The BBC have decided that wars are unwinnable and that therefore the use of military force should not be considered a viable option:
Spent force: Are wars still winnable?
The whole article is academic drivel, the real intent is to tell us how misguided were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and therefore we should not get involved in any more wars…
“Do not turn these into moral crusades.”
It seems the BBC have only one agenda…to undermine the war, the troops fighting it and the government.
It has briefed continuously against the Afghan war, and then Iraq, since the start, taking whatever line it thinks will cause the most political damage, painting the wars a complete failure.
The article is a strawman, raising irrelevant questions in order to channel the BBC’s own views about war.
The article tells us we are in a new era of warfare and the nature of war is changing…making the outcome of military action against ‘insurgents’ indecisive.
Only that’s pure bilge. Such battles against ‘non state actors’ have been fought throughout history….and they have always been difficult and protracted….you either surrender to the ‘Insurgent’ or you contain him and hopefully eventually defeat him……what else does the BBC propose?
We had up to 30,000 troops in Northern Ireland for decades…does the BBC really believe the military and the politicians have no idea that such conflicts are difficult to conclude?
The British Army fought endless ‘insurgencies’ throughout the Empire…it held onto a united India for centuries with a tiny presence on the ground….they couldn’t do that without an understanding of the politics and how to fight the glorious rebels.
Here is a quote from a British Army manual ‘Frontier Warfare India’…..
‘To sum up the tribesman’s characteristics as a fighting man it may be said that, although a formidable fighter individually in his own hills and an adept at guerrilla warfare, he lacks cohesion, discipline, leadership and continuity of purpose. Well trained, intelligently led and properly disposed regular troops should find no serious difficulty in eventually overcoming such resistance as the tribesman may offer, or in beating him at his own game in his own country. It cannot be too strongly stressed however, that the frontier is not the place in which to employ partially trained or negligent troops.
It will be readily understood that the political object for which any military operation is undertaken must govern not only the scope but the intensity of the operation and that it may often be necessary for political reasons, to modify the purely military applications of the principles of strategy and tactics.
These political difficulties, which are inherent in the problem of control, inevitably react on military plans and tend to retard decisive action.’
It seems they were quite capable of accurately assessing the military, political and social difficulties without the help of an ‘expert’ BBC armchair strategist.
Funny that.
Strange though that the BBC are only too happy to excuse the violence of those ‘insurgents’ or terrorists as we should call them. Unemployed, feeling discriminated against, ethnic, non christian, oppressed…..whatever….the BBC supports your right to use violence when the democratic process has failed you.
SYRIA.
Is INBBC being politically selective in appearing to give its tacit support to UK government’s donation of armoured vehicles, etc to Syrian Islamic jihadists who are in league with Al Qaeda?
“UK to send armoured vehicles to Syrian opposition”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21684105
For years, British military personnel have complained about British forces being under-equipped; but it seems that Hague is happy to divert military resources to Syrian Sunni jihadists instead.
Only yesterday, the British government announced the closure of several historic British army bases in Britain.
It seems that the British political class prefers to give political priority to spending British citizens’ money on foreign Islamic jihad causes rather than on strengthening British defence capabilities.
The one war which BBC-NUJ would support is a Hamas-fronted war on Israel.
I thought they Already do, Don’t They?
‘a Hamas-fronted war on Israel”
No yomping in Speedos to the front to help even with supplies for the ladies.
Nabila Ramdani will be spitting bullets. Probably literally.
Not sure I’d fancy her chances in the mud of war, mind…
http://globalpeaceandconflict.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/israeli-women-soldiers.jpg
wonderful, no more derogatory reports about army cuts from the BBC then…unless of course “Labour says…”
No more wars, except the continued carpet droning of certain parts of the world, killing untold numbers of innocents, under the direct approval of their beloved Nobel Peace Prize Laureate-in-Chief. And the continued US military presence-by-another-name in Iraq and Afghanistan. Other than that, no more wars.
“Obama plans to extract timetable for Israeli pullout from West Bank”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/03/obama-plans-to-extract-timetable-for-israeli-pullout-from-west-bank.html
That will only make the BBC worship Him even more.
Can’t have that, it’s racist. “The United States” does these things, not Him. And it’s controlled by the Joooooz – er, the Zionist lobby because it doesn’t sound racist. Besides, not all Jews are bad – some even hate themselves.
Never mind Iraq and Afghanistan. The most difficult war we have (yet) to fight is against the ‘British’ jihadis who have been encouraged to hide in the
multimonocultural ghettos, welcomed of course by the bBBC.The BBC don’t want Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen to make up our armed forces what they want are Social workers, Outreach workers and Guidance councilors.
War is won or lost on how you fight it, and I’m convinced that if we fight the next big war the way we did in Iraq and are doing in Afghanistan. Worrying more about the enemy’s human rights and not those of our own troops, giving them stupid rules of engagement that put them in more danger than is conscionable and just down right trying to be all touchy feely, “it’s war for havens sake not the desert song.” to quote a famous captain, then they may just be right and it will be un-winnable.
The BBC article is utter drivel. It confuses the war with the aftermath. To win a war you need clear and achiveable goals, the means with which to fight the war and a clear exit strategy. Despite claims that the war in Iraq was fought over weapons of mass destruction, the aim, as it was in Afganistan, was regime change. In both Iraq and Afganistan, this was achieved vey quickly. In the war against Iraq, the Iraqi field army was decisively beaten and, towards the end of the war, it simply melted away. The major failing was that, from the outset, the exit strategy in both Iraq and Afganistan was unclear. That is the lesson that should be learned from these two wars.
Agree, but I think that basically Britain should stop acting as if this were the 19th century and we were the world’s policeman and adopt a role more in keeping with our status. Which would be to let the world sort itself out unless it directly threatens Britain when we should resort to military force if necessary. Of course we can bleat away in the UN as much as we like to give the diplomats something to do.
Blair’s wars have cost many British soldiers lives and must have cost us billions of pounds and we have gained nothing from them. Indeed you could argue that we are worse off then before with a more powerful Iran without an Iraq counter weight plus Afganistan which will undoubtedly fall to the Taliban within a year of the US leaving. Which will be seen by the world as a victory over the West by Muslim fighters. More recently Cameron has continued and we now have unstable countries in North Africa which could easily turn against us.
Meanwhile, as people above have posted, we have a growing population in Britain who directly or by their silence, tacitly support terrorists within our midst. This is indeed where successive governments should have focused their efforts to keep Britain safe. Of course the first step should have been to have limited immigration, insisted on integration of immigrants into the British way of life etc. But Labour and the BBC were determined to have a multicultural country, not a British one, and so refused to tell the people the truth about what was going on.
Labour need to do much more than say they made a mistake on immigration. They need to fully join the fight against internal terrorists rather than flap about as on the side lines as concerned spectators. As for the BBC how soon before they realise that multicultralism is never going to work and appeasing the active and latent terrorists in our won’t work either.
I wonder what political party started the wars in Irak and Afghanistan
One of the reasons that in modern times wars are difficult to “win” (by Western players at least) and they get protracted for many years is due to the modern laws of war that allow local population to support insurgents.
In antiquity and before the modern laws of war, population of the defeated side new that it will suffer greatly if the opccupier (the winning side) even suspects that it supports, harbours underground forces of the enemy. Wars ended with one army overwhelming the other. These days, if an army of a side that honours laws of war (Western side)overwhelms an army of a non-Western enemy (esepcially so, a Muslim side), the population, with help of suicidally naive Western organisations, supports “insurgents” sometimes as a “day-job” – cos they know that unless caught shooting at the soldiers of the winning side, they can safely finish their lunches and dinners, sleep in their homes, and when needed, attack the military.
If the population knew that such tactics will mean heavby retributions and punishment, a war wud have ended once and far all.
Yes, we heard this before – 1935-39 the BBC was telling the country that Chamberlain was the only way forward, Mr Hitler was a nice man really, who was just trying to give the Germans some ‘living space’ and we should turn the other cheek.
‘Wars’ are often decided as much my morale, and of the home base as much as troops.
That can be seriously undermined by those operating from within the ranks.
‘The article is a strawman, raising irrelevant questions in order to channel the BBC’s own views’
Using all means at their disposal.
All wars are winnable but only if they are military not political war by it’s nature has to be quick and horrific in the military way you kill the enemy until they stop fighting or there is non left , in the political way you constantly try to play the public mood the inevitable protesters and the media who unfortunately in this case is the BBC and it’s pet hack rags who like the public rarely has the stomach to finish the wars they help start as was seen in Vietnam [the BBC cypher for all wars it doesn’t like !] the U.S didn’t loose they chose not to win !
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
– General George Patton Jr
Yep, Patton sumed it up perfectly, just a shame the man ment to be the watchdog of the BBC has only a name in common.
Of course wars are winnable – the question is, do we have the guts to win them anymore? the answer seems to be ‘no’. Afghanistan should have been totally flattened, wrecked, then we should have left. No more than a year. Raze the place to the ground, shoot first and ask questions later, and then leave them to get on with it. Harbouring our terrorist enemies? Tough, this is what you get. The whole point of winning a war is to destroy your enemy, crush them, and we won’t do it anymore. You can’t fight a war with rules against people who don’t recognise those rules. Unless that changes, any wars we get into, we’re not going to win them.
And with reference to muslim countries, they only understand extreme violence. It’s the only way non-muslims can get their attention. They respect it, especially in their enemies. Then they won’t mess with you any more. The islamic world has correctly calculated that the west isn’t up to fighting, so they can do what they like, and they are. What use are the world’s most powerful militaries if you’re not going to use them when you need to?
“Can William Hague Achieve Anything in Syria by Supporting the Rebels?”
By WILLIAM DOVE.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/443461/20130307/william-hague-achieve-anything-supporting-rebels.htm?
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