Cameron in Afghanistan
I fear we can expect nothing new or bold or radical from the Prime Minister’s visit to one of the most corrupt regimes in the world, for whom our native blood is constantly spilled in a fruitless endeavour to enable its authority to fuction outside a few fortified enclaves. This enterprise can never work because it was flawed at the start.
Planners, including and especially the Generals, were blind to history, to culture and to experience not only of the British Empire but also the Soviets. None had ever tamed this region, which is a composition of self organised war lord dominated tribal localities with a basic economy reliant on illegal production of opium for export and a social structure which has majority local support, but which is to our eyes medieval.
Add to this the supreme incompetence of the old War Office, now the Army department of the Ministry of Defence, which cannot even organise proper equipment and resources for what is in world terms a tiny army, which ironically is made up of maybe the best troops in the world today. These brave service men and nowadays women, give their lives attempting to do what can be done only in the dreams of Whitehall delusion.
The only question outstanding now for Afghanistan is how to make a dignified withdrawal as we did from the disgraceful war in Iraq. If the Americans want to carry on they can. In the end they will come home too. The streets of London and the towers of New York will neither more nor less safe as a consequence.