David Cameron is the fourth recent British Prime Minister to have embarked upon a military adventure.
Only the first of these, Margaret Thatcher's swift campaign to reverse the Argentine invasion and occupation of the Falkland Islands had a clear, well defined objective understood and supported by most of the British population. It was a triumph of civilian and military logistics with a beginning, middle and an end. The arrival of the fleet back in Portsmouth, the vast majority of the troops back at their UK barracks and the RAF aircraft at their bases drew a line under the campaign itself. The ongoing support to the Falklands Government was also marked by clarity and simplicity. No religious or tribal factors complicated the picture. Success was possible and it was decisivley achieved in a relatively short time. Thatcher came out of it as a leader with excellent judgement and way beyond her rivals in courage and determination. From having just previously flagged in the opinion polls her ratings soared and she went on to easily win the next General Election.
The three subsquent adventures have been very different and left the next two sponsoring British leaders seriously damaged and a third now threatened. What's gone wrong and why aren't they national heros? Very simply these conflicts have lacked clarity throughout. Why did we go there? There was no UK popular cause and we were inconsistent in where we intervened and where we didn't. Despite claims that they made UK streets safer, they manifestly did not. They did not involve protecting or reclaiming British territory. They were not largly solo British operations and in two of them, Iraq and Afghanistan ,Britain was subserviently tagging along behind the USA. In the third the USA wisely decided to leave most of the action to the Europeans. In their absence Cameron fell over himself to sign up with two unlikely allies, Berlusconi and Sarkosy. Neither is high in UK trust, credibility or any other positive ratings.
In Iraq the initial military "shock and awe "campaign followed by the drive of the armed columns from Kuwait to Baghdad was brilliantly successful. From then on it was all downhill. The moment a US soldier draped a US flag over the head of the toppled statue of Saddam Hussein was the beginning of the descent into floundering chaos. The whole thing has been a disaster. There was no plan for what was to happen and for the basic running of the country. The rush for de-Baathification shredded all the government ministries of most of the staff who organised day to day life and provision of police and public services. The viable and fully functioning infrastructure of the cities, towns, villages, roads, railways , water supply, distribution of goods was often reduced to ruin and rubble and bombed back decades. More Iraqi civilians were killed than Saddam's highly unpleasant security forces can ever have dreamed of destroying in a hundred years. Thankyou Tony Blair . A stable and officially secular country with a largely pro-western if difficult and repressive government has been replaced by a highly unstable one which could go in any number of different directions. None of these is likely to produce the dream of a western style democracy in which MPs politely refer to each other as the Hon Member for Basra South etc. That cosy vision is simply naive. Britain has now pretty much and very quietly slid out of it while still muttering that the casualties were a worthwhile sacrifice. For whom?
Then came Afghanistan which can be labelled as both Blair's and Brown's. The British Defence Minister, John Reid, stated that it it may well be that the mission , whatever it was , would be accomplished swiftly without a drop of British blood being shed. What planet were the politicians living on? Anyone who had visited Afghanistan or even flown over it and pondered its terrain through an aircraft window could have told them that the geography, climate and geology make any form of successful territorial occupation unthinkable . Anybody with a small knowledge of history could have told them that the only things which have ever united the country's disparate groups have been either iron firm rule or the presence of a foreign army who everybody instinctively wanted to expel. The British learned that in the 19th century, the Russians in the 20th. Now the British and Americans are learning it again in the 21st. Is history that badly taught in the UK ?(Answer sadly "yes, even apparently at Eton). Had nobody in the Blair sofa circle even read Flashman? Again , the prospect of a western style democracy is almost non existent and the elimination of the Taliban is illusory. The "allies" may just about occupy territory by day but at night..............? The slide out is well under way and again it will be said that the sacrifices will have been worthwhile. Again, whose sacrifices ? For most in Britain the view will remain that the country should never have become involved anyway . Any threats to its national security (eg Al Quaeda and its franchises) should be tackled far closer to home rather than nebulously and hideously expensively at arms length in a country few British begin to understand.
When the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition replaced Labour in May 2010 it was assumed that there would be no new Middle Eastern adventures. Then suddenly there came "The Arab Spring" and an extraordinary turn of events. Immediately before this series of very different and uncordinated uprisings, protests square occupations and demonstrations Britain had been strongly represented at an arms fair in the Gulf, ready to do business with more or less all comers. The UK had long and deep relationships around the Gulf, including with Bahrain. It had also painstakingly courted the Gaddafi regime in Libya hoping to influence it and continue moving it away from its previous support of sundry terrorist movements including at one time the IRA. The Arab Spring seemed to bring a rush of adrenaline to numerous political heads and almost immediately we,- that's to say Cameron,- were in the thick of it and seemingly unable to hold ourselves back from joining in. It was an almost compulsive reactive act and certainly not one founded in wisdom or Britain's centuries of Middle East experience. The national corporate memory has it seems been lost or at best shunted into a siding as irrelvant by a new "history is bunk " generation of politicians. Maybe they never knew that we once knew and it had all become in Rumsfeld language "an unknown known".
The question now is how can the UK extricate itself from military involvement in Libya with a modicum of honour? If Cameron doesn't find a quick solution the affair could bounce into Labour's hands as a high profile example of his lack of judgement, a theme they have already been peddling on other issues especially his unfortunate employment of Coulson. We are now into the European August works shutdown. Palace of Westminster dwellers head for the hills of Tuscany, France ,Spain or if "sharing your pain" to windswept British former resorts. This year coincidentally August overlaps almost entirely with Ramadan. There could be an opportunity there for some deep burrowing and a reappearance in September saying "We're out of there. Don't know what all the fuss was about. Anyone remember?" For that to happen we don't need Liam Fox or anyone else to be going on about "supporting the Libyan people" to the end,- especially as we don't seem too clear about who the various Libyan people are or where the end is anyway. Where the various groups stand seems to be a mystery too. We stand between an August sea fog at home and sandstorms various in the Middle East. Ideal cover for a tactical retreat and a new start.
