Daily Express: In case anyone hadn't noticed, there is a war on. And when this nation is at war it has a tradition of pulling together in support of the troops. But as far as the campaign in Afghanistan is concerned there is precious little sign of that... And yet the Government has been put under almost no pressure to explain what our soldiers are doing and when it expects their mission to be completed...
This newspaper's assessment is that the chance of outright victory in Afghanistan vanished the moment US and British forces went into Iraq. The focus on Afghanistan was lost and the coalition against terror broke up. There is now little prospect of the rest of Nato committing wholeheartedly to the fight against the Taliban. In a war of attrition, such as is presently being fought, victory will not be achieved, but heavy losses will certainly be sustained.
English military historian Corelli Barnett, in the Daily Mail: Gordon Brown yesterday warned that there will be many more young Britons killed and wounded in the hard campaigning to come -- though whether that campaigning may last for weeks, months of years he refused to say. And for what purpose?... For what purpose are their families suffering such grief?...
They say our soldiers are dying in order to achieve peace and stability in Afghanistan in time for presidential elections in November, in which that politically impotent clown 'President' Karzai will stand again... We are told that our occupation forces are 'winning hearts and minds' among the local people, when the truth is that support for the Taliban is growing.
Only a fool would believe that villagers are won over by foreign soldiers in full combat gear fighting house-by-house and calling in air-strikes that kill women and children instead of Taliban. I say 'foreign' soldiers, but the better word would be 'alien,' given that very few of them are Muslim or Asian, and most are Christians and of European or American nationality. They must make much the same impression on the locals as Taliban fighters in black turbans and draped with machine-guns would make on entering a Norfolk village...
So what should we do? The Duke of Wellington once said that the real test of a general was to know when to retreat and dare to do it... Britain must retreat from Afghanistan, and they must now dare to announce a future date for this.
