Report from New Milton Advertiser & Lymington Times 5th Sept '09
MP rounds on Government Policy in Afghanistan
Desmond Swayne MP for New Forest West told 100 members and friends of the Barton and Becton Conservatives at their Barbeque on Sun 30th August that he was dismayed by the recent poll in the Daily Telegraph showing 2 in 3 wanting to pull our forces out of Afghanistan.
Quoting from General Slim's account of the 14th Army's Burma Campaign Defeat into Victory -which is still required reading for all officers at Sandhurst- he pointed out Slim's conclusion that lack of strategic direction was the principal cause of failure:
"….Of these causes, one affected all our efforts and contributed much to turning our defeat into disaster – the failure to give the forces in the field a clear strategic object for the campaign. As a result, our plans had to be based on the rather nebulous, short-term idea of holding ground –we were not even sure what ground or for what purpose."
Mr Swayne stated that the first principle of war is 'selection and maintenance of the Aim': a nation going to war and putting its young men and women in the line of fire must be given a clearly understood purpose. He said that "the fact that so few of us appear to understand precisely what we are doing in Afghanistan is a measure of how the Government has failed to define the Aim". Indeed the country had been seriously misled about the nature of our involvement when, just before British troops deployed to Helmand province, the then Secretary of State expressed his hope that the mission might be completed without a shot being fired.
He went on to point out that maintaining the Aim requires a single minded focus excluding all distractions and he pointed out that the Government's record was lamentable "with a rapid turn over of defence ministers, one of them a part timer-doubling up as Secretary of state for Scotland, and now the current minister being the second most junior in the cabinet" and he pointed out that this lack of single mindedness was largely responsible for the planning failures which have resulted in our forces being exposed to greater danger because of a lack of sufficiently armoured vehicles and helicopters.
He ended by praising the retiring Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt for speaking out publicly over recent months and that attempts by politicians to undermine his reputation with freedom of information requests about his expenses was nothing short of grotesque.
Mr Swayne told the A&T that whilst he did believe that there was a danger of defeat 'turning into disaster' he did not yet consider that the campaign was lost: "as Slim did in Burma, we can still turn this around but it will require leadership and a focussed understanding of our objective" at present he complained that there were too many woolly notions floating around from propping up the discredited Karzi regime; establishing democracy; destroying the drugs trade; promoting women's rights; economic reconstruction; or killing the Taliban. "If the Armed Forces are to win, then they have to be given an achievable Aim which the public can understand and support, and, so far, I just don't think this has happened." |
