baldysblog.co.uk

Today being Remembrance Sunday and the sad news that we have suffered the 200^th casualty since operations started in 2001 with the fall of the Taliban. Although British casualties were light up until 2006 when the then Defence Secretary John Reid announced a significant troop deployment to Helmand Province, they have accelerated since and will no doubt continue to do so.

Should we, will we leave Afghanistan ? The answer of course is Yes but not in the immediate future and certainly not within the year. President Obama is obviously struggling with this one on many levels and frankly the withdrawal plan will be initiated by the US not so much because of military but rather with “political and prestige” reasons uppermost, these are not trivial considerations.

The Potential Damage to NATO.

The half hearted support of France and Germany in particular to a NATO operation in Afghanistan, has been disastrous for both NATO as an organisation and potentially the degree of American engagement with Europe generally, one must never forget that the US is also a “Pacific facing Power” and that is where the action is likely to be in future.

From an American perspective, unless they were to take on the whole military burden themselves which would mean pouring may tens of thousands more troops into Afghanistan whilst they still have a substantial commitment in Iraq which is not likely, if this NATO campaign were to fail, they will need to credibly fix the blame away from the USA.

In a sense, this will be very easy with both France and Germany as prime targets but the reality is that the USA and its military capacity will have to be “seen” as intact and not suffering from a “Post Vietnam” type depression. On the other hand, this is not good news for the EU either because despite the froth of an EU President and an “Ode to Joy”, the Emperor clearly has no clothes, historically trade without military potential has never worked

The idea of winding down the British presence to a much smaller commitment in terms of numbers is a total non starter unless there is a substantial US presence left on the ground, our troops would just become hostages. Besides which, without the Iraq Deployment which the US still has, no British PM will be scaling our commitment down until the US does theirs.

British Interests

The UK’s main threat comes from Pakistan and the AfPak border, a precipitate withdrawal would need to be accompanied by restricting travel between the UK and Pakistan by direct or, indirect means and especially so called “students” from the whole of the Indian Sub Continent. Even then, we would still need to deal with our home grown would be jihadists.

Am I saying that we will and should stay there for a very long time, No I don’t. Having read various articles in today’s press about public opinion concerning us being there, I’m not impressed because as far as the key factors and direct British Interests are concerned, nothing much has changed except the casualty list which however tragic and it is, is still modest in comparative terms. That our thoughts and prayers should be with the families and injured survivors of this campaign, is a given but here is another thought:

Despite our daft Prime Minister and whoever on “buggins turn” happens to be our Defence Minister for today, them not adequately explaining our policy and British Interests in this matter is a disgrace however we need to keep focused. In one day on 7/7 and within minutes of each other, 52 civilians died in London, more than half our military casualties so far this year. The perpetrators were home grown not outsiders but, they benefited from outside support to carry out their grisly deeds. Preventing repeats of this type of thing is a Police and Intelligence operation, denying training facilities and safe havens, is purely a military one.

Whilst I don’t accept fully the poorly expressed case put forward by this decrepit government, it must be clear that in the short term at least, we will have to hold the line. I am not a gung ho person but this is a complex situation and whilst perhaps not getting involved might have been better, we are now and it is from this point we must plot our forward moves.

In the end I too want our troops out but it may take some time to get there. I wrote on this back in February this year, it may be of interest: http://baldysblog.co.uk/2009/02/26/leaving-afghanistan