So writes Michael Portillo.
Well, you can certainly tell that he does not intend to stand for election again. This blog is not generally a fan club for politicians, but even here one must admit that when a former Secretary of State for Defence and Shadow Chancellor writes –
It raises questions about the stamina of our nation and the resolve of our political class. It is an uncomfortable conclusion that Britain, with nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, aircraft carriers and the latest generation of fighter-bombers, is incapable of securing a medium-size conurbation. Making Basra safe was an essential part of the overall strategy; having committed ourselves to our allies we let them down.
The extent of Britain’s fiasco has been masked by the media’s relief that we are at last leaving Iraq. Those who have been urging Britain to quit are not in a strong position to criticise the government’s lack of staying power. Reporting of Basra has mainly focused on British casualties and the prospect for withdrawal. The British media and public have shown scant regard for our failure to protect Iraqis, so the British nation, not just its government, has attracted distrust. We should reflect on what sort of country we have become. We may enjoy patronising Americans but they demonstrate a fibre that we now lack.
– it carries more weight than the same sentiments coming from most other sources.
Is it true? Broadly speaking, of course it is. I agree with those commenters to the Times who placed blame on the “carping, self-loathing left wing commentariat”, or made the parallel with the media in the Vietnam War, or with MGG of Auckland, who wrote
Fortunately Britain’s Armed Forces have not so far ‘lost the stomach for a fight’. But faced with this continuing lack of moral fibre in the civil population bred by the ‘Nanny State’ policies of New Labour it won’t be long before they give up too – in disgust!
As I wrote in a post about the New Cowardice in the emergency services called ‘Loss of Nerve’, “Poisoned soil does not long give forth good fruit.”
That said, I suspect that when viewed from the distance of thirty years, the sharp outline of defeat in Basra (and what is worse, a defeat that followed from a disgraceful accommodation with the enemy on the part of commanders too fond of their own cleverness) will be blurred by other, better parts of the picture.
Mr Portillo has shown an admirable willingness to make himself unpopular: he praised George W Bush, rightly, for the latter’s contempt of public and educated opinion. Mr Bush (contrary to popular opinion, which is one reason he has such contempt for it) has studied history and will certainly have paused over this quotation from Lincoln, written in August 1864:
This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such grounds that he cannot possibly save it afterwards.”
That is why I say that the difference between the United States and Britain in this story is not so large as all that. After all, in this war the Americans voted in the favoured candidate of the Copperheads, a President-elect who did indeed secure his election on such grounds that it would have been impossible for him to win the war after his inauguration, though he will be glad enough to take the victory that was won by other hands before it.
I think you’re right that we’ve lost our stomach for a fight, and I’m pretty happy about that. I don’t think we’ve significantly lost the fibre to defend our country, or to help our neighbours, but just being up for a fight is an attribute I’d be happy to see the back off.
That’s not what Portillo meant, of course, but criticizing the populace for not wanting to fight a war they didn’t want to fight in the beginning is disingenuous to say the least. At the start of the war only 25% thought sufficient evidence had been found to go to war, so criticizing them now because they still don’t want to be fighting it is a little like criticizing a rape victim for not at least enjoying the sex she’s having.
I was in favour of the invasion of Iraq; altho’ I never imagined there would be NO plan for the post-invasion period.
The war in Afghanistan is a silly war in a silly place. It is the only sort of war our enemies can fight. We should fight to our strengths, not theirs.
Going into 2001, our strengths were Massive Tank/IFV Battle in the Fulda Gap.[1] Hell, well into the current era, too many US generals looked at the world in terms of counting big guns. And our Air Force STILL can’t wrap their heads around the concept that The goddamn F22 and F35 have SFA to do with the current war and that we’d be well-served by a lot more helicopters and a few more wings of Hogs.
I don’t know what the UK’s problem is. From here, what I see is that Tommy is a badass worthy of great respect, when his chain of command allows him to be, and that his chain of command is a ****ing disgrace.
But the point is, to kill an enemy you have to go where he his or at least to within effective weapons range of him. And even if OEF isn’t “playing to our strengths,” according to the people I know who’ve been there we’re winning a hell of a lot more than we’re losing.
Which says nothing about encircling Iran, even though that part is probably worth mentioning. Unless one believes that the Iranian regime is no threat to the West, in which case I know who may be safely dismissed as a moonbat.
[1] I’ll give you Gothic Serpent. However, a 2-day battle fought by about a hundred elite troops doesn’t translate to a war.[2]
[2] Yes, I am calling it a victory. Our guys captured the men they set out to capture, fought on the wrong side of 10-1 or worse odds, and inflicted 20-1 (or better)[3] casualties despite having NO armored vehicles or fixed-wing air support (Thank Les Aspin/Bill Clinton for that, the assholes)
Shock horror! British folk care more about other British folk than Iraqis! How awful!
Clint Calls Us ‘Generation Pussy’
(Newser) – “We live in more of a pussy generation now,” Clint Eastwood tells Esquire upon the release of his new film Gran Torino. “Everybody’s become used to saying, ‘Well, how do we handle it psychologically?’ ” Eastwood, who grew up having to duke it out with bullies, looks back to a more stoic time: “My father had a couple of kids at the beginning of the Depression. There was not much employment. Not much welfare. People barely got by. People were tougher then.”
But stoicism didn’t mean a lack of sentiment, Clint adds. “Look how fast—seven years—people have been able to forget 9/11. Maybe you remember if you lost a relative or a loved one. But the public can get pretty blasé about stuff like that. Nobody got blasé about Pearl Harbor.”
http://www.newser.com/story/45398/clint-calls-us-generation-pussy.html
Mr. Portillo certainly gives one something to consider. The entire Basra campaign was a British bollocks. In victory or disgrace, just go home and leave the heavy lifting to the USA.
You cannot polish a turd.
Use the time to prepare for the next situation, that’s all. There will certainly be another situation.
I remember how upset so many Brits were in 2003 when Rumsfeld said that we didn’t need then to take out Saddam.
BTW there was a plan for postwar Iraq, It was designed to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe (mass starvation, epidemics etc.) it worked as far as it went.
Portillo’s kind of right, but only really with the benefit of hindsight.
When the Iraqis did pile in and wipe out the thugs, it was down-played in much of our press and even reported as a “strategic withdrawal” by the Mahdis. If the Brits had done this, would we really have greeted it with VE-day jubilation? Or more likely would they have injured a Reuters journalist or a telegenic stone-throwing youth and have another propaganda nightmare on their hands?
In other words, what’s in it for the British army to attack people whom their audience at home doesn’t even recognise as the enemy? I think I’d have done the same thing.
Besides, in return for some embarassment, we got a huge nation-defining victory for the Iraqis; that seems a small-ish price to pay.
Sunfish, could you please drop me a line?
I sent an email to a friend in California when the war was tooling up.
“Well at least we wont have so many friendly fire incidents this time.
British troops will be easily identifiable-
They will be the only ones in flip flops
with bayonets fixed.”
Because the rest of their kit just doesn’t fuckin work.
The guns wont fire in the desert, and their boots melt.
Their Armoured cars are tinplate and their vests arnt bullet proof.
The bravery of our soldiers in such conditions, is not in doubt. but the judgement of our politicians certainly is.
I worry that pretty soon, no one will wish to join the British Armed Services.
I worry about that too, RAB. There were stories coming out of Afghanistan about Tommy having to borrow ammunition and food from the local American units. At the time it seemed like just a local thing that was tailor-made for the American press.
But I’m not so sure. When your SAS chief resigns over lack of kit you have a problem, and whether or not you ought to fight a war is a question you can only debate if you’re capable of doing so.
Then again, the odd bayonet charge isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Notice what’s missing from that list? Little things like adequate numbers of helicopters (transport and gun-ships), up-armored wheeled vehicles, and drone aircraft (UAV’s). Lots of big ticket items, little in the way of what troops on the ground in a place like Afghanistan may need. Yeah, I know the US spends a whole lot on the big ticket items also. However, we also spend money for the small items that are needed in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
One example, a US Marine MEU was assigned to the British sector this year for four months. The Marines put together, and executed, an op the the British Army could not have done in their wildest dreams. The Marines had more helo transport assests available to them than the British Army had stationed in Afghanistan. And that was for one battalion-plus sized operation.
As far as the British Army not fighting the Mahdi army in Basra, in a way I don’t blame them They had nothing in the way of assests needed to fight a sustained urban battle. No vehicles (Strykers, hardened Humvees and gun-trucks), no helicopter gun-ships, no UAV’s, etc.
While a make-do and muddle-through attitude may harken back to a long tradition in the British Army, at some point the appropriate equipment needs to be brought to bear to fight the wars that have been thought neccessary to fight.
Not sure. If we (as a nation) don’t have the stomach to fight a bunch of people in a medium sized city we know nothing about in a country far away from us, where neither side ever asked us to fight, in a fight makes us no safer, and wins us no friends, well, gee, I think I can deal with that.
The idea that it is better to win a fight you shouldn’t have started than to lose it is a curious one. What would we prove by ‘winning’ Basra (whatever *that* might look like)? Would we scare Putin? Would that be worth the deaths of British and Iraqi people that it would entail? Doubt it.
Iraq was a stupid adventure – I’d rather leave it with our tail between our legs than hang around trying to boast about it. Christ.
Because the rest of their kit just doesn’t fuckin work.
Meanwhile:
I recommend less Daily Mail. There are a whole bunch of problems with our forces’ kit. Always has been always will be. That’s not to say things shouldn’t be improved, but this is hardly some kind of nadir for British military equipment. We have good kit. We could have more of it, but only if someone feels like paying.
Well, the collapse of civilisations is normally accompanied by the collapse of their military capacity, so nothing surprising really.
Woolworth’s is gone. It really is all over now.
Woolworth’s is gone. It really is all over now.
SAS bought its kit at Woolworth’s?
General “Mike” Jackson (the want-to-be para) spends most of his time sneering at American blunders in Iraq – although what exactly he did (apart from landing a force near Basra, keeping them a few years whilst making no effort to really control even Basra let alone anywhere else, and then pulling out) is not explained.
Whatever one thinks of the idea of going into Iraq it has been well faught – by the American forces in that the enemy commanders have been killed or captured (bar Sadr – who they are not allowed to kill or capture) and enemy forces are in rout.
Afganistan – for which there WAS public support for (even among the media) has turned out worse.
Of course I do not think much of the whole plan of taking democracy to the Muslims. This does not mean the plan is wrong – just my gut is against it (to which Bush and Blair would have said “so what?”).
I am a Rothbardian – it is more that (even as young boy) I talked to men who had served in these countries.
The above should read “I am not a Rothbardian”.
The idea that it is better to win a fight you shouldn’t have started than to lose it is a curious one. What would we prove by ‘winning’ Basra (whatever *that* might look like)? Would we scare Putin? Would that be worth the deaths of British and Iraqi people that it would entail? Doubt it.
I think this is wrong. Irrespective of whether or not the conflict was a good idea to start with, you’re not doing yourselves any favors by giving every two-bit strongman in the world the idea he can outlast you if necessary.
A military’s primary purpose isn’t actually breaking things and killing people. It’s primary purpose is to give you the obvious capability to break things and kill people. That way you don’t have to. It’s not the Putins of the world you need to worry about, it’s the regional powers (like Argentina) who look at such a loss and think “They don’t have the stomach to fight. They don’t have a properly equipped military that’s capable of independent projection of power. Let’s just take what we think is ours”
Ultimately this is why the US is in Afghanistan. After Vietnam, the Iranian Hostage crisis, Somalia, and the tepid response to various Jihadi bombings around the world, bin Laden thought the US was a “paper tiger” that either wouldn’t respond to the 9/11 attacks or wouldn’t have the stomach for a prolonged fight. This isn’t conjecture on my part – he said so very clearly.
J, I dont need the Daily Mail
My wife works for the MOD.
We’ve had enough of your
Things can only better
Army,
Already.
There’s a get missing
between only and better
But Im sure you all
got that .
At the risk of intruding in a British matter, I have to note that I follow foreign military affairs rather closely. I publish a newsletter on political and military affairs. “J” commented to the effect that while there are problems, it is not as critical as made out.
First let me say that I have the utmost respect for the British military. I doubt neither their courage nor their professional abilities at the operational level. When the politicians get involved, however, things fall apart.
Looking from the outside your military is, and has been, deliberately abused by your government. In the name of economy, it has been cut to the point where your entire armed forces including reserves and Territorials would fit into an American football stadium with a lot of seats left over.
Your SAS sets the standard in Special Operations. I have said that the SAS is what a lot of our SpecOps people want to be like when they grow up. They are real military professionals and they understand loyalty down as well as up. Recently, your SAS commander in Afghanistan resigned in protest of the shoddy equipment that was getting his people killed. From the details I have heard, the deliberate indifference of the government wasted those lives.
As has been noted here, your people are undersupplied and lack basic equipment. During the Gulf War, we had to supply you light machine guns, because yours would not work. Hell, I keep track of the Highland regiments out of personal interest and your guys are so short funded that they have to “hot Kilt” for parades.
Even the matter of caring for your troops and their families; especially those who are deployed, is something that from this side of the Atlantic is deplorable. From the reports we hear, your payroll people frequently kind of “forget” to pay your people when they are overseas.
Mr. Portillo mentions a panoply of modern weapons, including aircraft carriers. Your carriers are mostly in states of preservation, and the replacements have been indefinitely postponed in the new budget. Further, your Fleet Air Arm is about to be disestablished completely. That functionally means that Britain, an importing nation, has completely given up on the seapower thing.
Britain gives every appearance of having made the political decision that either a) they do not believe that there are or will be any foreign threats that they will ever have to face down with force, or b) they have made the decision in advance to yield in any such confrontation.
Although to be honest, that would be of a piece with the attitude that seems to be in effect for dealing with domestic threats.
Subotai Bahadur
Thanks Subotai
I hope you are not spying for a foreign power,
because you are bloody spot on!
Subotai – one minor correction. It wasn’t the indifference of the government that got those SAS soldiers killed, it was their arrogance in trying to fight two foreign wars without either the moral standing or the funding.
Ah, I would not count out the British man yet, as dandy and effete as he has become. 🙂 Guess who said this:
Men, hard pounding, this. But we shall see who will pound the longest.
Rhymes with Luke Bellington.
War is work. Britain has retired from it, for many years now. You may, before too long, become more experienced and better at it.
Subotai Bahadur is spot-on. It’s not just the little things. Our big-ticket procurements are a mess. The Nimrod MRA4 is still in pieces, the Typhoon has no appreciable A2G capability and the latter tranche is under threat of cancelation. We have just sold the last of AWE to some californians who will probablt re-tool to make organic smoothies or some such hippy shit. Our only land-based SAM is the 35 yr old 6km range Rapier which is expected to soldier on ’til 2020. The Type 45 Destroyers have been bowdelerized and are being produced in limited numbers. We is fucked.
And this matters because the lead-time for “heavy metal” kit is so enormous these days that if a conventional foe hoves into view then we’re stuffed. And one will eventually. Yes, we need to develop stuf for this COIN stuff but we also have to have the capacity to fight the other way too. We are in danger of gearing-up to fight the last war (a military truism) when we should (due to lead-times etc) be thinking two wars ahead.
And finally. Gorgon Brownshirt shows utter contempt to the military but then whaddya expect from a turd-gulping Commie traitor?
Exactly. That the general populace is not ready to unquestioningly line up behind the state every time it decides to take us on some ill advised foreign military adventure is something to be celebrated.
A great comment from Subotai.
I think it’s more a case of psychological defeatism. The general idea among the political classes, including those controlling the military, is the mantra that “we no longer have an Empire”, i.e. we are no longer a significant power. This led, long ago, to a general perception that we shouldn’t be trying to field a major world class armed forces and just have forces that fit in with other peoples. Was it Healey who decided we wouldn’t have big carriers? That was effectively a decision that the Royal Navy would no longer be the terror of the seas, kind of thing.
In general, Britain as a country is being wound down to fit its new role as a province of the EU’s shoddy empire. There is surely an awareness that within a couple of decades at the most there will be to all intents and purposes no national armed forces- there may be forces named after Britain, or parts thereof, but they will be under central EU command. Clearly in such a mindset nobody is going to try to maintain a fully specified national armed forces. So what they’re at now is creating, or trying to create, forces that will “fit in” with The Colleagues, or which can be used as bargaining chips with The Colleagues in a kind of “we brought two aircraft carriers to the table, what have you brought?” kind of a way. So procurement is in disarray not just because of bureaucratic and political incompetence but also because it’s policy not to really try very hard. The public still think of “our” armed forces and expect them to be world class. The elite think of them as something being merged into the Greater Whole. So it’s not aircraft carriers to ensure we have a world class, effective navy that can strike terror into the hearts of the Towelheadistanis, it’s aircraft carriers we can show to the EU colleagues to give us a better place at the bargaining table of Pooled Sovereignty. With that kind of mindset, the probability of making top level military decisions that seem to make sense is minute.
I don’t know what the UK’s problem is. From here, what I see is that Tommy is a badass worthy of great respect, when his chain of command allows him to be, and that his chain of command is a ****ing disgrace.
Nothing new there- that’s a tradition that literally goes back centuries.
At least they’ve stopped selling officer’s commissions.
“Not sure. If we (as a nation) don’t have the stomach to fight a bunch of people in a medium sized city we know nothing about in a country far away from us, where neither side ever asked us to fight, in a fight makes us no safer, and wins us no friends, well, gee, I think I can deal with that.”
The point is surely that – in the words of Colin Powell – if you break it you fix it. Britain invaded, and so had an obligation to fight for the establishment of peace and stability in Basra. Opting out of that fight because of political expediency and military arrogance (we’re the British Army, this is how we did things in Northern Ireland, we know better than those foolish Yanks, etc) doesn’t do a lot for Britain’s reputation.
Where to start?
1) I well recall, when the Brits went to Basra, we got all these snide little lectures about how the Septics lack the nuance and worldly-wiseness of your average Tommy when it comes to dealing with Johnny Arab, and how the Brits were going to teach the US a lesson on How to Do It. Don’t hear so much about that now, do we?
2) I also well-recall a tragic blue-on-blue incident where a UK armored vehicle was hit by a US A10 and a British soldier was killed. The hysteria in the UK newspapers was something to behold – the US pilot was excoriated as a ‘trigger-happy cowboy’, conveniently overlooking the fact that the British Army’s idea of IFF kit seems to center on coloured banners and Very lights. Of course, when a squadron of UK Challengers got all bollixed up just a few days after and commenced to firing on each other, it barely got a mention. Only Americans can be cowboys, it seems.
3) The UK armed forces have always been the poor relation, chronically, institutionally underfunded and denied the benefits of the great well of innovation and technology that would be available for the asking. This has bred a sort of make-do-and-mend attitude, where getting by with inadequate kit and half-assed logistics is seen as being somehow praiseworthy and indicative of suprior military acumen. Hence the contempt for the US forces, with their apparently-profligate use of always-superior kit – as though warfighting should be an exercise in careful husbandry of resources. This is fine in peacetime garrison, stupid in combat.
4) Much has been made of the incidents of bad behaviour on the part of US soldiers, while similar acts by british and other coalition troops have been generally underplayed.
I am honoured to be personally acquainted with Captian Vivian H. Gembara, a US Army JAG officer whose recent book ‘Drowning in the Desert’ chronicles her time in-country in Iraq, including her prosecutions of US Army deserters and soldiers who assaulted and murdered Iraqi civilians. War, especially guerilla war, is a nasty and brutal business, but her experiences show us in stark contrast that while the US forces in Iraq were/are not choir-boys and -girls, the standard of behaviour expected of and enforced upon them by their own command is perhaps unique in all the annals of war.
And, unlike General ‘Mike” Jackson, CPT Gembara actually is a para, who earned her “blood wings” and Bronze Star the hard way.
Gotta go plow snow. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this.
llater,
llamas
Britain has lost the stomach for a fight? Perhaps the most damning comment would be: it doesn’t matter.
I think you are overlooking The First Rule Of Warfare (click link).
Or perhaps it does. Certainly, there is a rather snooty Euro-tendency to consider themselves as being beyond war — “Too Legit To Hit”. Just look at the way that Russia’s recent military action in Georgia was seen as a problem for the US — not as a problem for those Euros who will freeze in the dark the day that Russia decides to cut off the gas supply. (The Russians would never do that, would they?)
Maybe the Euros are right that they will never have to fight again, and thousands of years of contrary historical precedent are irrelevant. Time will tell.
Trouble is Alice, they still want their European Army all neatly under Commission control.
While rather ignoring the fact that the only country in Europe that is any good at fighting is Britain.
The German High Command freely admit that their troops cant fight, because they are too fat and underexercised.
The Italians havent been very good at it, and neither have the French lately.
Can you imagine the utterly useless ineffectual balls up we will be left with if a European Army ever becomes a reality?