From "Snatch Land Rovers" to Grand Strategy, we have been on a five-year virtual journey, from the deserts of Iraq to the hills of Waziristan, following two "wars" which have cost the lives of thousands of soldiers, injured many more, and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Broadly, we were supportive of the war in Iraq, and felt the counter-insurgency there "winnable". Having invaded the country and deposed its ruler and destroyed its government – rightly or wrongly – we had in any case a moral and legal obligation to restore law and order, and to re-establish the semblance of a working government.

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Agreed. We get out and leave the ragheads to fester in their cesspit of a territory.

But we tell them that if we get any more sh*t coming our way from their direction then we'll nuke them back to the stone age. No, they're already in the stone age. Make that the Hadean.

More practical would be regular Predator over-flights. The tribesmen won't know they're there and hellfire strikes where the explosion precedes any hint it's coming would be a terror all their own. Reasonable Intelligence feedback and UAVs should keep international terrorism in the tribal lands at bay.

We should not leave altogether, we need to be in there all the time in locked down bases with drones and special forces taking out the Al Queda and Taliban leadership and also large concentrations of their troops. The risk for the special forces is however much greater as they do not have close backup and that should not be ignored.

The fact that the special forces will be at higher risk, needs to be accepted, those arguing for a greater and greater presence so that at some mythical moment we can get to a point where we have so many troops there that we intimidate the locals by our mere presence and thus have lots of men there but no casualties!

The point is if we are fighting people will die both ours and theirs and civilians. If we do not think the risk of dead soldiers is worth the benefit of whatever it is we are trying to do then we should get out.

My view is I have never understood the expansion in 2006 to Helmand other than as a political choice trying to hide the withdrawal from Basra.

We are sending men to die, because we are not willing to admit we have have been sending men to die for the previous 3 or even 8 years for no good reason.

There is no number that the UK could send which could ever come close to controlling Afghanistan and "winning", so we should be trying to send no one or the minimum number to meet the diplomatic obligation of helping allies, if so we need to explain to the public that we are not trying to "win" because we are not in charge. The Americans debate sending 60-100,000 men while we get into major Parliamentary debates about is it 8,700 or 9,500! The Pakistani Army in the region is 600,000 plus.

The word Helmand is barely mentioned in the entire McCrystal report, we are a minor player in a minor province in part of a war in which most of the action is in the country next door.

The new focus on Pakistan is the key. The AF-PAK strategy becomes the PAK-AF strategy. In time, it is replaced by the Future Pakistan Afghanistan strategy, FPAK-AF . Silent P.

Nice one, ELF.

I heard on the news this morning that Obama's latest strategy is to offer Taleban fighters cash payments to swap sides. I am thinking of writing to Ed Miliband, asking if the government will pay me to believe in global warming.

Please tell me that you don't really still believe that 9/11 was perpetrated by a "vicious terrorist organisation" i.e. AlQuaeda (which never existed anyway)-if you do you must be the only one who does

Of course... I forgot ... the CIA did it on the instructions of the Duke of Edinburgh, in order to get Tony Blair appointed as Emperor of Europe.

What really happened?

Something tells me that WWIII has already broken out - with the 9/11 incident. but we haven't as yet recognized it as such - and until we do, we won't be able to formulate a strategy to win the WWIII that we are already in.

Watchet

Don't go there ... I do not want this thread hijacked by a troofer debate. If you want to discuss 9/11 go to the open forum.

Very interesting post, Richard.
At long, long last, reason & pragmatism are slowly beginning to dawn...I do hope.

As such I totally agree with the strategy of going after the Taliban and Al Queda to make sure that they are not in a position to carry out large scale attacks like 9-11 (though I really wish we could get all the truthers in one spot where AQ has its next op and they will get a real taste of truth.)

I believe that Afghanistan is a small part of the overall war, it needs to be managed in as low resource way as possible, propping up a regime that causes the Taliban to waste itself in trying to take over the country with us using a core force of special forces and other good quality assets with UAV's and helicopters and air support that go after Al Queda and the Taliban leadership and of course large enemy troop concentrations means that they are stuck in limbo.

I do not think that bringing democracy to the Middle East is actually a bad idea in spite of my feeling that Islam is the issue, but picking the most third world country on the planet and trying to do it there is a sort of madness pushed by the Euroweenies who as always make decisions based on no common sense unless their decision was to weaken us, which is why Rumsfeld wanted to keep a small footprint only, its only in the second term of Bush when he started thinking of his legacy that he really went down that path, did you notice that . If only we had Bush there when Iran self-destructed with its election madness, then the most suitable country for democracy in the ME with a well learnt anger towards Islamic rule that could have really changed things could have been made what Iraq could never be, but no we have Obama, who cut funding to the opposition in Iran.

Afghanistan is a side show, one where we should just be making sure that they spend most of their time keeping their heads down, one in which we create a killing zone for those Islamics who want to pick up weapons. Ahhhhh but the UN seems to be on to us:

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/10/28/u ... xecutions/