Read Sun-Tzu or Clausewitz, then comment

I saw a soldier on TV this morning talking about Afghanistan

I’ve no doubt he’s a decent military tactician, but strategically I think he was dead wrong. He was asked about why we are deploying in Helmand and trotted out the usual stuff about fighting terror and suppressing drugs. Much as I respect the British Army, I think this is superficial thinking.

There is little point engaging Taliban forces in Afghanistan, if they can just decamp to Pakistan. The Americans discovered this to their cost when fighting Viet Cong in Vietnam, when they could just go into Cambodia, out of US reach. The USA with all their resources never suppressed the Viet Cong. I fear we face a similarly impossible task against the Taliban, especially in light of out miniscule forces in theatre.

In addition, far from fighting terrorists, it just gives “grist to the mill” of Al Qaida’s recruiting sergeants in the UK. The July 7 bombers weren’t trained in Afghanistan, but there maybe many who are motivated, at least in part, by our presence there.

Then there’s the old “suppressing drugs” chestnut. Despite public utterances, I cannot believe, that if a local warlord says to the Paras “Look, I’m not Taliban, but I need the money from the poppy to fight them” I cannot believe we’d burn his crop. (If we did, wouldn’t we alienate him?) It’s a dangerous confusion.

Sure, as a headline grabber “Brits fight drugs and terror” it’s great, but it doesn’t stand up to rationale thought.

And we need some more of that, before more Brits needlessly die. Does anyone honestly think that when we decamp in a couple of years, the Taliban will have been finished ? Or maybe Afghanistan won’t grow heroin anymore ?

Then of course there is the fate of at least three major armies who have gone into Afghanistan in recent times. The second Afghan war resulted in two and a half thousand British deaths, the first war deployed the 44th East Essex regiment, which resulted in a Cannae style wipe out for us, (indeed it was worse, the Romans got out with c.20,000 men from Cannae, we got out with (sic) 1). And the modern Red Army, wholly unconstrained by the rules of warfare, deploying on average 100,000 men for a decade was again defeated, with a loss of approximately 15,000 men.

I cannot see what we expect to achieve, except to send brave men to their futile deaths. And we need to stop. Now.