On both sides of the Atlantic, every politician of any calibre now knows - as the press and the public know - that the military campaign in Afghanistan is going nowhere, and can go nowhere unless it is integrated into a clear political strategy. Unfortunately, that strategy is still missing in inaction, yet that doesn't stop western politicians from popping up in Kabul or Kandahar to mouth the same old platitudes about progress being made, though the challenges remain. They still subscribe to the big lie that the Afghans will be ready to secure and govern their country to a timetable dictated neither by conditions on the ground nor by progress towards a Afghan settlement, but by the unforgiving calendar of western elections.
That is why I conclude that Ledwidge's book may be telling the truth, but not the whole truth, about why we are losing these wars. It is unfair to blame soldiers for being soldiers. In a democracy, those responsible for such mistakes are the political leaders and their advisers, who decide to do not what they know to be right in Afghanistan, but what they believe to be expedient; leaders who have too often chosen to go along with military advice that they know to be overoptimistic and self-serving.
Afghanistan is great blood and treasure - getting on for £6bn a year for Britain alone. Sooner or later the account must be settled. Ledwidge's well-aimed missiles hit the secondary targets - the foot soldiers in this Afghan march of folly - but not the political high command. It is to the latter that the invoice for a decade of expeditionary excess should properly be addressed.
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