Yesterday saw Gordon Brown’s statement on the UK’s continuing involvement in Afghanistan, in which he defended the government’s strategy, and maintained its goals were “realistic and achievable”. It earned short shrift from Nick Clegg:
The situation in Afghanistan is on a knife-edge. Yet today we have heard little in the way of fresh, new thinking from Gordon Brown. After pursuing an overambitious and under-resourced strategy for eight years it’s hard to believe that increasing the training of the Afghan police and army will now do the trick. We need a bolder change of strategy to turn things around. When it comes to Afghanistan, we need to do things properly or not at all.
“Despite the recent elections being plagued by fraud and low turnout, Gordon Brown has chosen not to take a stance on this issue. He must realise that a second round of elections is now necessary to ensure Afghanistan gets a president with legitimacy without which the conflict against the Taliban will be all the more difficult.”
The Spectator’s Coffee House blog views Nick’s statements has a precursor to the Lib Dems calling for the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Nick’s predecessor, Lord (Paddy) Ashdown, was on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning also criticising the Prime Minister’s statement and the “catastrophic errors” in the campaign so far. Here’s PoliticsHome‘s account of the interview:
“What we needed yesterday was a battlecry to stir the nation. What we got instead, I fear, was a rather wan exercise in post-rationalisation,” he said. He added: “In order to give the country a sense of why we are there, we needed a little more passion and a little more charisma. And a little more clarity.”
Mr Ashdown said there had been no improvement since his warning 18 months ago that the campaign was becoming unwinnable. He said that his criticism was directed at military strategy rather than Britain’s continued involvement in Afghanistan. “This was the right war to fight but there have been catastrophic errors over the last five years,” he said.
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4 Comments
Michael Moore claimed in one of his books that the fighting in Afghanistan was really about the proposed gas pipeline from Turkmenistan.
Apparently, the proposed route through Afghanistan is Herat to Kandahar. The only major area between these two cities is Helmand valley.
In the absence of a really credible reason for being there you can’t help wondering if there’s any truth in this.
How about a debate or poll on LDV – ‘cut and run or see it through’.
I decline to support anything other than immediate withdrawal until the government can come up with a clear definition of what winning would look like, and when we can tell them all to pick up their stuff and come home. There will always be some local emergency, rioting, insurgents, criminal operation or peasants growing crops we haven’t burned yet. As long as we keep messing with them, it’s never going to end.
As our Military Forces suffer the worst loss of lives in Afghanistan,at 211 killed 6/9/09, since the Falkland Conflict 1982, the important questions to confirm the future UK role there, must be determined by public opinion.
There has to be a new human protection shield for our front line courageous servicemen and women and max help and support for the maimed and injured and dignified re-housing, for those returning from Afghanistan from the Regiments into civilian jobs, in the UK.
Nick Clegg has said that if the job is to done in Afghanistan at all, than it must be done properly.