Two respected political commentators have written about the situation in Afghanistan in the past few days, James Forsyth in the Spectator and Matthew Parris in the Times.
James Forsyth's opening paragraph is interesting:
... we must begin to extricate ourselves, but not in a sudden way that looks like defeatism and a snub to America.
He then criticises army ceremonies to the extent of stating 'the military has a strong cultic dimension'. He further adds that 'it has intensely powerful rituals and a sense of shared purpose which is not a bad thing: it makes a culture of service and sacrifice possible. But we must be wary about this religiosity seeping into the debate about whether a distant war should be fought'. May I suggest that ritual adheres all of us to each other. We need rituals for security and emotional well-being.
Matthew Parris has a couple of thought provoking sentences within his article:
It is not reasonable to suggest that Britain simply declare national defeat, turn tail and abandon our US ally at months’ notice. Canada, Spain and the Netherlands can do this because their contribution is relatively small. Ours (there is about one British soldier there for every eight Americans) is not.
Note both authors mention we must not upset the US at any price. In my naivety, I cannot understand why we are so enamoured by the US when we have settled the heavy debt for their help in WW2. Is it because Britain feels the need to continue paying or do we not have enough confidence in Europe? Canada and Spain are much larger countries than Britain yet they have not contributed a great amount of their troops. Is it because they know this war is not ours to fight? Is it because we need to borrow more money from the US? On Newsnight tonight Barack Obama's fiscal policy was discussed and it was agreed it wasn't working. Doesn't bode too well for Gordon Brown if he thought he could easily acquire a loan.
I shall leave you to read both articles and make your own judgements. Let me quote Matthew Parris' starting point:
So my starting point is this: the Western effort in Afghanistan is misconceived. It cannot create the stable democracy it seeks. We should never have got ourselves into this.
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