UK military problems & policies

[davidbfpo]

Ex-SAS commanders are not known for taking a high profile on current events, so this article deserves reading. It does refer to the UK decision to become involved last week. It is a moot point whether it also applies to the USA and others outside the region.

The title 'Get the politics right, then the plan for the military might work' and sub-titled 'Bombing IS jihadists provides a 'sugar rush', but the Government has been silent on what it knows is needed'.

Link:http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...k-9759924.html

Here is one key paragraph:

But to those of us that know Iraq, terrorists and extremism, and have fought organisations such as Isis within that country, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the situation does not look as positive, or the plan as robust, as that presented on Friday in Parliament. Projected by the theatre of Parliament, the deployment of six RAF bombers has taken on a military and political significance out of all proportion to their real military value. They provide us and our leaders, desperate to do something, with a military sugar rush, to be followed inevitably in six months’ time with the “war-downer” reality that things are not going as we wish them to, and that the long-term costs of our involvement are escalating, in ways that will need to be explained, or hidden, during a general election.

Then shorter passages:

Bombing that is not geared to an Iraqi political purpose will only create propaganda opportunities for Isis, as it seeks to legitimise its hold over western Iraq.....Bombing alone will not break the will of Isis to hold its ground in Iraq, and it must be joined on the ground by the Iraqi military if it is to be decisive. What, then, of this essential task?.....Bombing and killing Isis and Iraqis without a political solution for the Iraqi Sunni is to risk strategic failure – to risk making the Iraqi Sunni see Baghdad as oppressors and not liberators. Bombing without an effective Iraqi army is to risk operational stalemate on the ground and a fixing of the front lines, both of which appear to define the course that we have set ourselves.

Personally I am deeply pessimistic from the comfort of my armchair about the UK resuming a military role in Iraq, for our national interests bar one which I will end with later. Secondly the Iraqi state shows no sign of changing and as Joel Wing reports on the main Iraq-Syria thread the state armed forces remain, well a mess. I fear we have done what ISIS wanted, as western powers return to the region with just bombs.

What is the UK national interest bar one? Joining in a coalition which the USA has advocated, so once again we stand beside you.