Wounded & Dangerous

What do armchair warriors know about combat? In Afghanistan in particular where the Taliban use suicide attacks as a weapon of choice? The murder of a wounded Taliban fighter was of course wrong, it goes against everything we believe in including, as the Royal Marine sergeant who did the killing acknowledged at the time, the Geneva Convention. Still, we have to remember the circumstances they were in. The attack they had repelled was not necessarily over, and the wounded fighter may have become an even greater danger. Shooting him was an expedient of the battlefield.

War is ugly. However I would still have preferred that the Marines did the decent thing and gave the wounded Talib first aid, as they discussed, instead of a bullet. But that’s easy for me to say, I wasn’t there. Nor were any of the other armchair warriors who pour down scorn on them. The Taliban had attacked their position and did everything they could do to kill as many of our troops as they could. Who could be sure this particular Talib, who was still armed, was not a threat? Would you bet your life he wouldn’t still kill you? The Taliban don’t respect the Geneva Convention, they don’t even respect their own lives.

So it’s pointless speculating whether the Talib fighter had surrendered or was even a captive; the Taliban have a record of concealing grenades to blow up themselves together with their captors. Fighting against irregular forces is fraught with danger but even in combat with another western army you can never be sure where you stand. The last time we fought a western army was in 1982 against Argentina, a signatory of the Geneva Convention. In one notorious incident, three paratroopers were killed when advancing under a white flag to accept the surrender of the Argentines at Goose Green.

Were the Marines mindful of that danger? We think of Afghanistan today and delude ourselves that we are on top of the situation, but back in 2011 when this incident took place there could be no delusion; Helmand was a very dangerous place to be. The Marines were coming to the end of a long and dangerous deployment and they had lost comrades to Taliban attacks and IEDs. It was kill or be killed. Let’s not forget either that we had sent them there with inadequate personal body armour, weaponry, vehicles and helicopter support. The stress must have been unimaginable, lapses in judgement inevitable.

I’m glad the Marines have been held accountable. But we must remember that it was us who put them in harms way. We sent them there to fight on our behalf and we are just as responsible for what they do. We should support them and try to be understanding when it goes wrong as in this case. Certainly have pity for the Talib fighter who was murdered, but have some pity too for the Marine. The fact that he was a sergeant in the Royal Marines is evidence enough without knowing his name or background that he was an outstanding soldier. He does not deserve to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Postscript: There is no conceivable risk that showing clemency to this Marine will endanger serving troops as is being claimed. Does anyone serious believe that any British troops who are captured by the Taliban would be leniently treated? Therefore it seems to me that the harsh words of the currently serving generals scorning the idea of clemency is in fact covering up their own complicity in historically under-resourcing the men in the field and is reprehensible.

The Legacy of the Neocons on 9/11

Saddam Hussein brutalised his country and ruled it by fear. He was without question an evil man responsible for the deaths of countless thousands of Iraqis. But he posed no threat to the West in general or the United States of America in particular. No threat whatsoever. Osama bin Laden on the other hand was a major proven threat. He had orchestrated numerous attacks against American lives and interests culminating in the 9/11 attacks when hijacked airlines, packed with passengers, were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another plane was brought down in open fields by a brave but ultimately fatal passenger rebellion. Three thousand innocent people were killed that day.

Yet the Neoconservatives, the lunatic right wing of the Republican Party in power in the Pentagon and the White House at the time, still saw Saddam as the main enemy instead of bin Laden. After 9/11 they launched a justified invasion of Afghanistan where bin Laden had a safe haven and they came close to wiping him out along with his entire organisation. Holed-up in Tora Bora, with no possibility of escape, and with American bombers pounding the mountains with fuel-air bombs of devastating power, bin Laden wrote out his last will and testament. Then a miracle happened. The Americans scaled down their operations and left a route open for bin Laden to escape into Pakistan. He would live to spread terrorism for another decade.

In “Deafness Before the Storm” Kurt Eichenwald explains how the Neocons briefed against the CIA who in the days leading up to 11th September 2001 were frantically trying to alert the White House to the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Acknowledging bin Laden as the principal threat did not fit with Neocon priorities so they did everything they could to discredit the CIA warnings. You can read the full article here. Outright lies and denying facts was stock-in-trade to them, indeed Karl Rove is attributed with saying they made their own reality.

Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defence during George H W Bush’s Presidency, and Vice President to George W Bush. Donald Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defence to President George W Bush. Together, they regarded deposing Saddam during Bush 43 as unfinished business from Bush 41. The idea that after 9/11 they could still regard Saddam as a greater threat to America than bin Laden is extraordinary, but clearly they did. They diverted vital resources away from Afghanistan when US and allied forces were on the cusp of finally eradicating al Qaeda and they threw everything into a war against Saddam. A war predicated on the lie that Saddam was a threat to the West and to America when he was no such thing.

So that, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, is the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld legacy to America. They could not have prevented it, let’s be realistic, the CIA did not have sufficient evidence of the exact nature and timing of the attack. But they could have snuffed out al Qaeda in December 2001. Instead, they let bin Laden off the hook. They let him get away. They let him plot terror against America and her allies for another ten years. And even though bin Laden is now dead, no thanks to them, al Qaeda has grown stronger and more dangerous with semi-autonomous organisations in several regions of the world. Thanks to Neocon stupidity we are all at greater risk than ever before and another 9/11 scale atrocity has a frightening inevitability about it.

As the IRA used to say, “We only have to be lucky once; you have to be lucky every time.”

Defence Select Committee report on operations in Afghanistan

We’ve read over the last few years some pretty alarming reports in the press about the state of operations in Afghanistan, now we can read an authoritative report from Parliament which has had access to all the relevant papers and interviewed people involved at the highest level. It is a horrifying report.

The Select Committee writes:

“It is unacceptable that UK Forces were deployed in Helmand for three years from 2006 without the necessary personnel, equipment or intelligence to succeed in their mission, says the Defence Committee in its report on Operations in Afghanistan.”

“The Committee is disturbed by the fact that in 2006 the Secretary of State was being told that commanders on the ground were content with the support they were being given in Helmand when clearly they were not.”

Summary of the report

Index to the full report

Here are some further points about what the report says, distilled from an article in the Telegraph:

  • The key failing was to send too small a force into Helmand.
  • The report also criticises senior commanders for sending the task force into Helmand without a strategic reserve force – a move widely regarded as a fundamental and potentially catastrophic military mistake.
  • Troop numbers were capped at 3,150. Of those, around 650 combat troops were deployed into an area half the size of the UK; by contrast, in 2001 NATO had 30,000 personnel in Helmand.
  • The task force deployed with just five Chinooks (heavy-lift helicopters) and just over half the number of vehicles required. Defence chiefs told ministers they had enough helicopters in Helmand even though field commanders complained of shortages. It was deployed without a single vehicle capable of surviving a strike from a Russian anti-tank mine or larger IEDs.
  • The lack of armoured vehicles meant convoys could not safely travel the vast distances over which troops were spread without sustaining heavy casualties, and within weeks of their arrival, British troops were trapped in isolated locations and engaged in daily battles.
  • The 75-page report does not name officers but those in positions of authority at the time included Gen Sir Mike Walker, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, Gen Sir Mike Jackson and Gen Sir Richard Dannatt.

The full article in the Telegraph

My own view is that none of this comes as a surprise. We read all about this as it was happening, but it still comes as a shock to see our worst suspicions confirmed and to see how little the reality on the ground affected those at the Ministry of Defence whose incompetence created the shambles in the first place, and whose only response seems to have been to tell lies and cover it all up. As the Telegraph observes, the report names no names, but the four four-star officers named above presided over a monumental military cock-up that has cost 370 lives and counting, and more than 2000 wounded.

Surely there has to be some accounting for their conduct? Just how incompetent do you have to be to lose out on another promotion? Just how negligent do you have to be to lose out on another appearance in the Honours List?  Just how many servicemen do you have to kill before you lose your job?

Losing two wars at once

There are two wars going on in Afghanistan at present, not one as is generally perceived. The first is a war of choice against the Taliban in which we seek to build a stable, peaceful democratic Afghan state. The second is a war of necessity against al Qaeda who we seek to eliminate as a terrorist threat.

Neither war is going well. There is no conceivable hope that we can eliminate the rampant corruption at every level of the Afghan government, and therefore no hope that we can bring peace and stability to that country. But we continue to prop up Hamid Karzai while we try to win hearts and minds amongst the populace. To that end we go out to remote villages, find the village elders and sit down and talk with them. We offer education for their children, medical aid for their community, trading opportunities and financial support, and even weapons so they can defend themselves from the Taliban. The Taliban have a much simpler approach. They go to the remote villages, find the village elders and kill them. Their approach is going to trump ours every time because we can’t occupy and defend every village in Afghanistan and the Taliban know that what the Americans were fond of saying in Vietnam is true, “if you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”

So why don’t we cut our losses and just pull out? The problem we have is with the second war, against al Qaeda. We were on the verge of completely defeating them back in 2003 when we shifted our attention away and invaded Iraq instead. The war in Afghanistan suddenly became the forgotten war, starved of resources, devoid of leadership, and out of the public eye. Al Qaeda used that respite well. They have regrouped and organised a network of training camps not just in northern Pakistan, but in other regional hot spots around the world. Afghanistan is important to us because it is the only land base close to their heartlands from which we can operate. If, or when, we lose Afghanistan as a base, operations against al Qaeda can only be conducted by air across what will then be a very hostile Taliban controlled Afghanistan, or an already hostile Iran, or an increasingly hostile Pakistan. If we lose Afghanistan, we may lose any hope of defeating al Qaeda in Pakistan.

The consequences will be severe indeed. We will leave al Qaeda free to operate against us from a secure base, immune from attack by us. They will continue to destabilise Pakistan and will in a few short years take possession of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. We should then reflect on the lie of WMD’s that took us into war with Iraq and which gave al Qaeda this unprecedented opportunity.

Should economic reality trump military necessity?

These have to be the happiest of days for pacifists. With a growing sense of disillusionment with our wars and our ability to fight wars, the Strategic Defence and Security Review just heaps joy upon joy for them. Now the Royal Navy is to be saddled with two massive aircraft carriers, useless without aircraft and which the Navy must scrap much of its surface fleet to pay for. The Army and the Royal Air Force, both apparently clinging to the need to defend Northern Europe from a Soviet Pact invasion, a threat that vanished decades ago, have sacrificed everything else to keep that dream alive. All of which leaves brave men and women fighting in the front line to pay the ultimate price for years of neglect.

Who should the finger of blame point towards? The last government appointed some of the most breathtakingly incompetent ministers in our history, but if they are given no leadership from above, and they are never held to account in Parliament, is it their fault for being useless or ours for letting them get away with it? And if the Ministry of Defence is run by clowns, have our top generals and admirals been moulded by their environment or are they equally culpable for the mismanagement of the department over many years? It’s hard to imagine how any senior officer who puts the case for military need above that of political expediency can further his career.

And that is a large part of the problem. We have far too many senior officers scrambling up the greasy pole to collect more stars before retiring to a comfortable job in the defence industry which is  milking and bilking the defence budget. We already have more admirals than ships even before the planned round of cutbacks. But the bloated empire that is Whitehall will not be scaled back accordingly. It will be the soldier, the sailor, and the airman who will again bear the brunt of economic cutbacks. There will be fewer of them, with poorer equipment, and less of it. All of which ignores the fact that we are in a hot, shooting war with al Qaeda.

We need to confront terrorism everywhere. We need to tackle its radicalising influence here in the UK, and we need to be capable of responding to terrorist incidents or preferably of detecting and preventing them beforehand. We need to be tracking them down to their training camps and flushing them out of their safe havens, worldwide. That’s why we were in Afghanistan originally, that’s why we should be in the North West Provinces if the Pakistan government won’t assist. Hot spots of radial Islam in Yemen, Somalia, Indonesia and elsewhere also need to be brought into the equation and we need to deal with those politically if at all possible but militarily if not.

To do this we need more military resources, not fewer. We need more armed police or territorial army manpower ready to deal with a Mumbai-style attack wherever it might occur. That means more soldiers and army camps across Britain. We need sufficient emergency resources to cope with casualties after a bomb attack, again wherever it might occur which means more ambulances, hospitals and medics across the country. And we need intelligence gathering to tell us what the terrorists are planning. We also need to engage with moderate Moslems, to counter the extremist views being put across by radical clerics, and to reassure them that this isn’t a war against Islam.

But we also need to be able to deploy an independent army to any location in the world. Fully equipped, fully trained, and fully supported on land, sea and in the air. We should not require support from any other country to do this, but we should be ready and willing to support others should we be called upon to do so. Finally, and most important, we need the political will. Defence expenditure is not something to be weighed against other peace-time budgetary considerations. It’s not a choice between a new warship or a cross-rail link. We either spend the money and defend ourselves adequately, or we have no need for budgets for anything. This is a matter of survival, plain and simple. We are at war.

These may not be happy days for pacifists after all.  White Poppy, anyone?