That’s what the Tory-Labour fight about Aghanistan and how “the troops” need more helicopters and aren’t properly equipped feels like. It’s as if neither side wants to examine the actual mission in Helmand province and its inherent dangers to the troops, let alone the broader question of why the UK is in Afghanistan or whether or not it should pull out. Since both parties have supported the Aghanistan mission from the start, there’s a danger for both of them in a honest examination of these questions.
From the Tory side therefore criticism is limited to the supposed lack of helicopters in Helmand, without any concrete proposal on how to get them in time for them to matter. It’s not like Boeing has a showroom full of Chinooks waiting for that lucky first time buyer. Any order now has to go to the back of the queue so will take months to years to deliver. UK army procurement being what it is, it will probably take years before the order is placed as well. Then there’s the question of paying for it. If done out of the existing defence budget, something else has to go; if additional funds are needed, where are they going to come from. And how many helicopters would be enough anyway?
It’s easy to call for more helicopters, but without a concrete plan to get them and put them into action, just a cheap way to score points. Again though, if the Tories were to put forward concrete proposals this would lead to all kind of nasty questions about the mission. The same would happen were Labour ministers to call them out on this lack. And since neither the Tories nor Labour want to confront the true reality behind the UK presence in Afghanistan, this can’t happen.
The point is, the UK is in Afghanistan not to fight terrorism, or to make the UK safe from Al Quaida or Islamic terrorism — it already was until it started meddling in Iraq and Afghanistan — or to help the country “transition towards democracy” or any of that nonsense, but purely to appease America. The UK, as well as holland and the other NATO countries with a presence in Aghanistan are only there because America wanted us to and because we were scared back in 2001 of what the US would do if we didn’t. That NATO war declaration was the world’s most public “don’t hit me” cry, completely unnecessary and illogical but the circumstances were such subtlety wouldn’t have been appreciated. Since then we’ve been sort of chained to America’s Afghanistan strategy, the UK especially as Blair was so smart as to make the UK’s support open-ended.
Anything that triggers a honest re-apprasail of the UK’s role in Afghanistan runs smack dab into the nature of the UK-US “special relationship” and both the Tories and Labour have too much invested in that to want to open that can of worms. We may think the relationship is abusive at best, but for UKanian prime ministers it’s the only way to still be important ont he world stage.
On preview, I see that Jamie makes the same point more succintly. He also links to a comment thread on an earlier post on what “more helicopters” actually means that’s worth reading.