[TobyD]

Rank and file Democrats must be questioning his foreign policy and national political credentials + capabilities.

As indeed are many Conservative party backbenchers.  Biden has been a sceptic of US involvement in Afghanistan for many years,  he was during the Obama administration and it should not have been a surprise to our government that this happened.  Johnson's government have completely failed to do something competently,  again; just to add to the management of the pandemic response,  Brexit,  the NI situation etc.

Its funny how our ministers of state are always too busy to do important things but have plenty of time to devote to statues, taking the knee, or what pictures some students have in their common room.

[colin8ll]

The Greens are to play a formal role in government for the first time in the UK, working with the SNP in Scotland. I think this is noteworthy. I've been a Green supporter for a long time, and know others who would support the Greens but don't because they believe it's a wasted vote, at least within the UK's first past the post system. I hope this marks the start of the Greens wielding more power and influence throughout the UK's political establishments, and I also (obviously) hope they can navigate the challenge of being the smaller party in a power sharing structure.

[ummagumma]

Rank and file Democrats must be questioning his foreign policy and national political credentials + capabilities.

As indeed are many Conservative party backbenchers.  Biden has been a sceptic of US involvement in Afghanistan for many years,  he was during the Obama administration and it should not have been a surprise to our government that this happened.  Johnson's government have completely failed to do something competently,  again; just to add to the management of the pandemic response,  Brexit,  the NI situation etc.

Its funny how our ministers of state are always too busy to do important things but have plenty of time to devote to statues, taking the knee, or what pictures some students have in their common room.

I think we have found some common ground! Especially the last paragraph in not seeing the wood from the trees.

Again, and I feel I am harping on so will stop after this, it is not that the Biden withdraw has happened that is a surprise but it is a surprise how it happened. I wont carry water for the UK government, but most have been caught off guard by this US strategy (plus the resulting swift takeover by the Taliban) and sent into reactive mode .. which is never a good thing militarily or politically speaking.

[seankenny]

I found this short essay, written by an American woman who's lived in Kandahar for a decade and speaks Pashto, to be insightful:
https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/the-ides-of-august

In short - too much corruption in the Afghan state, enabled by the US. The negative role of Pakistan and its intelligence services. Karzai being too close to the Taliban.

And whilst I'm appalled at Dominic Raab and think he should resign, this is clearly a failure that's been building for years. That it hasn't been flagged particularly well shows a big hole in our democratic system. We have the systems in place to investigate ongoing issues which aren't necessarily in the public eye, eg select committees whose very job is to oversee and interogate the government. Why didn't we see this coming? Were we too bound up with Brexit (another opportunity cost of this idiotic policy)? This isn't just policy wonk stuff - the likely future path of climate change is going to create plenty of failing states not that far from us, so we need to work out how to fix things better than we have been doing.

[TobyD]

The Greens are to play a formal role in government for the first time in the UK, working with the SNP in Scotland. I think this is noteworthy. I've been a Green supporter for a long time, and know others who would support the Greens but don't because they believe it's a wasted vote, at least within the UK's first past the post system. I hope this marks the start of the Greens wielding more power and influence throughout the UK's political establishments, and I also (obviously) hope they can navigate the challenge of being the smaller party in a power sharing structure.

I agree that it seems like a good thing, except for perhaps the union, but honestly, climate change is far more important. The greens did well in Sheffield in the last election, in the local and general ones.

[Bradders]

The Greens are to play a formal role in government for the first time in the UK, working with the SNP in Scotland. I think this is noteworthy. I've been a Green supporter for a long time, and know others who would support the Greens but don't because they believe it's a wasted vote, at least within the UK's first past the post system. I hope this marks the start of the Greens wielding more power and influence throughout the UK's political establishments, and I also (obviously) hope they can navigate the challenge of being the smaller party in a power sharing structure.

I agree that it seems like a good thing, except for perhaps the union, but honestly, climate change is far more important. The greens did well in Sheffield in the last election, in the local and general ones.

Careful of confusing the English Greens with the Scottish. The latter seem to me to be a fairly extreme hard left nationalist incarnation of the party, as opposed to the moderate centrist version we're more familiar with in England.

[Duma]

the only sensible option is to complete the NHS online type-1 opt out. Which is what I've done.   

Is this all you have to do for the opt out? I was thinking I had to send a form to my GP?

Hmm..

This page - https://digital.nhs.uk/your-data/opting-out-of-data-sharing - explains there are two types of opting out:
1. opt out of data being shared with third parties (but your GP will still share your data with NHS digital)
2. opt out of all data being shared by your GP to NHS digital.


Online to opt out of 1. Letter to GP to opt out of 2.

It may be that option 1 doesn't stop the risk of your data leaching to commercial interests.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/22/nhs-data-grab-on-hold-as-millions-opt-out

some (hopefully) good news

[BrutusTheBear]

Brutus - respectfully you have missed the sarcasm! I attempted to denote that with the quotation marks. Obviously it failed - the perils of the internet! Sorry...

My intention was to highlight that usually those opposing these violent ventures are always in the tiny minority, usually on the left, and criticised as "not adult" / "student politics" / "not patriotic" / "foreign subversives" / "rebels" etc. After much loss of life, national wealth, and opportunity cost to direct resources to more productive endeavours, they usually turn out to have been right. Again.

Apologies Nigel.. I posted and then headed into the wilds of Scotland without reception/WiFi..  Totally missed your sarcasm 

Totally with you..  Another classic, and sadly missed by most, method of undermining leftwards and/or anti violent political thought is to dismiss it as childish, less than serious etc..  Leave it to the adults in the room indeed. To quote Elbow 'the leaders of the free world are just little boys throwing stones.'.
The lack of maturity of thought is astounding and yet when it is challenged  we are told to we are immature whilst our sons and daughters are sent to their deaths in order to sate the egos of people whom genuinely haven't grown up.
Pisses me off massively.

[seankenny]

The lack of maturity of thought is astounding and yet when it is challenged  we are told to we are immature whilst our sons and daughters are sent to their deaths in order to sate the egos of people whom genuinely haven't grown up.

So you disagree with the policy of humanitarian intervention*. Fair enough. Does that mean you think western powers were right not to interfere in the Rwandan Genocide?

* Feel free to call it "so called" humanitarian intervention if it makes you feel better.

[Oldmanmatt]

Always feels a bit different when you’re standing there, watching people die, but hey, obviously I’m not “mature” enough to understand the principles of non-intervention. I never got it/understood it in Yugoslavia, for instance.

[Oldmanmatt]

Are they all just going to ignore the crisis in Haiti, and spend a few days kicking the Afghanistan political football around parliament for a few days?

Edit - I see some support has now been promised.

That was never the case. We always have a large vessel deployed to that region, year round, for disaster relief and drug interdiction.
Wave Knight is there right now, iirc. When the fleet was restructured around the then determined “modern needs” (circa 1995), we massively reduced the number of “Warships” in favour of multirole vessels like her. They are civilian vessels, actually. Though their crews wear RN style uniforms, they are Civil Servants (part of the RN reserve, for sure and “become” military when activated). The vessels carry military personnel and equipment and are lightly/defensively armed (think air defence and no missiles). They have hospital and casualty receiving facilities, but due to the weapons are not “Hospital ships” and are therefor not protected under the Geneva convention. That was a deliberate decision, since it also allows the vessels to enter conflict zone and actually get close enough to provide meaningful assistance.

  Most of the tier 2 operation and the Commando/Assault type units of the British military have been heavily reoriented to humanitarian relief, for around two decades now. Most Royal Marines, for instance, will have spent almost as much time rebuilding schools and infrastructure in disaster zones, as they have on patrol  in war zones, during that time. Just as they are now.
There is a naivety in certain people’s perception of  so called “violent” response that conveniently seems to gloss over the true nature of the role.
War is shit and shit happens in war. Innocent people die. One principle difference between “Us” and “Them” in most modern situations, is that the killing of innocents is accidental, because something or someone has fucked up, they were never deliberately targeted.
Just ask yourself, as a little exercise in comparative philosophy, how many Taliban fighters will be prosecuted by their own government for war crimes?
Then, bear in mind every UK serviceman so prosecuted, was reported by his own comrades.

Also, with regards to Afghanistan in particular, there seems to be a great deal of conflation between the initial US invasion and it’s objective, with the subsequent/concurrent  UN mission there.   Which is odd, given a eye witness account posted in this thread. 
There is also a significant difference between those who conduct such missions and those who exploit these conflicts and disasters for personal gain or political advancement, of which there are many, from as low as the likes of Farage through to heads of state. A fair few have been Labour party politicians, incidentally.

[TobyD]

That's a great post Matt. It seems to me that British forces do an enormous amount of invaluable work in many areas of the world and that a kneejerk anti intervention response is rather  myopic, especially given that as many problems intervention runs into at times,  you can never know the counterfactual to it. Even if the most the allied presence in Afghanistan has produced is a generation of young Afghans who are more aware that greater rights for women,  better education and a slightly more culturally liberal society isn't the end of civilisation then that's surely worth something.

[SA Chris]

I think you misunderstood my post, I was saying parliament at the time had priorities wrong, and were debating who should have done what in Afghanistan, while the crisis in Haiti unfolded without comment, which I edited shortly afterwards.

The rest of your post is interesting but tangential to my comment.

Anyway, it looks like the US have not only pulled out, but also given the Taliban a considerable arsenal for free.
 
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/taliban-fighters-gloat-with-newly-stolen-us-weaponry-significant-threat-to-us/ar-AANI99L?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531

[Mike Highbury]

Anyway, it looks like the US have not only pulled out, but also given the Taliban a considerable arsenal for free.
 
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/taliban-fighters-gloat-with-newly-stolen-us-weaponry-significant-threat-to-us/ar-AANI99L?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531

I know bugger all about guns and ammo but won't most of the fancier ordnance be 'bricked'?

[SA Chris]

I'm sure they have remote access /lockdown for some of the higher tech stuff, but not all of it. Guess not everyone can jump straight in a Blackhawk and go for a spin.

[seankenny]

Good article in The Economist on corruption and failed states here:

https://www.economist.com/international/2021/08/22/why-america-keeps-building-corrupt-client-states

[jwi]

Good article in The Economist on corruption and failed states here:

https://www.economist.com/international/2021/08/22/why-america-keeps-building-corrupt-client-states

I found this article on France's military inventions in the Sahel to be interesting as well

https://tnsr.org/2020/11/frances-war-in-the-sahel-and-the-evolution-of-counter-insurgency-doctrine/

I am in no position to evaluate the scholarship, but I liked the insistence on that the military should know if they fight a colonial or a post-colonial war.

It seems fairly straightforward to criticise the economist article using the French post-colonial framework as presented in the Texas National Security Review article.

[Bradders]

Anyway, it looks like the US have not only pulled out, but also given the Taliban a considerable arsenal for free.
 
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/taliban-fighters-gloat-with-newly-stolen-us-weaponry-significant-threat-to-us/ar-AANI99L?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531

I know bugger all about guns and ammo but won't most of the fancier ordnance be 'bricked'?

Well there's that, but also one of the factors in the collapse of the government was the general complexity of a lot of it meant that even the Afghan army, who'd been trained to use the equipment, weren't then able to work it all effectively once the Americans packed up and left!

Not to mention that the Taliban also seem to have systematically targeted pilots in their offensive, meaning again there just won't be anyone with the skills to use the aircraft they've inherited.

[TobyD]

Anyway, it looks like the US have not only pulled out, but also given the Taliban a considerable arsenal for free.
 
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/taliban-fighters-gloat-with-newly-stolen-us-weaponry-significant-threat-to-us/ar-AANI99L?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531

I know bugger all about guns and ammo but won't most of the fancier ordnance be 'bricked'?

Well there's that, but also one of the factors in the collapse of the government was the general complexity of a lot of it meant that even the Afghan army, who'd been trained to use the equipment, weren't then able to work it all effectively once the Americans packed up and left!

Not to mention that the Taliban also seem to have systematically targeted pilots in their offensive, meaning again there just won't be anyone with the skills to use the aircraft they've inherited.

This is also why they're desperate to stop Afghans leaving the country, because they really can't run a competent government if their previous administration is anything to go by. An effective guerilla insurgency they may be, but I wonder how many of the Taliban can run a government department, or a bank etc?

[TobyD]

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/ian-botham-trade-envoy-australia-boris-johnson-lost-plot-1166008

Comments on Johnson's latest appointment to his ability devoid administration. The quotes from Botham are most amusing.

[BrutusTheBear]

Are they all just going to ignore the crisis in Haiti, and spend a few days kicking the Afghanistan political football around parliament for a few days?

Edit - I see some support has now been promised.

That was never the case. We always have a large vessel deployed to that region, year round, for disaster relief and drug interdiction.
Wave Knight is there right now, iirc. When the fleet was restructured around the then determined “modern needs” (circa 1995), we massively reduced the number of “Warships” in favour of multirole vessels like her. They are civilian vessels, actually. Though their crews wear RN style uniforms, they are Civil Servants (part of the RN reserve, for sure and “become” military when activated). The vessels carry military personnel and equipment and are lightly/defensively armed (think air defence and no missiles). They have hospital and casualty receiving facilities, but due to the weapons are not “Hospital ships” and are therefor not protected under the Geneva convention. That was a deliberate decision, since it also allows the vessels to enter conflict zone and actually get close enough to provide meaningful assistance.

  Most of the tier 2 operation and the Commando/Assault type units of the British military have been heavily reoriented to humanitarian relief, for around two decades now. Most Royal Marines, for instance, will have spent almost as much time rebuilding schools and infrastructure in disaster zones, as they have on patrol  in war zones, during that time. Just as they are now.
There is a naivety in certain people’s perception of  so called “violent” response that conveniently seems to gloss over the true nature of the role.
War is shit and shit happens in war. Innocent people die. One principle difference between “Us” and “Them” in most modern situations, is that the killing of innocents is accidental, because something or someone has fucked up, they were never deliberately targeted.
Just ask yourself, as a little exercise in comparative philosophy, how many Taliban fighters will be prosecuted by their own government for war crimes?
Then, bear in mind every UK serviceman so prosecuted, was reported by his own comrades.

Also, with regards to Afghanistan in particular, there seems to be a great deal of conflation between the initial US invasion and it’s objective, with the subsequent/concurrent  UN mission there.   Which is odd, given a eye witness account posted in this thread. 
There is also a significant difference between those who conduct such missions and those who exploit these conflicts and disasters for personal gain or political advancement, of which there are many, from as low as the likes of Farage through to heads of state. A fair few have been Labour party politicians, incidentally.

A good friend of mine that is a commando was on 24hr notice to head out to Haiti for this very humanitarian reason last year.  The role our military play in this respect is outstanding and anecdotally something the personnel gain huge amount of amount esteem from.
Whilst civilian casualties may be unintentional, 40% of the victims of our airstrikes were children. A shocking statistic.
Your final point about Labour politicians is bang on and to see those self same individuals being rolled out as 'serious' commentators in all of this is outrageous yet tiresomely predictable.
This veteran says it all and illustrates the 'leftist' position better than I ever could...

[TobyD]

I emailed my MP (Paul Blomfield, Labour) recently to encourage him to hold the home office to account about the housing that refugees are sent to after the recent death in Sheffield. I received this reply, it may be from his office but I am impressed anyway and may actually vote for him next time:

Thank you for your email about the tragic death of Mohammed Munib Majeedi, which has profoundly affected our city.



Our thoughts are with the Majeedi family through this awful time and supporting them has been my priority; you might be interested in this appeal launched by family friends. After fleeing the harrowing situation in Afghanistan they sought asylum and protection in our country and it is devastating that this young boy lost his life in this way and here in the UK’s first City of Sanctuary. 



Clearly the tragedy raises questions for the Home Office and, with the other Labour MPs in Sheffield, I wrote to the Home Secretary calling for an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding Mohammed Munib Majeedi’s death and the processes used in determining the suitability of accommodation for vulnerable refugee families. 



The UK must be a safe haven for those fleeing the appalling horrors in Afghanistan, and we must see a clear commitment from the Government to ensure this is the case.



Thanks again for writing.



With best wishes,

Paul


Paul Blomfield
Labour MP for Sheffield Central

[seankenny]

The lack of maturity of thought is astounding and yet when it is challenged  ...

So you disagree with the policy of humanitarian intervention*. Fair enough. Does that mean you think western powers were right not to interfere in the Rwandan Genocide?

* Feel free to call it "so called" humanitarian intervention if it makes you feel better.

Well this is depressing but not unexpected. Our resident leftists want to be taken seriously yet can't be bothered to answer a fairly obvious question that's an attempt to probe their views on foreign policy beyond their preferred narrative. I'm put in mind of this:

[petejh]

The lack of maturity of thought is astounding and yet when it is challenged  ...

So you disagree with the policy of humanitarian intervention*. Fair enough. Does that mean you think western powers were right not to interfere in the Rwandan Genocide?

* Feel free to call it "so called" humanitarian intervention if it makes you feel better.

Well this is depressing but not unexpected. Our resident leftists want to be taken seriously yet can't be bothered to answer a fairly obvious question that's an attempt to probe their views on foreign policy beyond their preferred narrative. I'm put in mind of this:

Not particularly enthusiastic to intervene in your private battle with Brutus and inquiry into his views on foreign policy.
But just in response to your post about your 2008 Afghanistan adventure and advocacy for humanitarian intervention. Military historians on here will be more familiar than me with some of the operations by the British through the 1950s, 60s and 70s to erode regional terrorist capability in Borneo, Yeman, Oman, Kenya and other former British colonies. Also Columbia through the 80s and 90s, Sierra Leonne in the late 90s early 2000s. And various small scale interventions against terrorist groups that have gone on under the public radar through the 2000s. Admittedly some of those labelled 'terrorist' were so simply by virtue of being the opposition to the UK's preferred actor.
None of these are examples of humanitarian interventions or exemplars of virtuous military behaviour - you can find stories of war crimes and damage to civilian institutions committed by the British in most of those as per most military actions. But to my layman's knowledge of events those interventions against regional 'terrorist' forces took on a far smaller and precise focus than the US and UK's military interventions following the 9/11 attacks, which had the same purported aim of eroding/destroying terrorist capability. In other words - it's a fallacy that massive military interventions are necessary to tackle small scale 'terrorist' or regional problems.
 
I'd suggest it's a narrative created by the Bush administration and vested interests in the US, cheered on by a sometimes quite idiotic and navel-gazing population, who opened the floodgates post 9/11 for massive-scale military intervention to fight terrorists by using standing armies and invasion/occupation of foreign countries. Anyone who viewed the interview with Bush the other night (9/11 lookback series) and felt anything other than profound unease at his mindset and the wisdom of the US's decision-making following the 9/11 attacks would need to be blind to what alternative courses of action the US could have taken to fight Islamic terrorism, instead of sending standing armies to invade.
I've always held the view that regional Islamic terrorist groups such as IS, Al-Qaeda etc. could have been eroded  and contained (captured/destroyed in the case of Bin Laden) by using a *tiny* amount of force, backed by good intelligence, compared to the massive deployment of conventional force used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I clearly remember my thoughts as a soldier just about to leave service in 2002, on hearing the US's and UK's case for invading Iraq. I remember thinking this was utter madness and couldn't understand why more people in the public and military weren't shouting out that Iraq posed near zero direct threat to the West and which could be contained without needing to occupy the whole bloody country. I thought then that the US and UK were embellishing a bullshit intelligence case in order to enact vengeance for the US's bloody nose of 9/11. Unfortunately it was taken up with enthusiasm by a 'hand-of-history' idealistic and righteous PM. Nothing that's happened since in Irag or Afghanistan has convinced me my initial reaction was wrong.

What would have followed if a much smaller-scale focussed use of force was used to contain regional Islamic-extremist terrorist organisations in Iraq and Afghanistan? Things would probably most likely look similar to what Afghanistan looks like currently. Just without the loss of life, money and (western) status that the intervening 20 years has seen. And without giving some Afghan women a 20-year window into how life could be different for them if they didn't have the misfortune to be born into a country run by Islamist zealots. But the last 20 years has seen communications and media technology change beyond recognition and it's far harder now than it was in 2002 for a government to control what its population sees in the wider world. If decision-makers in the US back in the early 2000s had some foresight they'd realise that change and progress happens anyway, if slowly.     

[TobyD]

Re the post 9/11 intervention I'd add Blair's enthusiasm for it, misguided by the relative success of then recent events in Kosovo.

Blair does seem now to have learned from his mistakes, although he might not admit to them.

You might be right Pete, but I wonder if just leaving the handful of troops who've been in Afghanistan there would have stabilised the country for longer. Despite the experience that the population have had, my feelings are that the Taliban have a sufficient amount of ruthless violence that they can repress any internal opposition to them, and return the country to it's previous state.