Is the government failing our troops in Afghanistan?
The Conservatives have joined the Liberal Democrats in criticising the equipment the armed forces are supplied with. They say helicopters are desperately needed.
Meanwhile a poll for the BBC suggests half the population support the war in Afghanistan (read the full story on the BBC News website), but how would people feel about more taxes being spent on the conflict?
It's what Nicky will be talking about from 9 o'clock this morning. You can comment here on the blog, by calling 0500 909 693 or text to 85058.
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Podcast
5LNPI: Afghanistan 06 Nov 09
10:06 Fri, 6 Nov 09
Gordon Brown spoke about Britain's strategy in Afghanistan this morning, and we got your reaction on the Breakfast phone-in
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afghanistan is the new vietnam we cant defeat the people who live there the taliban are warriors history has proved that for the last 200 years they have not been defeated even the super power USSR could not defeat them so how are we gonna make inroads and they are not the enemy they may be undesirable but they are no enemy of us the al-qaeeda lot have buggred off a long time ago after we destroyed the training camps so what are we doing there protecting the intrests of our pipelines and allowing british troops to die in the process based on goverment lies
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The MOD has never properly looked after it's soldiers, sailors or airmen. Why should this conflict be any different?
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bring the boys and girls home we have no business in afghanistan this is george bush,s war not ours we have no beef with the taliban the money we are wasteing on thses invasions in afghanistan and iraq is a complete waste of life and money which could be better spent on our schools,hospitals and elderly folk in this country but more importantly we are creating enemies both at home and abroad with our actions based on the so called war on terror its time we learnt from history
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In general I support the war - however it would be useful to know the contribution to this cause from other 'Western' countries, Germany, France, Japan, Canada etc - My concern would be if our input was disproportionate to our position on the global map. We are not the USA and we do not have access to their resources - yet the EEC is broadly the same size and the EEC should therefore be spreading the responsibility proportionately across the members.
I would like this put as a question to a minister.
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" Maxturkana wrote:
In general I support the war "
why?
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The main problem is our politicians and Generals who in their desire to sit at the 'top' table take on too much. There is a simple equasion, either send more troops and equipment for the land area covered or cut down the land area we control to a more suitable size, we would then have enough men, equipment and helicopters to do the job well.
There is nothing wrong with our men and if realistic goals are set we also have enough helicopters, we have just taken on to much both physically, geographically and logistically.
Paul Manning
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Nicky/Harriet
The media let us down when it failed to challenge the notion of an 'Axis of Evil,' used in marketing the war on Iraq. This weekend we have heard a new marketing campaign from Brown, Miliband, Ainsworth et al. designed to hold onto public support for the war in Afghanistan. Some backroom writers came up with 'an incubator for terrorism' as a description for Afghanistan and its threat to Britain. It's been repeated so many times, naive members of the British public could be forgiven for believing it was really true. This time, the government script must be challenged:
When David Miliband describes Afghanistan as 'an incubator for terrorism;' can you tell him that 9/11 was hatched in Germany and America. And they were mostly Saudis, not Afghans.
When Gordon Brown warns 'the threat in Afghanistan must be contained by our brave British troops;' can you remind him that the 7/7 bombers were born in Britain.
When Bob Ainsworth says 'our troops are fighting to prevent a chain of terror reaching Britain;' can you point out the 7/7 bombers said the motivation for their attacks WAS the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
When Sir Jock Stirrup claims Afghanistan is a 'cradle of terror'; can you ask him why Mrs Thatcher told us the same people were "freedom fighters" when they were fighting the Soviets (and she also said that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist!)
When any Conservative spokesman come on your programme to criticise the Government for 'failing to give our troops the support they deserve by not providing the right equipment;'can you remind them the Thatcher government, with the Reagan Administration, armed and funded the same people who are killing our troops, using the same leftover weapons.
When Jack Straw, or whoever, says 'eventually there will have to be a political solution'; can you ask them to cast their minds back to October 2001 when the Taliban offered a solution - they offered to handover Osama bin Laden and Co. to an international court to face the 9/11 crimes. It was turned down by USA. Had they accepted the Taliban offer:
#- 600 American, 180 British, and 120 Canadian troops would still be alive today;
#- the 7/7/05 attack might not have happened saving a further 52 lives;
#- and we would have 4 billion pounds extra to help with the financial crisis.
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Tunnel vision wendymann, widen your vision, Pakistan has nuclear weapons. This is not a simple matter.
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presently the government is running a damage limitation campaign through the media to shore up the support for the war by claiming objectives that range from 'patriotic duty', 'national security' and ' national interest'.
the players:
taliban = afghan resistance and 'legitimate' government - never have been involved in international terrorism.
uk-usa-india-nato = invading armies / armies of occupation.
karzai/afghan 'government' = western backed puppet regime.
al qaeda = today an useful bogeyman organisation.
aims:
labeling all resistance as taliban or al qaeda.
to remove any afghan resistance to uk-usa occupation.
create benign regime - oppressive to its own people if necessary.
secure resources from caspian.
to provide a base for future campaigns into pakisitan and iran.
claims:
to prevent attacks on streets of uk through afghansitan/pakistan training camps.
counterclaim;
ira did not need to go to afghanistan to create or learn terrorism tactics in the uk.
supporting terrorists:
seymour hersh states that usa is supporting jondallah (pakistan taliban) in creating terrorist attacks in iran and pakistans baluchistan/sindh regions. baitullah mehsud in swat/nwfp funded by india and america. pakistan army have found arms caches with indian and american arms.
claims that one of mehsuds last act will be to attack pakistans nuclear facilities which will lead to a pretext for pakistan invasion.
claims taliban will take over pakistans nuclear facility.
counter claim:
estimated taliban numbers in pakistan 5 000 - 10 000. pakistans army = 1 million with use of airpower and heavy armour. paksitan a nation of 160 million who are hostile to the taliban. recent polls resulted in less than 5% of support for islamic parties.
afghan surge:
all troops will be in place by end of 2009 ready for next stage of conflict.
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oh dear the arrogance of campbell to call the taliban a thug medieval regime , this from a nation that supports israels persecution of palestinians for the last 60 years, that has involved itself in killing 1 million iraqis, that has supported torture all as a matter of choice not security. for resources not freedom or humanity.
also interesting that campbell invokes the wholly discredited neo conservative hawks af - pak propaganda.
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Why dont you people wake up ! If you look at a map on the proposed oil gas pipelines that the US wants to run through Afganistan and look where the US and British bases are in Afganistan they match perfectly ! This is a economic war just the same as Iraq was .
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"This is a economic war just the same as Iraq was . "
its both an economic war and the age of the american empire which the uk is piggy-backing upon.
this empire needs a benign supine and compliant region (much like the uk media reports today) and in order to achieve that it has to kill all those who might oppose the idea of empire and occupation by a foreign power.
so of course with a lot of media help we create the bogeymen ..in afghansitan whilst courting those other evil leaders across the planet because they serve our empire.
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brown says its his 'patriotic duty'.
so clearly anyone who is against the afghan war is being unpatriotic. this even though frank gardner the bbc security expert says that al qaeda are not in afghanistan and the taliban (disparate afghani groups)are only interested in getting rid of the foreign forces that have invaded their country.
should we trust frank or gordon with his analysis of the afghan situation?
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" RomanCenturion wrote:There is nothing wrong with our men and if realistic goals are set we also have enough helicopters, we have just taken on to much both physically, geographically and logistically."
leaked nato documents (around jan 2009) state that there will be no definitive end goals set nor any date for ending the war.
"RomanCenturion wrote:
Tunnel vision wendymann, widen your vision, Pakistan has nuclear weapons. This is not a simple matter."
and an army of 1 million. so what will any terrorist group do with a nuke war head without any means of delivery? without the codes to fire a missile? etc etc
as for radioactive material .. just go to any hospital, university etc
it is a nonsense to claim that pakistans nukes are under any threat. they are only if one has other end goals otherwise rational persons understand the claimed threat to be idiotic.
neo con hawks dont want any muslim country to have the nuclear capability this is what is driving the afghan surge and the anti pakistan claptrap.
"Darz456 wrote:
Why dont you people wake up ! "
presenters are generally university educated people with the vast resources of the bbc news org behind them , with access to all other news agency reporting.
its not a matter of 'waking up' but more a question as to why the media chooses to report as it does despite evidence and facts that directly contradicts their reporting of these issues.
one has to ask what the driving force is behind the inability to ask questions that are pretty obvious and why the predominant source of guests/experts are from the hawkish neo con right.
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I know that this discussion was held earlier today but I was driving and couldn't write till now.
This government is failing our troops because we should not be in Afghanistan in the first place. We were sent there on a fools errand by a "mistaken" idea that flushing Osama out, would be as easy as carpet bombing the mountains and then identifying his remains.
I am fiercely patriotic and as English as tea and scones or fish and chips, but the way that I see it, the "talliban" are doing exactly what the French Resistance did during the war and you can be sure that if Hitler had ever made it across the channel there would have been an insurgency throughout Britain popping up and then blending back into the population. (I only wonder what the Germans would have called us, terrorists, insurgents, or maybe freedom fighters).
That said, now that we (and the talliban), have destroyed what little infrastructure that the country had the only way that we can ever effectively leave them to it, is to rebuild their roads, schools, etc. so once again our brave men and women will have to sacrifice their lives to keep the insurgency under control. Under these circumstances they should be given every piece of equipment necessary to do the job.
On a separate but related issue, why is it that British and American soldiers are shouldering the responsibility for all of the fighting while the other members of the E.U. have soldiers in only the relatively quiet areas? I suspect that the citizens of those countries would not accept the losses but would and will be glad recipients of the safer more stable Afghanistan that our troops are fighting for.
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Flexible BBC news listeners may have heard Col (retd) Mike Dewar now a 'defence analyst' at the MOD (whatever that means albeit very well insulated from public spending cuts)say on the flagship BBC 2 Jeremy Vine show that the anti-war movement are mostly pacifist! No doubt as a regular 5 Live interviewee he's made this spurious comment before as he is constantly raked up by your channel as a defender of our troops !
Well Colonel. As the JV Show producers didn't want to p2p you with other callers, just because you are dutifully bound to support this policy of occupation in a country that's not attacking us doesn't mean that others, many of whom have served in the Armed Forces themselves and who don't agree with this policy are pacifists.
Two years ago Israel attacked and destroyed Lebanon. We never attacked Israel in retaliation of defence of freedom an democracy so does that make the UK a pacifist nation? Going back further we never went to the aid of the Spanish fighting Franco fascism. So were we all pacifists? The point being Colonel as you are clearly a forces institutionalised fella and always will be is that just because people disagree with your clearly right wing 'blue' views doesn't make them a pacifist!
The real issue here is that our forces are the victims of the neoliberal political consensus that exists in British politcs today. As to ideological battle between the UK political parties which are totally subservient to US foreign policy that attacks economically inferior countries like Afghanistan because they know that the apathetic British public arn't going to feel its physical military effects and therefore never question the folly of this failed mission due to no fault of out troops!
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Sorry rephrase that last paragraph...
The real issue is that our troops out in Afghanistan are the victims of the neoliberal consensus betweem the mainstream parties that's existed for well over thirty years.
Our forces get sent into an impossible battle situations because the careerist political politicians who earn high expenses know that the public arn't going to question anything because they are in no danger of being attacked themselves. It's like a spectator sport so that when thing's go wrong like the deaths of 8 squaddies in one weekend they either resort to phoney patriotism or pragmatism!
Every time a Tory or Lib Dem politcian resort to the 'low quality equipment' factor to win cheap politcal points they are exploiting our forces.
The low quality equipment factor is systemic of failed foreign policy. Without defending this pathetic right wing 'big business'subservient government that calls itself 'Labour' those MP's like Liam Fox (Tory) or Nick Clegg (Lib Dem) both of whom have never served in HMF and who opportunistically dredge it up all the time to win cheap political points are just exploiting the plight our troops face.
[Personal details removed by Moderator]
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leaked october 2008 nato document key points include (for purpose of media interviews):
1. Afghanistan remains NATOs number one priority. This is not an operation of choice, it is one of necessity. We are in Afghanistan for the long term under a United Nations mandate for as long as we are needed and welcomed by the Afghan people.
2. The Afghan National Security Forces and ISAF are making progress on the ground. The militants* do not and cannot hold ground where they are challenged by ANSF [Afghanistan National Security Forces] and ISAF [International Security Assistance Force].
*Opposing Militant Forces is the correct term but is not suitable for use with the media. Depending on the audience and the group being referred to, the phrases militants/insurgents/extremists/Taleban extremists/enemies of Afghanistan may be used.
3. NATO has the strategy and forces to succeed over time. If asked: However, we could achieve the mission much faster and more efficiently with more. To that end we are constantly re-assessing the capabilities required to achieve the political goal and to mitigate any shortfalls.
4. NATO/ISAF fully respects the sovereignty of Pakistan. NATO/ISAF has every right, however, to address issues which might diminish security in Afghanistan, and put its military and civilian personnel at risk.
Only if pressed: ISAF forces are frequently fired at from inside Pakistan, very close to the border. In some cases defensive fire is required, against specific threats. Wherever possible, such fire is pre-coordinated with the Pakistani military.
5. Both the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran repeatedly indicated that they will pursue the development of stable and trustful relations.
Weapons with Iranian markings have been intercepted on Afghan territory. NATO/ISAF has no direct evidence of Iranian government involvement. NATO/ISAF is monitoring the situation.
6. NOTE: The term compensation is inappropriate and should not be used because it brings with it legal implications that do not apply. ISAF makes every effort to minimise the risk of any damage, injury or loss of life to civilians in the course of its operations in Afghanistan. NATO/ISAF deeply regrets the death or injury of any innocent civilian as a result of its operations.
7. Jordan has requested not to be mentioned as an ISAF member state in the public domain.
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