Frank
Ledwidge, Losing Small
Wars: British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2011, viii + pp.267,
Notes, bibliography, Index, ISBN 978-0-300-16671-2
I
consider it to be the duty of anyone who sees a flaw in the plan not
to hesitate to say so
General
Einsenhower immediately before General Montgomery’s briefing for
Operation Overlord, 15th
May 1944
©
Frank Ellis 2012 All Rights Reserved
Anger
and shame assailed me when I was reading Losing
Small Wars: anger with
a corrupt Prime Minister (Blair) for the lies used to justify the
deployment of British forces to Iraq and Afghanistan and the
professional collusion of senior officers and the security services
in the dissemination of the lies; and shame for the untold misery
inflicted on Iraqi and Afghan civilians, the deaths and maiming of
our soldiers and the lies used to comfort their families and to
mislead the public. As if this was not bad enough, we are confronted
at every turn in these badly judged deployments with far too many
examples of incompetent political and military leadership in theatre.
With all these failings and the scale of the invasion and occupation
in Iraq, and the NATO mission in Afghanistan, Ledwidge’s title
hardly does justice to what is revealed. In any case these are hardly
‘small wars’: the lying alone was and remains even now on a mass
industrial scale.
If,
having read Losing
Small Wars, I had to
identify the single most important failing about the disastrous
British interventions in Iraq and, currently Afghanistan, it would be
the failure on the part of the British government and its military
advisers to spell out quite clearly why the British armed forces were
ever deployed to these two parts of the Middle East. Factor out the
obvious lies disseminated by Blair and his political-military clique
that Iraq was armed with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that
these weapons posed a threat to Britain and there was no justified
reason for Britain’s ever having had anything to do with the US-led
invasion of Iraq. Bush’s ravings that Saddam Hussein was another
Hitler reflect the appalling ignorance of American presidents about
the world. Such claims were intended to provide some weak
justification for Saddam Hussein’s removal from power. Nevertheless
they are pitiful claims. By the standards of Arab leaders Saddam
Hussein was averagely repressive. Oil is a factor on the Middle East
but did it require that the US and others invade Iraq and inflict
such dreadful misery and suffering? If we went there to impose
democracy and other Western abstractions then that too has been a
catastrophic failure and one that was bound to be in a part of the
world where Islam rules. Why do Americans and their too willing
British allies not realise that the liberal democracies that evolved
in a small part of northern Europe among small groups of racially
homogenous peoples cannot be just imposed on what are Third World
tribal societies? Here we see a deadly serious failure of
imagination, caused by what Pat Buchanan has correctly identified as
democratic fundamentalism and which has been made to appear
fallaciously plausible by the malevolent ideology of multiculturalism
and neo-conservatism.
As
for the British Army’s being in Afghanistan, no British politician
has yet provided a convincing argument for the deployment. Brown’s
claims that British troops in Afghanistan made the UK safer were
obvious lies and so obviously clumsy one wonders why he thought he
could get away with peddling such nonsense. Equally mendacious are
the claims that UK forces are helping the Afghan population to build
a better future. Do the Taliban – they are part of the Afghan
population – want our help? How do we help people by laying their
country waste and imposing utterly alien institutions such as
elections and education and undermining the foundations of a tribal
society? Other possible reasons for our being there may be related to
Iran’s nuclear ambitions and fears about Pakistan’s nuclear
weapons (and oil, of course). But even these are not that convincing
when trying to find an explanation for why Britain has expended so
much blood and treasure. Remove any geo-political considerations and
one is left with the interests and rivalries of the three services.
Ledwidge refers to remarks made by General Dannatt to a British
diplomat that if the British army, with an exit date from Iraq
established, did not redeploy its battle groups to Afghanistan, they
would be removed in any Strategic Defence Review. Ledwidge also
suggests that the British army wanted to go to Helmand to show what
it could do and attempt to compensate for its less than glorious
performance in southern Iraq. Another factor prompting the deployment
was, as always, a desire on the part of senior British politicians
and officers to ingratiate themselves with the Americans, to try to
rebuild their damaged stock.
British
woes in Iraq started well before the first tank crossed the border.
Ledwidge convincingly argues that senior British officers failed not
only to challenge demagogue-politicians, especially Blair, before the
invasion, but also to ask the necessary hard-headed questions about
what would happen after Saddam Hussein was removed from power. In a
reference to a very short British document entitled ‘Iraq – the
aftermath – military options’ which was dated 4th
March 2003 Ledwidge makes the telling point that the fact that this
document was prepared as late as it was ‘speaks volumes for the
priority placed on the “what now?” question’.1
That these and other questions were not asked by senior officers and
pushed, if necessary, to the point of resignation, amounts to a clear
dereliction of duty. The lack of planning for the occupation phase
and the failure to realise that if the British did not provide firm
and fair governance less desirable local entities would seize the
initiative, helped to create a situation in which law and order
collapsed and the militias were able to pursue their vendettas.
Matters
in Basra were exacerbated, according to Ledwidge, because the view
was held among senior British officers that the lessons of Britain’s
previous counterinsurgencies from Malaya to Northern Ireland
comprised a body of knowledge and experience that was readily
applicable to Basra; and that this historical background made the
British army uniquely qualified to engage in counterinsurgency
operations unlike the Americans. Ledwidge devotes a lot of space to
trying to demonstrate that the experience of previous
counterinsurgencies, especially Malaya and Northern Ireland, was not
always helpful and often hugely misleading; and that the Americans
mastered the problems whereas, the British more or less withdrew to
their base and waited for the end, as the security situation in Basra
deteriorated.
Expertise
in fighting a counterinsurgency in northern Europe, argues Ledwidge,
‘does not imply such prowess elsewhere’.2
On the contrary, I suggest it most certainly does imply such prowess.
Counterinsurgencies, for all the specific racial, geographical,
political, religious and cultural differences, have themes in common
which make it possible to derive general principles and observations.
For example, I am not aware of an insurgency that is so unique such
that experience gained could not be applied elsewhere. In fact, were
such an insurgency known to have existed, one might well be justified
in considering it not to be an insurgency at all. The British Army’s
track record in waging counterinsurgencies does, in my opinion,
justify the expectation that this expertise/prowess could be applied
beyond Northern Ireland. That this expertise was not properly applied
is another matter.
In
attempting to weaken the validity of any experience gained in
Northern Ireland and then applied to Iraq, Ledwidge points out that
we the “Brits”, as we were named by IRA/Sinn Fein, knew the
opposition very well. The cultural, historical links made the task of
dealing with IRA/Sinn Fein that much easier. Gerry Adams used to
boast that the “Brits” would negotiate with people they condemned
as terrorists because they always have done before, as in Kenya,
Cyprus and Aden. Adams was right. However, there was a crucial
distinction between the counterinsurgency in Northern Ireland and the
rest of Britain’s post-1945 counterinsurgencies. Britain could
negotiate a settlement with former Mau-Mau leaders and leave. If no
negotiated settlement was possible the option of just walking away
and leaving the natives to it was always an option. If IRA/Sinn Fein
could demonstrate the necessary stamina, it could reasonably expect
to be sitting down with British politicians at some stage. Where
Adams and other IRA/Sinn Fein leaders were spectacularly wrong was in
holding the belief that the British government would be able to
abandon Northern Ireland to its fate and that IRA/Sinn Fein or any
other group would take control. What was a feasible option in Kenya
and Aden was not possible in Northern Ireland, the UK. Northern
Ireland was not Kenya. The UK government could not abandon Northern
Ireland, however much it might want to, and it took a very long time
for IRA/Sinn Fein leaders to grasp this brutal fact. Once Adams and
his colleagues realised this the way was set for some kind of
negotiated settlement. Alongside this political reality was the fact
that IRA/Sinn Fein had been subverted, penetrated and monitored so
totally by MI5/GCHQ that its chances of imposing any kind of solution
in Northern Ireland were nil. This furthered the chances of a
negotiated political settlement.
And
here we might find the incunabula of the deal done by the British
with Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia in Basra, which Ledwidge sees as
a disaster. By 2005 it was crystal clear to all but the seriously
deluded that the invasion had gone horribly wrong; that Blair and his
close circle of civilian and senior military advisers had
demonstrably lied about WMDs (for which they remain unpunished); that
no planning had been conducted for the post-war/occupation phase; and
that Blair and his clique wanted out of the hideous mess and carnage
they had inflicted. In these circumstances an accelerated deal with
the militia gangs based on what had taken place in Northern Ireland
seemed attractive. However, by the time the British and IRA/Sinn
Fein started negotiating Britain troops had been on the ground in
Northern Ireland, in large numbers, since 1969. Moreover, IRA/Sinn
Fein, even with, at best, the treacherous indifference of US law and
order agencies to British requests for extradition, and, at worst,
with the treacherous collusion of a whole swathe of the American
political caste (Democrat and Republican), was losing what it called
the “armed struggle”. Factors that made a negotiated settlement
possible with IRA/Sinn Fein - specifically the longevity of the
“armed struggle”, the obvious successes of the British army and
MI5 and the realisation, eventually, by some of the more enlightened
members of IRA/Sinn Fein that no British government could walk away
from Northern Ireland – did not obtain in Basra or anywhere else in
Iraq. It took 30 years before serious negotiations with IRA/Sinn Fein
could start. Britain could not afford to wait 30 years before it
started serious negotiations with Iraqi insurgents. Political factors
in the UK which militated against hasty deals being done with
IRA/Sinn Fein in the 1970s encouraged premature deals with militia
gangs in Basra. Everything was done with indecent haste and presented
as a solution which it was not. The time factor was one of the key
lessons of Northern Ireland and other long-running insurgencies that
were ignored by the British and by the Americans. In fact, Ledwidge
concedes that the time factor was one of three factors that could be
used to defend British policy: (i). the war could last forever; (ii)
the Iraqi army was being trained and (iii) there was a view that the
British Army was part of the problem.3
A
major criticism I would make of Losing
Small Wars is that the
author in his determination to expose British failure to scrutiny is
far too willing, certainly as concerns Iraq, to see success in
American efforts and very little else. This distorts his message.
Whereas, according to Ledwidge, the Americans are willing to learn
from their mistakes the British remain trapped in the Malaya-Northern
Ireland paradigms. It is worthwhile reminding ourselves of the
errors made by the Americans. If the British failed to plan for the
occupation so did the Americans. They then made things many times
worse by the programme of de-Baathification which was inspired by the
de-Nazification of Germany in 1945. Whatever the Baath party was, it
not the Nazi party and Saddam Hussein was not another Adolf Hitler.
The de-Baathification programme denied status and support to the
Iraqi technocracy the very people needed to get essential services
running properly. It turned qualified Iraqis against the Americans.
Another disparity can be noted. Ledwidge mentions the charges of
torture against the British military interrogators in Northern
Ireland in the early days yet he has nothing to say about the
appalling abuses carried out by the Americans in Iraq immediately
after the invasion in 2003 in Abu Ghraib which were way beyond
anything perpetrated by British soldiers in southern Iraq. The
Americans, specifically the CIA, also failed to identify the
significance of the Fedayeen and their role in the insurgency. And
why is Ledwidge, a lawyer, so deafeningly silent about the American
state torture chambers in Guantanamo Bay and so-called “extraordinary
rendition”? Guantanamo is not even in the book’s index. Why does
Ledwidge bypass these American outrages when berating the British
Army for minor infringements? If internment without trial and Bloody
Sunday are now seen as propaganda gifts to the nationalist cause,
what about the routine mass killings of Iraqi and Afghan civilians,
carried out by US forces? On a finding of fact Ledwidge even gets
the date of Bloody Sunday unforgivably wrong: he says it was April
1972 when it was, in fact, 30th
January 1972.4
Recent events in Afghanistan would suggest that the anarchic spirit
which led to Abu Ghraib and much more, before, according to Ledwidge,
the Americans set the new standard in counterinsurgency and in
winning friends and influencing people in remote tribal societies, is
alive and well. In the new model American counterinsurgency paradigm,
for example, it is acceptable to have yourself filmed while you
urinate on dead Taliban fighters, burn the Holy Koran and leave your
base in the early hours of the morning to kill Afghan families.
Once
again, and wilfully ignorant of some of the realities, Ledwidge
pushes the multicultural agenda in the military, praising the way
Americans have been quick ‘to appreciate the benefits of such
people [immigrants]’.5
Ledwidge has obviously not heard about what happened at Foot Hood in
Texas in 2009 when, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a US army psychiatrist
due to be posted to Iraq, and already known for his anti-American
statements, murdered 13 people on the base. On the clear dangers
posed by multiculturalism to the military Ledwidge is just as
wilfully blind despite his repeated warnings that our analyses must
be based on hard evidence not wishful thinking. To quote Ledwidge:
‘What happens on the ground is rather more important, and that
depends on having a true appreciation of what one is doing. In turn,
that appreciation must be founded on hard fact, not on the kind of
wishful thinking that passes for military assessments of “effect”
’.6
Ledwidge is guilty of precisely this “wishful thinking” when he
pushes the agenda of multiculturalism in the military or believes
that it can work. Consistent with Ledwidge’s assertion that we must
deal with facts and things as they are, not as they ought to be, then
it should be pointed out that, quite apart from the fact that they
degrade operational efficiency, Western women in uniform are
extremely offensive to Muslims and that Iraqis do not like – to put
it mildly – blacks in Western armies. So how do Ledwidge and his
feminist/multiculturalist colleagues in the British Army propose to
deal with that situation, an appreciation based on ‘on hard fact’?
For example, were it necessary, in order to demonstrate to the
people, say, Iraqis, that we were sensitive to their culture would we
be prepared in the name of operational flexibility in a
counterinsurgency only to deploy units comprising white male soldiers
or is the ‘wishful thinking’ and self-esteem of feminists and
multiracialists, with all the antagonisms it arouses among Iraqis,
going to be allowed to set the agenda?
Iraqis,
the Taliban and all the other indigenous groups that resent Western
interference have every right to feel aggrieved. However, they need
to be clear that when Western nations cease to interfere in the
affairs of tribal states, as they should, it means just that. It
means that no food aid when populations spiral out of control shall
be donated (only sold at the full market value); it means that
Western expertise in victim search and rescue in the aftermath of an
earthquake or tsunami shall not be free but will be paid for either
in hard currency or free access to natural resources (gold, platinum
and oil); it means that drugs that can prevent malaria, bilharzia and
even cure AIDS shall be available at market prices to those in Africa
that want them; and when the latest African dictator orders the
slaughter of some rival tribe Western troops will not be sent to sort
the mess out; and it means that Haiti will forever remain mired in
primitive savagery. No longer will Western troops impose, or attempt
to impose, abstract concepts of free speech, the rule of law, free
and fair elections on people who do not understand them or do not
care for them. In short, Third World states or tribes are quite right
to resent being invaded and lectured to by First World powers on how
to lead their lives. They should be left alone provided they
represent no threat to the West (and Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Iraq and
Afghanistan were/are not threats to the West). That said, when they
request, or normally demand, Western aid, these
we-will-not-tolerate-being-lectured-to-by-Westerners states whose
people are conscious of their dignity and who demand to be treated as
equals should bear in mind that any assistance that Western states
might consider to provide shall at all times be subject to terms and
conditions - pacta sunt
servanda - and if you
do not like them then you can eat your dignity and use your sangomas
to cure your children of malaria. This is the new world order.
Ledwidge
would have us believe that these days there is very little animosity
towards the Russians in Afghanistan. I can only assume that this
assertion is intended to create a contrast with the way the British
are currently regarded in Helmand and thus to imply that the Russians
performed better than the British. The comparison is somewhat flawed.
The Russians – they failed abysmally - are gone: the British are
there (and failing); they provide a new focal point for Afghan
xenophobia. If the British went and the Russians returned tomorrow
Afghans would transfer their xenophobia back to them and start saying
nice things about the British. Ledwidge’s source for these claims
is Rodric Braithwaite’s Afgantsy
(2011) and on at least two occasions Braithwaite is cited incorrectly
and in a manner that distorts Braithwaite’s original. For example,
Ledwidge cites Braithwaite as having written that ‘there was no
grudge against the Russians’.7
Braithwaite’s original is conditional and far less assertive:
‘Perhaps it was because of the horrors that followed that the
Afghans did not in the long run seem to nurture a grudge against the
Russians’.8
The ‘horrors that followed’ is a reference to the civil war that
ensued after the Russian withdrawal. Ledwidge cites the page number
from Afgantsy
incorrectly (p.332!!/p.333☺). Ledwidge then cites Braithwaite as
having written that he, Braithwaite, was ‘told by every Afghan that
he met that things were better under the Russians’.9
Braithwaite actually wrote: ‘I was told by almost every Afghan I
met that things were better under the Russians’.10
I would expect an author with a legal training to show greater
attention to detail. Having listed a great many of the fine
qualities now attributed to the erstwhile Russian invaders by Afghan
interlocutors – apparently they never killed women and children –
Braithwaite concludes that: ‘As history much of this was
travesty’.11
On the other hand, Ledwidge is unaware of this or it suits his
purposes to ignore the bizarre Afghan assessment of the Russian
occupation which as Braithwaite points out is a travesty. In fact,
both authors fail to consider the possibility that when Afghans
praise the former occupiers and their policies to the present
occupiers that they could just be engaging in a bit of Brit-baiting
not pursuing serious historical analysis.
Some
of the most devastating parts of Losing
Small Wars deal with
what can only be described as the super abundance of middle-ranking
and senior officers in the British Army. Ledwidge notes that there
are 12 brigades in the British Army and thus allowing for leave,
illness, training, extra-unit postings and retirement one might
expect there to be about 24 brigadiers. There are a staggering 190
and this is 20 more than in 1997.12
But it gets worse. There are 2 divisions in the British Army.
Divisions are normally commanded by a major-general and we have 43
major-generals.13
There are also 5 full generals (and that is just the army). In all,
the three armed services have about 500 general officers (brigadier
or above14).
To cite Ledwidge: ‘To put these figures into perspective, there are
far more generals in the British army than there are helicopters, or
operational tanks. There are considerably more admirals than ships,
and about three times as many RAF officers of one star or above than
there are flying squadrons’.15
The comparisons with the US Marine Corps, US Army and the Israeli
Defence Forces (IDF is similar in size to the UK’s) are grotesquely
embarrassing. To cite Ledwidge again: ‘There are proportionately
eight times
more generals in the UK armed forces than there are in the US Marine
Corps, four times as many as in the US army, and an astonishing ten
times as many as the Israelis have’.16
It will almost certainly be the case that many of these senior
officers will have been promoted beyond their abilities. Below the
hordes of generals are the hordes of colonels and majors: ‘There
are no fewer than 5,500 officers of full colonel or lieutenant
colonel rank (or equivalent) in all three services, and 9,550
officers of the rank of major’ […] ‘An entire division, with
all its ancillary support, could be manned by army officers over the
rank of major’.17
Most
of these officers will never command active units and will be
employed as administrators and, judging by the profligacy of MOD, not
very efficient ones. Not only do these officers clog up the rank
structure, denying talented officers their professional dues, but
they provide all kinds of non-military incentives and promotion
opportunities for those who wear a uniform but are in fact not
soldiers (the same thing happened to the British police a long time
ago). In this MOD, office environment, the kind of skills and
qualities required for promotion and other rewards will be based on
being adept at social net-working, presenting an impression of comme
il faut, getting
noticed by one’s superiors and avoiding any association with
failure but making every effort to get linked with any sort of
success. It also raises the possibility that social connections,
something we had thought had long been consigned to the rubbish bin
will make a come back, if they ever went away, in career planning and
rewards. Officers who have secured promotion and rewards by such
methods will use the same methods to reward their favourites and will
learn to expect deference when they are wrong instead of being
corrected by competent staff officers. Long term the damage is very
severe and professionally dysgenic: it actively discourages and
punishes those with drive, new ideas and unusual approaches,
rewarding the mediocrities and time servers. Sign up to all kinds of
human rights’ legislation regardless of the consequences for those
soldiers who actually do some soldiering and who run the risk of
being killed and losing their legs in an IED explosion and who have
to make split second decisions about whether to open fire in a
threatening situation - Ledwidge’s analysis of this situation is
woefully inadequate - impose the politically correct orthodoxies of
diversity, feminism and homosexual rights, again, regardless of the
real-world
consequences, and the stage is set in which absolutely no officer of
any rank challenges anything for fear of missing his promotion,
posting, medal or knighthood. It should also be pointed out that
these officers receive very generous allowances, especially for
sending their children to public schools and equally generous
pensions when they retire or are made redundant. The case for a
pitiless cull on the grounds of operational efficiency and cost
savings is overwhelming; and long overdue.
Without
realising it, Ledwidge provides evidence that a toxic mixture of
keeping one’s head down, saying what one is expected to say and
political correctness are contaminating the Staff College at
Shrivenham. For example, he notes that a senior officer at Shrivenham
complained that many of the officer students ‘were simply not
interested in discussing, for example, why they were fighting in
Afghanistan’.18
This is deeply disturbing because it suggests to me that the reasons
have less to do with genuine ignorance or lack of interest and
everything to do with the infiltration of politically correct ideas
into the heart of the military. Those student officers knew full well
– and the instructor referred to by Ledwidge knew it as well –
that any officer attending a course at Shrivenham who asked
hard-headed questions about the role and presence of UK armed forces
in either Iraq or in Afghanistan and brushed aside the obviously
mendacious reasons given by Brown, Cameron and the senior military
establishment (keep the streets of Britain safe) would find his
career very badly damaged. The student officers know it and so does
the instructor (and Ledwidge). Imagine a similar scenario in some
Metropolitan Police Service course where white officers were asked
for their views on the Macpherson
Report (1999). Would
they attack this vicious anti-white racism and its Marxist hatred of
England or would they grovel and make conciliatory, snivelling noises
about “institutional racism” so as not to damage their careers?
To quote Ledwidge: ‘Without a clear understanding of what one is
doing fighting a war, for what one is fighting and how, the mission
is highly unlikely to succeed’.19
Ledwidge is quite right and here is the perfect opportunity for
Ledwidge to explain to the reader – although such an explanation
should have come much earlier – what exactly the British are
fighting for in Afghanistan. Ledwidge, having routinely excoriated
senior British officers and politicians for evasions and turf wars,
largely true, nevertheless fails to offer any clear cut explanation
for the British presence in Afghanistan. Ledwidge never tells us.
Maybe he has access to sensitive sources and has succumbed to the
cult of secrecy in Whitehall which he has earlier lambasted. Either
way he has nothing to say on why British armed forces are in
Afghanistan, offering no convincing explanation for their presence at
all, an astonishing lacuna in a book of this kind even more so when
he attacks senior officers for muddled thinking or lack of any
thinking.
Recalling
that other students and he at Shrivenham were silenced when they
started considering certain areas of the legality of the Iraq war20,
Ledwidge then compares the way sensitive questions are dealt with at
Shrivenham with civilian institutions: ‘Nonetheless the kind of
difficulty I encountered would be completely unheard of in most
serious civilian institutions’.21
If Ledwidge really believes that he must be an ostrich or a
troglodyte. If you cannot raise awkward questions about the legality
of the Iraq war at Shrivenham in 2006, rest assured you cannot raise
awkward questions about race and IQ, the consequences of mass
immigration and the corrupting effects of feminism in a British
university in 2006. Soldiers obey orders and so a commander having
weighed up the situation gives his order. Universities, on the other
hand, promote themselves as institutions of free thinking, free
speech and academic freedom yet are utterly cowardly and corrupt on
issues of race and feminism, totalitarian in fact. Universities will
not permit conferences on the theme of race and IQ because some of
the administrators are too frightened of the truth and determined to
suppress it. What happened to Satoshi Kanazawa at LSE in 2011 merely
confirms the dire state of academic freedom at British institutions
of higher education. Ledwidge decides to look elsewhere for
inspiration and his quest for the ‘critical soldier’22
takes him once again across the Atlantic. Unfortunately for Ledwidge
the US military and its academies are corrupted by feminism and PC as
well. Moreover, Ledwidge is obviously not aware or prefers not to
notice that the kind of censorship which exists at Shrivenham also
pervades the US military and indeed American society, especially the
universities. For example, any senior officer who attacked the
damage done to the US military by “diversity” (quotas for blacks
and women) would have his career terminated in very short order. US
Major Andy Messing waited until he had retired before he criticised
racial diversity in Special Forces as a liability. The most recent
FBI report on gang activity in the US military, 2011
National Gang Survey: Emerging Trends
also highlights the dangers of diversity and how it can undermine
morale and unit cohesion.
A
fundamental question and one not dealt with by Ledwidge is the
purpose for which the UK armed forces exist. If the primary aim of
the UK armed forces is the defence of the UK and UK interests, then
this will necessitate armed forces configured to wage highly mobile
war. Why should we train British soldiers to engage and to kill the
enemy then complain, as Ledwidge does, that units like the Parachute
Regiment are not the best troops for certain missions where it is
necessary to engage with civilians? The counterinsurgencies in which
the British army has been involved since 1945 were related to
colonial withdrawal (now over), and long-standing historical
grievances in Northern Ireland, which have been addressed. The
insurgencies in Malaya, Kenya, Aden and Northern Ireland were forced
on the British government. That was not the case with the
insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan which were the direct result of
going where we have no right to be. Defining vital British interests
to mean an obligation to spread democracy, aiding the allegedly
oppressed or preventing the spread of WMDs is an attempt to hide the
fact that our motives are not honourable; that our real intentions
are to impose
the tyranny of democratic fundamentalism on remote indigenous
populations so as to control them and if they resist we will kill
them.
The
specific causes that led to the disastrous deployments in Iraq and
Afghanistan will be fought over for years to come. Losing
Small Wars and other
titles on these wars leave me in doubt that one of the primary causes
of failure in Iraq and Afghanistan was dangerous wishful thinking
that persuaded civilian and military planners that tribal societies
in the Middle East really did want liberal democracy, human rights,
education and the idiocies of feminism imposed upon them. Ledwidge
makes a convincing case that senior British officers – colonels and
above - colluded in these disasters by putting personal career
considerations before their duty or because they lacked the moral
courage to challenge politicians. Thus they refused to confront
Blair’s dangerous fantasies about saving the planet with
hard-headed questions. The problems now are all about reforms. Once
the men have been brought back from Afghanistan we should avoid
involvement in further military adventures unless there is a clear
and vital British interest and one that can survive full and open
scrutiny. Above all we must decide whether counterinsurgencies are
suitable operations for a modern army – I suggest they are not –
and if that view is upheld we must concentrate on the core tasks of
defending the UK, vital overseas assets (Falklands & Gibraltar)
and our trade routes. We can leave nation building and saving the
Third World from itself to the Americans: they have the men and
money; we do not. Senior officers and civil servants in the MOD
cannot be trusted with these reforms. They are clearly part of the
problem. So to whom does it fall to implement these reforms?
