as such. Listen to the people for a change. It is their sons and daughters who will fight and die in that barren land. Meanwhile, fat journalists and politicians will fill their fingers with ink stains and dribble their tea on their shirts, while pronouncing a military strategy that they will not have to fulfill. I spent 4 years in the Marines during Vietnam. War is not just hell, it is mostly unnecessary, and this war is not an exception as it is a fool's mission. Send the journalists and politicians to Baghdad and Kabul and let them taste something besides the soft, fat underbelly of western civilization. They will come crying home like the indolent, spoiled children they are.... Is one brave UK warrior worth the whole of Afghanistan? I think not.... -Robert
All Mr. Moore's arguments are just so much whistling in the wind. This war will be won by the army that stays in the field the longest; and who really doubts that that will be the Taliban?
I'm flabbergasted at how we are all trying to sidestep the core reason why "our" values are different from "their" values. If we are going to "win" this war, there are lot of well educated, otherwise normal people we will have to convert to our values and not just in Afghansitan. Witness the doctor driving his jeep into Glasgow airport or the US army major killing 13 people whilst shouting Allah Akbar. We are not just fighting poor, uneducated people who can be persuaded (a la N. Ireland) - we are fighting a different mindset. But let's not mention religion in case anyone gets upset eh? Let's get the troops back home, pull up the drawbridge and keep a close eye on our inner cities.
All right minded people detest war. However , if we as a nation are asking our troops to sacrifice their lives it should not be done in the prissy pc fashion that this useless Govt is doing. It seems to want to fight a war where no-one gets hurt or killed , especially teh enemy (impossible); where no one is offended (i.e Muslim in the UK); and as for winning hearts and minds, what waste of time. Either we unleash our forces to go in full pelt to destroy the enemy and their supporters or we pull our troops out. This half-hearted wishy-washy left-liberal "politically correct" war is getting us nowhere.
And so here we have Charles Moore�s strategy for victory in Afghanistan. He writes: �If we truly want to win the war in Afghanistan, we need to challenge its opponents much more fiercely� How pathetic! What it would really take to win you would not be able to digest. Indeed your newspaper would be the first to throw their hands up in horror. Like Con Coughlin you want a humane victory by �equipping and training the Afghanis to look after themselves�. That has never happened and it never will. If you want a real military victory you will have to take the gloves off and engage in imposing draconian constraints on the indigenous population and blood letting on a massive scale right into Pakistan through overwhelming manpower and firepower. And your level of resolve amounts to a fierce challenge to your opponents! Mr. Moore either you advocate total war or else you starting supporting those of us who say lets get out � it really is not worth it.
Hiya MMB at 10:39 PM , darlin x . Maffs ain't my strong point , hun . Is wot your sayin good or bad ??? E x . BTW - is anyone workin tonite ?? I wrote loadsa stuff an I'm starin at this screen , wotchin it dry . Some people have had their stories posted twice which is soooo unfair !!! I'm in a moany mood LOL . Bye bye x .
These deaths are not, of themselves, a reason to end the war in Afghanistan-however, this war is illegal, immoral and unwinnable. As the Americans found to their cost in Vietnam, it is impossible to beat a whole people in a war. to win, you have to have the people on your side against a repressive regime. This is clearly not the case here. To say that fighting in Afghanistan helps to keep terrorism off the streets of Britain is clearly and demonstrably untrue - better to spend the money protecting our borders and people than wasting British lives on this futile posturing.
We are never going to win if we tie one hand behind their backs yes civilians will die but rspect is won when they know your are more terrifying than the enemy.And yes they did sign up to fight but they olny follow orders if some stupid Prime minister declares war on a country that poses no threat to us after 11 years of cutting the budget of the armed forces it is not their fault they do what is asked requardless of what they think that is what makes the British soldier the best in the world we stand by our troops but loath Brown
I saw a quote in the NY Times from the French Foreign minister. When asked about NATO and Afghanistan he said, ' Nato is not working.' Harold Wilson reputation rises every day.
Whatever this dishonourable government say this war is not in the interests of this country. While we are on the subject the largest training camps for Al Qaeda are now in Somali - are we going there next? British troops are dying in vain.
This "war" is not being carried out in "defense of the UK" nor as an effective measure against global terrorism, the latter of which is based on an outdated and initially ill-formed strategy re: "launching areas", which come mostly from within a target country or from next door.
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