We invaded because the Taliban government refused to give up bin laden. They did offer to try him in an Islamic court, which might have saved us all a lot of trouble, but I don’t think US public opinion would have worn that at the time. We then got bogged down in a prolonged counter insurgency operation. I’m not saying it’s black and white, there are clearly a thousand shades of grey, but this mindset that the Taliban are representative of the afghan people and the big bad west is oppressing their will is very wrong in my experience. GIRoA is far from perfect but most of the Afghans I’ve met will take it over the Taliban.

In what way is the Karzai govt a puppet? It would be more acquiescent to US foreign policy and less corrupt if this were the case.

Past western policy in the Middle East has certainly caused plenty of problems, but hindsight is a wonderful thing and I’m talking about what we’re doing now.

Glad to hear it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, much like your comment about Harry not being in harm’s way. I can but aspire to your level of repartee. I work here, your experience? Is it mostly from the Internet?

I wouldn’t fight for the Taliban, because I don’t think enslaving an entire country under a repressive theocracy based on an extreme interpretation of Islam is a good idea. I accept that guerrilla forces have to use guerrilla tactics, but the choice to wage the conflict is theirs. We are only here because they are. And my point is that our collateral damage is accidental, theirs is policy (shooting schoolgirls etc) and of a much greater magnitude.
I think you’d struggle to describe the Taliban as anybody’s freedom fighter.

Berm bandit, 2 a levels will get you in to Sandhurst. There is no additional requirement for pilot training, except passing the aptitude tests and medical standards.
Would not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Taliban? How does that square with flying a big green target round Afghanistan, or his previous tour out on the ground as a forward air controller?
Interviews given by service personnel don’t have to be authorised at any sort of level, although I suspect the palace rather than the mod look after Harry’s PR.

Well, if we just left them alone they’d have the Taliban back. That’s why we’re here, at the request of the afghan govt, mainly focused on training afghan security forces so they can look after things without us.

The insurgency have killed more than us, because that is what they do. Leaving aside the fact that everything we do is a reaction to their actions. I can’t produce dodgy figures in correct stw style, but it’s just self-evident if you’ve done any time out here. That will not persuade many people, but seriously, once you’ve seen a bit of the ground truth, arguing any ambivalence over who the bad guys are is like arguing 2+2 = 5.

The other actions you describe (rendition etc) I’d probably agree on. Like I said, I have plenty of doubts about the political decisions and policies taken at the start of the conflict. I am defending the record of the coalition military forces, in particular the uk component.

Also, I don’t think James Hewitt is prince Harry’s dad. I also think that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, no aliens crashed in New Mexico, and lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. Sorry.

BristolPablo +1, Lewis page is very poorly regarded by defence journalists and the like. The book is supposedly an expanded cliche fest of the sorts of opinions I was trying to counter on the first page. He rose to the heady rank of lieutenant in the RN so I don’t think he will have had any first hand experience of procurement, he’s just listened to all the hoary old opinions in the mess and written them down in a book.

Yossarian, that’s an interesting article. We have the moral high ground because, as it says, we investigate such incidents and we punish the guilty. We have just sent a load of squaddies down for murder. The insurgency don’t do this, in fact murder, kidnap, intimidation etc are policy instruments for them. When you use military force there will always be innocent victims, but I’m pretty confident the insurgency have killed rather more innocent bystanders than we have, and you can surely draw a distinction between accidents and deliberate policy? Would the bulk of afghans want the Taliban back? It’s a messy and unpleasant situation but I stand by my comments.

I’m sure being royal does open doors, but so does being an old boy, knowing the bloke that runs the company, whatever. Human nature I think, we all have to make the best of the opportunities we get.

He probably has less security in Afg than he does in the UK, so it’s a taxpayer saving (sort of)!

He would not be flying the Apache if he hadn’t been up to it. I know this because I know and understand the military flying training system, having worked in and around it for 10 years or so. What’s your expertise, junkyard? Or is it just prejudice? You said yourself Prince Edward didn’t make it as a marine.

Phil: a legal war is one supported by the UN Security Council. Of the five permanent members, who can each veto an action, china and Russia are hardly Uncle Sam’s “buddies”. France is arguably not either!

Much easier to post some funnies than answer the argument with proof to the contrary. If you’d read it properly you’d have seen I was talking about our conduct of the counter insurgency, not the political level decisions to go in in the first place.

Jamj1974: you are well within your rights to believe that. I think you may have a point re American foreign policy, in the past certainly.

My point is that we retain the moral high ground. We use lethal force as a last resort, we only use it against the “bad guys”, and we take great pains to ensure nobody else is hurt. We don’t go around shooting schoolgirls in the face. So all this talk of “somebody’s life”, you are talking about somebody who will have been responsible for a few deaths himself.

I think some people genuinely believe our lot fly round the countryside mowing down farmers like in Apocalypse Now.

Illegal war? Aren’t we here at the invitation of the democratically elected government of Afghanistan under a UN Security Council resolution?

Look how they turn out? Most parents would be quite proud to have their kids make the grade as helicopter pilots.

If he hadn’t made the grade, he wouldn’t be in the cockpit. I’ve got friends in the helicopter flying training system and I seriously believe this. Academic results have little bearing on flying ability.

Yossarian: True enough. With that handle, you should know all about it. But let’s not belittle his achievements.

I never said anything about laser guidance, clean kills etc. I said the people he was shooting at. Collateral damage can happen. But I know the lengths we go to to avoid it, including threat to property as well as human life. Do you?

The people he’s shooting at aren’t very nice, you know. Some of them have even killed and maimed people themselves. Come to think of it, that’s probably why he’s shooting at them!

Civil list is about £15m/year. 60m people means 25p each. Party on!

An F18 is hardly cheap. And another trick the media enjoy is comparing the bare bones price of a foreign price of kit with the home grown alternative, ignoring development, through life costs, training, parts etc etc. See the recent reports of the RAF paying £1bn each for new tankers. I’ve also seen it bandied around that the exchequer recovers a lot of UK programme costs as tax, which Uncle Sam won’t be giving you.

Rudebwoy, perhaps we should equip them so it’s fairer? Or maybe we should run around in flip flops with AK47s?
Crewing an Apache is still rather braver than typing about it. And I think it would do fine against most SAMs actually, due to the British procurement system ensuring we have some of the best defensive aids suites in the world.

Er, yes they will (have aircraft to fly off them). F35B should arrive a couple of years after the carriers, which have a 40 year (I think) projected service life. You can hardly blame the UK for the delays in that programme, we are very much the junior partner to the USA. And again, it’s cutting edge technology. Lots of stuff that we look on as indispensable now had a troubled development, sometimes you need to keep the faith!

How would you have balanced all the planning factors?

Also, what BristolPablo said; the fault is not all on the MoD side!

How do we compare to other major nations for cost and time overruns then? The US, Brazil, India? Investing in top line capability is an uncertain game, and it costs a lot of money. But recent history shows that a better trained and equipped force will defeat a much larger one.

That article is so riddled with inaccuracies that I can’t be bothered to correct them. The media like things simple, but some topics are not simple. You can put a number on soldiers, aircraft, ships or whatever, but it’s harder for them to quantify capabilities, training and skill levels. So they don’t, they bang on about the Falklands or something instead.

We’re not as bad at procurement as the press would have you believe. Believe it or not, it’s quite difficult given the lead-in times, constraints and changing requirements procurement staff work under. “Mandarins”, a classic bit of tabloid stereotyping; most of the folk you’re talking about aren’t public school educated Sir Humphrey types in a chesterfield at the Garrick Club, they are hard workers on about 30k a year.

And I don’t think prince H will get made redundant, because I don’t think any Apache pilots will.

Irrespective of computer games, movies, and the whole debate about whether a killer will always find another way of killing, I can’t see any defence for the sale of assault rifles. I’m trained to use one, they typically have a 30 round magazine and fire high velocity rounds in automatic or semi automatic modes. They are designed for putting a lot of ammunition down, fast. In semi-automatic mode, in a crowded space, I think a decent shot could kill 15-20 people before having to reload. There is no other weapon that provides that capability, so while your mass shootings may still have happened, less people would have died. There is no justification for them from a hunting perspective either; you get one shot at a deer, and if you miss it buggers off. They are for the military, so why sell them to the public? So the citizenry can fight off the military? Even though they’ve got all the tanks, planes and ships?

Come on now, that’s not even remotely true.

You think it’s not even remotely true that most countries manage to find “genuine solutions other than force” to deal with problems ?

No, it is true. They do. So do we, most of the time. Do we invade every country that irritates us? I think the OP’s point was that the West are far from being the only ones willing to use force to meet our foreign policy objectives. It’s just that we’re currently the best at it. The emerging economies, BRIC nations etc, are working hard on it and catching up fast. So we’re not in some kind of uniquely amoral position, in fact I think that as genuine democracies we are far more restrained and ethical in our use of force than most others.

Good point.

Reversed Picture?

Awesome? I assure you it loses its allure after 8 months or so! Great pictures though. Apparently some bits of Afghanistan are beautiful, but in true British style, we built our base in a god-forsaken dust bowl!

I remember being harangued at uni by a young lady on the phallic symbolism of missiles, aircraft etc. As CountZero says, it’s actually about minimising drag and resistance. Come to think of it, I pointed out, that’s why a phallus is that shape too. Not one of my more successful chat up lines. 😀

What did you say? If it was directed at me, feel free to PM.

Regarding having modern aircraft in the display, apart from the Typhoon, what others have we got? C17 Cargomasters?
Only leased, and hardly our cutting edge tech.

Sorry to be a pedant, but I think that beating ourselves over the head with our terminal decline is a British disease, and it’s made worse by inaccuracies!
The C17 Globemaster is the backbone of Uncle Sam’s heavy lift fleet, with no plans to replace it any time soon. If it’s good enough for them….
The RAF owns 8 of them. They were originally leased but bought, and extras ordered, after their usefulness became clear and we put way too many hours on them for the lease!

Tornado? Well, I think we’ve got one or two left.

About a hundred I think, in various degrees of serviceability/deployedness etc.

Regarding the Typhoon, how many do we actually have available, that aren’t in the Falklands/in maintenance/ whatever? I’ve been told the Typhoon is something of a hanger queen, but that could be hearsay.

It is. If you talk to people who actually know, rather than read Max Hastings or some other journo with an axw to grind, it’s a great aeroplane and developing all the time, thanks to the hard work of a lot of people.
Apologies again for the pedantry, but I don’t like to see the modern RAF slated!

Regarding our less commendable actions during the war, such as the Bengal famine, and comparing them to the Holocaust, is it not possible to distinguish between deliberate genocide of a people and that caused by neglect, mismanagement or simply having other priorities? Remember this was total war, difficult for modern minds to picture, with people in power having to make terrible decisions between the lesser of two evils. Not a position I’d want to be in.

I agree with Ernie and Churchill, the BoB was the Empire’s finest hour.

I actually found the uncritical reverence for anyone in the military a bit wearing after a while. They think everyone in the military’s a hero, which considering how bloated their military is, probably includes a fair few paper shufflers like myself. The first few people shaking your hand and thankIng you are a pleasant change from the UK, where people tend to assume you’re a parking attendant or paintballer or something. Then it gets tedious, as you have to listen to another set of tales from some old fart, and be treated at length to his bizarre world views, which he naturally assumes you share.

The US is like any other country, it has good and bad points and people.

Why? Interventionism is out of fashion at the moment after Iraq and Afghanistan. In the late 90s, after Rwanda, the Balkans, Sierra Leone, it was all the rage. The wheel turns….

I don’t have a garage full of wonderbikes because I can’t afford them. Shouldn’t I bike at all?

Copied from a post of mine on an earlier thread:

We aren’t intervening in Syria because we can’t do it:

Legally – As Z11 says, there is no way a UNSCR would get through.

Politically – Syria is at the heart of the Arab world, physically and culturally, and has ties with Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah etc. It would set the middle east ablaze.

Militarily – Syria has a large and credible military. We haven’t got the numbers. Even the Americans would struggle, given their current commitments. There would be heavy casualties on our side, and western democracies won’t tolerate that for somebody else’s fight.

So overall, it’s realpolitik. All we can do is diplomacy, protest, sanction etc. Just because we can’t intervene everywhere, does that mean we shouldn’t intervene anywhere? Hypocrisy or doing what we can?

Come on, admit it…..

Those are quite funny.

I think public sector pay in general is pretty good, speaking as a public sector employee. Yes, you’ll never earn as much as the highest paid in the private sector, but you’ll never earn as little as the lowest either. My job (RAF) has its good bits and bad bits, as long as the good outweigh the bad (and the pay is one of the good bits), I’ll stick around. I suspect teaching is the same.

I wonder if there is drug problem in North Korea?

Don’t know, but there’s a huge heroin problem in Iran, so it’s a problem for authoritarian societies too,

Singletrackmind:

It’s my first enduro, I don’t mind where I finish and just want to complete it! My wife will even turn up and feed us at some point!

Up for it?

Back to the top!

TJ, I accept that motoring isn’t really all that expensive, in the great scheme of things. I’m still struggling to see how you think private motoring is subsidised given the VAT on the car, fuel duty, road tax etc. The points you list:

Gribs – cost of motoring is far more affordable as a % of average earnings – and yes – far more is spent on motoring than is raised from motoring taxation. All the costs that the car lobby conveniently forget, the cost of enforcing motoring law, the cost of all the deaths and injuries, the costs of all the pollution damage, the cost of all the ill health from pollution. The value of tha land that belongs to every one but is used for free car parking

Enforcing motoring law = the police. OK so you need to pay a few more coppers because there are cars on the road, but compared to what’s made in fuel duty? Really?

Deaths/injuries/pollution = all very diificult to quantify, and all would rise significantly from public transport if it was increased sufficiently to cope with the loss of the car.

Free parking is a rare sight these days, except when it’s atttached to retail, where I presume the retailers do the sums and decide they’ll make more money with a car park.

Also you’d have to offset all of the above against the enormous cost to the economy, and hence the tax take, of restricting car usage.

I just can’t see how these sums can add up. For the record I agree with you that our lifestyles have to get more sustainable, but it can only be done slowtime and from many angles; better cars, better public transport, better town planning etc.

Re the rebels killing civillians: there is a difference between collateral damage and deliberate targeting.

Are we arming them? We’re allowing them to be armed, which is different.

To those talking about armed insurrection against, “the legitimate leader of Libya”, putting down any protest through force for 42 years is hardly legitimate is it? I guess the rebels figured that an unarmed insurrection was likely to be unsuccessful.

Those who ask whether we would support a foreign power intervening militarily in the UK to support protest against our Govt; yes I would, if the Tories ruthlessly seized power and put down any opposition through force for 40-odd years. As we have the good luck to live in a democracy, though, the analysis is total hoop!

denegrating the whole army.

Whole Armed Forces!

The argument about Qadhafi being a legitimate target as CinC of the Libyan Armed Forces, if not as head of state, may be convenient but it’s true!