David Cameron said two important things this week; both relate to Afghanistan.
First, yesterday in Afghanistan he said:
"We must never do or say anything that gives the impression to the Taliban that we will not see this through.”
Second, during this week’s Parliamentary debate Cameron warned against troop reductions in the near future.
"I don't want us to raise false hopes. It's pretty unlikely you're going to see a reduction in British troop numbers next year. As soon as you can hand over lead responsibility to the Afghans in a district you should do so... but do it based on success.”
Cameron, thank God, is now aware, or has been made aware, that the more we talk of exit strategies, the more the Taleban will believe victory is in sight, and that to put artificial timetables on troop withdrawal is to invite future defeats.
In Iraq, we pulled out of districts and handed them over to ill-prepared Iraqi police and security forces, often riddled with enemy militia or openly corrupt. We pulled out before the job was done so that the Government, which had committed UK forces to a war it no longer had the stomach to fight, could pretend things were on track according to its timetable, perhaps the most wretched example of this administration’s ‘target’ culture.
At January’s NATO meeting on Afghanistan, Prime Minister Brown will be desperate for good news. The Government will spin as much as it dares. It will likely raise false hopes. It will do so because we have an election coming up.
Like many people who have been to Iraq or Afghanistan, I sometimes wonder if our leaders (US and UK) understand the war we are in and have the moral integrity to fight it. Our enemy seeks a protracted war to exhaust us psychologically and materially. Its targets are not primarily our troops, but our political leaders and the polls they fear. They attack our troops as a rallying cry for jihad throughout the Muslim world. Once the Afghanistan War is over, there will be other insurgencies, in East Africa or elsewhere in Asia, in which the UK will be directly or indirectly linked. That is in addition to the battle against fundamentalism here in the UK. These are wars we will be fighting for years, probably decades. We do not really have the option not to fight them without an ever mounting cost on our own society. Therefore we need to start winning them. That means getting the right attitude as well as the right strategy.
I think David Cameron understands that. I think he realises that however long the UK and other nations remain in Afghanistan, we must now stop giving succour to our enemy if we are resolved to win. I only wish the UK and US administrations understood that too.
