Home by Christmas

 

I was asked for 210 words on what the situation will be in Afghanistan in two years time? Here's my guess. What's yours?

 

 

The ‘Home by Christmas’ campaign of the autumn of 2010 won widespread support. The image pulled at the heartstrings.  With bitter irony 15 soldiers did get back to Britainin December 2010. Their coffins were conveyed through the streets of Wootton Bassett. Public outrage at the cruelty and futility of the war reached its crescendo. No political party resisted the ‘Home by Christmas 2011’ demand.

Belief in the myth of a terrorist threat from the Taliban faded. It was a Vietnam exit forced by public disgust at the waste of life. NATO avoided the abject rout of Saigon. The deal protected and consolidated gains made in five provinces where Karzai ruled. Throughout the rest of the land warlords and the moderate Taliban dominate with mediaeval rough justice. The negotiated peace has held together strengthened by Western gold, local self-interest and an unspoken military threat.

Afghans feared returning to the mass slaughter of the Russian occupation. The ten year NATO presence has raised ambitions and the living standards of some downtrodden groups. Much is unchanged. Tribal and religious divisions are still deep. A new civil war is a constant threat. The West has learnt a new humility. The limits of high-tech military might are exposed.

But the troops are home-not just for Christmas.

 

Why bother?

To get the full flavour on how the Tories have learnt the techniques of non-answers, here are the full questions and answers from yesterday:

Mrs May:I thank my hon. Friend for that question. She has made an extremely valid point on an issue that will concern a large number of parents and others. She is right to say that the previous Government were slow to deal with the issue of legal highs, particularly mephedrone. It was only pushing from our party while in opposition that led them to do something about it, and we are committed to introducing a temporary ban on legal highs.

Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab): The United Kingdom has the harshest drug laws in Europe and the highest number of addicts. Portugal has the least harsh policies in all of Europe and the smallest number of addicts. Why is this?

Mrs May: The hon. Gentleman has been a long-standing campaigner on the issue of drugs. As it happens, he and I take a different view on how we should approach the issue. What we need to be doing in this country is looking at making abstinence much more of a goal for individuals and looking seriously at ensuring that the treatment and rehabilitation provided to drug addicts mean that they do not simply go back on drugs in future.

Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab): How can the Prime Minister retain his optimism after 11 British deaths in 10 days? How can a stable Afghanistan be built on the crumbling foundations of an election-rigging president and his criminal family, on an Afghan army that is mercenary and drug-addicted and on a police force that is depraved and entirely corrupt? We are in the end game position, as Canada and the Netherlands have explained. At the end of the Vietnam war a question was asked that should haunt us all now: who will be the last soldier ordered into battle to die for a politician's mistake?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman has long taken that view, but even though he makes that case he wildly overstates it. If we talk to British soldiers who serve with the Afghan national army they say that those soldiers are brave, they work hard and they are committed. Yes, of course we need to improve recruitment from all parts of the country, but I do not think it is fair to characterise the army as he does. There have been problems with the Afghan police force, but when we go to Afghanistan we see police trainers from European and American countries doing good work. I do not accept that all is as bleak as the hon. Gentleman puts it. We have had a number of casualties, which are heartbreaking in every individual case and it is heartbreaking that there are so many, but we have to remember what we are doing in Afghanistan. It is not creating the perfect society; it is training up the Afghans so that they can take care of their own security and we face fewer attacks from terrorist groups trained in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but the fact is that today the number of
Threats coming from that area is reduced, because of what we have done in Afghanistan and because of what the Pakistan Government are doing in Pakistan. Of course we should not be blind to people's concerns, but we should try to take people with us on the success there has been in reducing those threats.

Comments

[Errol (no relation)]

Why bother ?

Pot.....kettle