For those who were perhaps expecting the Sun to allude to the heavy criticism their stories involving Jacqui Janes have received, not just in other quarters but on their own comment facilities, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed with today's follow-up. The closest their report comes to acknowledging that maybe Gordon Brown's letter wasn't more evidence of his "underlying disregard for the military" is in this sentence:
Funny, the paper didn't think it was well-meaning yesterday or on Monday. Then it was "bloody shameful".
Mrs Janes incidentally has been persuaded, doubtless by the Sun itself, to make clear that her intentions were the very best:
Jacqui also set the record straight on her contact with The Sun and her recording of the PM's phone call, in which she berated him over troop and helicopter shortages.
Mum-of-six Jacqui, 47, said: "I released the tape because I wanted people to know what he really said to me, not what Downing Street put out.
"I also want to make clear that I didn't take a penny in payment for interviews with The Sun."
Jacqui said she contacted The Sun because the paper backs Britain's Forces, adding: "It had nothing to do with politics."
Except the paper turned it into politics, whether Janes wanted them to or not. On any grounds, that's exploitation of a grieving person.
As for an editorial comment, the only thing which it offers today is a typically lachrymose, jingoistic and unfeeling demand that everyone remembers. Gordon Brown will presumably unfairly cop it again once this whole incident slips down the memory hole.
To be fair when the Sun clearly doesn't deserve it, Mrs Janes' claim that she recorded it on the spur of the moment with a friend's BlackBerry could be true. In any case, whether they were personally involved in the recording of the conversation between Gordon Brown and Mrs Janes or not, they must have realised that this was taking the story to a whole other level. It's one thing after all to complain about what you consider to be an insensitive and insulting letter, or indeed to do the equivalent of a Sharron Storer, confronting a politician on the spur of the moment in front of watching television cameras; it's quite another to effectively ambush someone who is quite clearly mortified at the damage he thinks he has done and then to use it against him as part of a campaign.
The transcript of the conversation between Brown and Janes does not make for easy reading. Janes is convinced that her son's life could have been saved if there were more helicopters available, a view she is fully entitled to, but not one that she can actually prove, or be proved without a full coroner's report, which will probably take years considering the current backlog (indeed, we now know that a helicopter was sent after the explosion which ultimately killed Janes). Brown goes out of his way to not argue with her without agreeing with her, and as before, is clearly desperately wishing he wasn't having the conversation. This isn't because he can't face up to the consequences of what he is asking the army to do for him, which clearly affects him hugely, but almost certainly because he knows there is almost nothing he can say that will placate a grieving mother, nor can he think of it while actually in conversation with her. Time, while a healer, also allows for far greater consideration and with it, eloquence, which the prime minister displayed at today's press conference. If he had said during the phone call what he did today to the media, it might just have satisfied Mrs Janes that little bit more. As it was, Brown was right to disagree when she claimed there were 25 spelling mistakes (there were 4 or 5 at most) and that he had spelt both her name and her son's name wrong (unclear on the family name, while he did get his name right, if scruffily). Probably the most instructive lines of all though come towards the end:
GB: Whatever information you've been given, that is not correct. But I don't want to interact in a political debate about this...
JJ: No that's fine. Nor do I.
Whether Mrs Janes did or not at the time, or still does, as a result of handing the Sun the conversation this has become a political debate. As the Heresiarch correctly points out, this isn't about the letter. This is about the fact she has lost her son, with the letter simply being used as a vehicle for her anguish. It just so happens that her belief that the military are being underfunded and betrayed by the politicians is exactly the same one which the Sun holds, or at least pretends to hold. Grief is the motivator, and while money might well have changed hands between the paper and the Mrs Janes, the real issue here is both the exploitation of Mrs Janes for political and personal gain and the low and dirty methods used. Did the prime minister after all imagine that what he must have thought was a confidential and private phone call would be recorded and reproduced in a newspaper, to be used, as yesterday's Sun editorial put it, as evidence of his "underlying disregard for the military"?
If that was the Sun's intention, then it seems to have backfired spectacularly. Yesterday the consensus, across the political spectrum, seemed to be that this was an unpleasant non-story, with some feeling sympathy for Brown. Today that appears to have turned to overwhelming distaste at the reproduction of the conversation, and with even more defending the prime minister even while disliking the man and his policies. Most dangerously for the Sun itself, its own readers at least on the website also seem to be in the majority taking Brown's side, with some even taking pot shots at Mrs Janes herself. This is especially intriguing, as this is hardly the first time the Sun has used grieving parents to demand political change, without them being attacked in the fashion to which Mrs Janes has been by some. Partially this is because of the view of some that those who choose to join the army know the risks of the "job", but it's also because while Sun readers often favour the draconian policies on crime which the paper espouses, they are far more sceptical on Afghanistan, despite the paper's complete support for the war.
Furthermore, the paper's own journalists seem unsure of the attack on Brown which they've launched. The Graun claims that Tom Newton Dunn, the new political editor, having previously been the paper's defence correspondent, wanted the story to put more emphasis on Brown's eyesight with its impact on his handwriting, despite him supposedly being the man who wrote the original report. Even more significant is that Murdoch himself, while obviously supporting the change of support from Labour to the Conservatives, apparently "regrets" it. If he objects to the highly personal turn the criticism has taken, new editor Dominic Mohan will swiftly know about it. It's also curious that despite the high profile the story has taken, that there was no editorial comment today on the interview.
The biggest indictment of the Sun's story though is not just that it has undermined the claim that Brown has "underlying disregard" for the military, that it has so misread the mood of its own readers that they have came out in sympathy with him, but that it has actually deflected the debate away from government strategy on Afghanistan onto the personal and, ultimately, the newspaper itself. This is, as Labour themselves have argued, been a campaign to damage the prime minister, and an unfair one at that. David Cameron might well be concerned with just what kind of partner he has jumped into bed with.
Two days later, and the paper attacks Gordon Brown for err, dedicating his "every waking moment" to the fate of our forces out in Afghanistan. Not only did Brown "fail to bow" at the Cenotaph, quite clearly a concious snub to Our Boys, but he also sent a "bloody shameful" letter to Jacqui Janes, mother of Jamie Janes, killed on October the 5th in Afghanistan. Brown's crime was to write it in his almost illegible handwriting, as well as possibly mistaking their surname for James instead of Janes (it isn't clear whether Brown has written James instead of Janes; his n and m look very similar) and to make a number of spelling mistakes. According to Mrs Janes, who has naturally given the Sun an exclusive video interview, she was so angered by the letter she threw it across the room and burst into tears:
"I re-read it later. He said, 'I know words can offer little comfort'. When the words are written in such a hurry the letter is littered with more than 20 mistakes, they offer NO comfort.
"It was an insult to Jamie and all the good men and women who have died out there. How low a priority was my son that he could send me that disgraceful, hastily-scrawled insult of a letter?
"He finished by asking if there was any way he could help.
"One thing he can do is never, ever, send a letter out like that to another dead soldier's family. Type it or get someone to check it. And get the name right."
Of course, once she had finished chucking it across the room, she got on the phone to the Sun. In fact, there's nothing to suggest that the letter was hastily-scrawled: Brown's handwriting is simply that bad. As someone whose handwriting is also close to being illegible unless I write out every letter individually, which makes you look even more like a child, and who also has a surname which is very easily misspelled, which while annoying is hardly the end of the world, it's difficult not to have some sympathy for Brown. Clearly he wants the letter to have the personal touch, something that a word processed expression of condolences wouldn't have, and just what do you say to the parent of someone who's just lost their son in a war you sent him to fight without slipping into the obvious, the clichéd and the torturous? Yes, he should have perhaps been more careful with the spelling and especially with the names, but has it really come to the point where we think that personal letters written with the very best of intentions are acceptable material to attack the prime minister with?
The Sun it seems, having up until very recently having supported the prime minister, even if it didn't blow smoke up his backside like it did his predecessor, has decided to attack Brown over the very trivial things it was alarmed he was involving himself in. Not being able to disagree with him over policy on Afghanistan, on which he only fails to be as gung-ho as they are, they've decided that such perceived slights are "more evidence of Mr Brown's underlying disregard for the military". After all, nothing quite says you disregard the military like not acting like a hunchback in front of the Cenotaph, or err, writing a personal letter to the bereaved. This also ties in with, according to the Sun, his "half-hearted attitude to the war in Afghanistan". This half-hearted attitude involves his increasing the number of troops by 500, and yet another speech last Friday on just why we're in the country. His speech did have a contradiction at its heart, but the reason for this is that Brown is trying to please everyone: he has no intention of getting us out, but knows as public opinion turns against the war and against the corrupt Karzai government, he has to put down some "conditions" for their continued presence, even if they're false ones. If Brown is being half-hearted, then so too is President Obama, still undecided on whether to increase the US troop numbers by 40,000, as requested by the army. Seeing as we rely on the Americans, we're waiting on them as much as everyone else is.
Even by the Sun's complete lack of any standards, this must rank as one of the lowest attacks to be launched on a politician in recent times. Not only is it without any foundation whatsoever, but the newspaper seems to think it's perfectly acceptable to use an individual, in this instance a grieving mother, to attack someone for their own ends, someone as pointed above which up until a month ago they were giving their nominal support to. As Mr Eugenides also suggests, it says more about that person that her first instinct on getting the letter was to phone the Sun to complain about the handwriting than it does about the person who took the time to write it. Clearly, we've now gone beyond the point where Brown will be attacked by the Sun on the virtue of his actual policies, it's now "bucket of shit" time, where anything and everything that he does which they decide is wrong will be pointed out and complained about. Going by the Sun's past record when it comes to smearing Labour politicians, the election campaign coming up could be quite something.
When Gordon Brown stands before the nation, as he did last week, to justify the war there, this is what he is talking about.
Fighting to stop al-Qaeda operating in those lawless regions actively lessens the threat to Britain.
Err, except the argument is that through fighting in Afghanistan we're preventing having to fight them here. The "liquid doom" plot shows this argument to be farcical, for the simple reason that the threat is not in that country, but in this one from British citizens, not the Taliban. The diametric opposite is more plausible: that through this ludicrous war we are in fact increasing the threat by starting the radicalisation process through our bull in a china shop approach. For a newspaper that claims to care about the forces that are out there fighting this increasingly lunatic war, it would do them a service to approach such matters with something bordering on honesty.
All of a day later, and up pops Gordon in Afghanistan with the promise of more troops. Coincidence? Probably, as it's somewhat doubtful, even considering New Labour's obsession with the Sun, that yesterday's paper will have persuaded Brown and his advisers to immediately order a trip to the badlands of Helmand. No, but there might have been something much more conspiratorial at work here: I remember Peter Oborne on Newswipe mentioning that the Sun launched a campaign against asylum seekers back in 2003 with the full cooperation of Downing Street, with David Blunkett's interview with the paper sewn up in advance, where he'd agree with the paper's attacks on one of the most vulnerable groups in our society. Is the same thing at work here? Who knows?
My guess is that they do (they being the politicians) and that you (us) also do. It's just that the war in Afghanistan is one which has little overall consequence for anyone outside of the military. We have relatively few troops in the country (around the 10,000) mark, they're all there because they want to be, which makes a major difference to wars where conscription is used, and their presence has no real tangible effects on us back home whatsoever, except for the families of those who return either dead or injured, not to mention mentally scarred. You can argue that this shouldn't be the case, that there should be more than simple passive support for what the soldiers are out there doing, even if this doesn't extend to political support, but what exactly does the Sun expect? For the country to be put on a war footing? For the prime minister to take personal control? It seems they do: they want him to "take charge and take responsibility for the war", and if he doesn't he should be replaced by someone who will. Has it not perhaps occurred to the Sun that the very last person who should be in charge of the conduct of a war is an unqualified politician? Or do they mean something different when they say take charge and take responsibility?
This point matters because the paper is not only not comparing like with like, it seems a little hazy on history as well, as this passage from the editorial makes plain:
Mr Brown has taken the country to war but is ducking responsibility for the conduct of it. The tradition of our country is that in wartime, the Prime Minister takes charge.
Lloyd George led us in World War One and Winston Churchill in World War Two.
Margaret Thatcher led from the front in the triumphant Falklands War in 1982.
John Major took charge in the first Gulf War of 1991. Tony Blair assumed full responsibility when we invaded Iraq to topple Saddam. And he did the same over the liberation of Kosovo.
Except Gordon Brown hasn't taken the country into Afghanistan; Tony Blair did, in 2001. We've been there ever since. Brown as chancellor provided the funds for the war, it's quite true, but was not personally responsible for taking us there. He also wasn't prime minister when we entered Helmand in 2006: the defence secretary then was John Reid, who famously said he hoped that we would leave without firing a single shot. Then there's the fact that we're there in the country, not just on our own, but as part of the ISAF NATO coalition. Additionally, if we're going to split hairs, Winston Churchill didn't lead us into WW2; Neville Chamberlain did. The war in Afghanistan is also not, in any meaningful sense, a war with specific aims like all of those the Sun lists. It's far more comparable to what we were doing in Iraq from the fall of Saddam up until our exit this year: peacekeeping, reconstruction and providing security. Missions, like Operation Panther's Claw, which had the specific aim of clearing out Taliban so that people could vote in the presidential election, have been few and far between. As also argued above, we are quite clearly not in "wartime".
It's perhaps instructive that some of yesterday's front pages screamed that up to 10 British soldiers had died so that a whole 150 people could vote. The message from that was unequivocal: what's the point? The Sun quite clearly believes there is a point, as it has argued in the past, but it certainly isn't suggesting what it is in this editorial. It seems intent instead on kicking people before they've even had a chance:
There is an air of unreality in the country. While Our Boys are dying, a fool who is out of his depth and with little experience is in charge of defence.
...
Bob Ainsworth is an appalling appointment as Defence Secretary, yet he's in charge of the war. General Lord Guthrie, the hugely-respected former defence staff chief, makes devastating criticisms of Ainsworth's shambolic Ministry of Defence.
Is Ainsworth a fool? I doubt it, and at least he was previously a defence minister, unlike some of the other recent secretaries which were put in place and which the likes of the Sun approved of a lot more. It's also hardly fair to blame Ainsworth for the problems at the Ministry of Defence when he's only been in charge for getting on for two months.
Guthrie is most likely integral to working out the Sun's real position. Guthrie was one of the founders of the United Kingdom National Defence Association, an organisation which pushes for a return to the levels of cold war defence spending, a ludicrous position when we face a threat that couldn't be more different to that posed by the Soviets. As also could be expected, Guthrie has interests in pushing for an increase in defence spending: according to the House of Lords register of members' interests, Guthrie is a non-parliamentary consultant to BioDefense Corporation, whose mission is to "play a key role in homeland security and the mitigation of bioterrorism", while also non-executive director of Colt Defense LLC, which supplies the American military with weapons.
As could be expected, the equipment provided, or lack of it, gets it in the neck, especially the lack of protective vehicles. Yet the Americans, who do have such vehicles, have experienced 45 casualties so far this month in the country. Jock Stirrup, the current armed forces' chief of defence staff, writing in today's Guardian has a slightly different take:
The Sun isn't willing to acknowledge such challenges or nuances, and just blames the MoD entirely.
It comes to down three immediate steps which the paper demands, which attempt to be reasonable but which are in fact anything but:
First, Mr Brown must take personal charge of the war in Afghanistan and tell the country clearly where we stand.
Second, he must sack Bob Ainsworth and appoint a competent Defence Secretary who will work with the military, not against them.
Third, he must make available whatever money it takes to supply the equipment urgently needed on the ground.
The first step is far enough on the second point, not so much on the former as already discussed. The fact is though that there is no convincing argument for our presence in Afghanistan, hence the fallacious argument (which the Sun supports) that what the troops are doing in Afghanistan is protecting British lives on British streets. The reason why the government is obtuse is because it realises this, however inappropriate that is. The best argument that can be made, whether you agree or disagree, is in Jock Stirrup's piece above. Sacking Bob Ainsworth will solve precisely nothing, especially when the Sun doesn't even attempt to suggest someone who should replace him, just as there is no evidence whatsoever that Ainsworth is "working against them". Lastly, just where does the Sun expect the government to get "whatever money it takes" without raising taxes (which it loathes), borrowing yet more (equally) or cutting services (which?)? In any event, helicopters and armoured vehicles cannot suddenly be magicked out of thin air; they take time to procure.
The Sun, as always, wants things done yesterday, and wants more to be done with less. It's trapped in the fatal idea that we are still a world power when we are not, and demands the sort of military spending that a world power would require. We are instead an island nation that requires defence, but not of the kind which the likes of Guthrie support. Gordon Brown can be criticised quite rightly over many things, including the current lack of dedication and explanation vis-a-vis Afghanistan, but the problems can be traced back to both Tony Blair and John Reid, who had the main hand in the calamity currently occurring in the country. The real way to defend the forces is to call for them to be brought home, and for a realistic defence policy which accepts that the main threat comes not from Afghanistan, but in fact from its neighbour, Pakistan. Undoubtedly though, whoever the editor of the Sun, when the paper barks, politicians listen, and Brown and Ainsworth will be surely mulling over what their response will be.
It probably says something about the mounting cynicism concerning the war in Afghanistan that even the Sun, by far the most ardent supporter of our presence in Helmand province, has been moved to commission a justificatory article on the "chain of terror". As you might have expected though, to call the arguments made piss poor, utterly confused and easy to rebut would be an understatement.
To begin with, Oliver Harvey seems to be confused exactly where it is and who it is we're at war with. It is Afghanistan or Pakistan? Is it the Taliban or is it the Pakistani Taliban, who for the most part are entirely separate? This extends to Harvey's geographical knowledge: he claims that Malakand is near to the Afghanistan/Pakistan border when it is in fact quite some distance from it. This is an attempt to link Mohammad Sidique Khan and Omar Khyam to the war in Afghanistan and the Taliban; the problem here is that there is no link. Khan and Khyam, if trained by any particular grouping, were most likely trained by individuals with links to al-Qaida. Khan might well have left for Pakistan with the intention of fighting in Afghanistan; he left behind a video for his daughter which made clear he wasn't expecting to return. The fact that he did rather undermines any links he had with the Taliban, who are fighting only in Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than having worldwide ambitions.
Next we have just the word of Gordon Brown and Barack Obama to convince us that somehow British troops in Afghanistan do make us safer:
Gordon Brown made his remarks last week as the war in Afghanistan entered a particularly grim phase, with 17 British soldiers killed already this month.
The PM argued the sacrifice made by our troops - 186 have died since operations began in Afghanistan - was vital and that to stop fighting the Taliban would make the UK "less safe".
Justifying the UK military presence in Helmand, he said: "It comes back to terrorism on the streets of Britain.
"There is a chain of terror that links what's happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the streets of Britain.
"If we were to allow the Taliban to be back in power in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda then to have the freedom of manoeuvre it had before 2001, we would be less safe as a country."
US President Barack Obama agreed, insisting: "The mission in Afghanistan is one that the Europeans have as much, if not more, of a stake in than we do.
"The likelihood of a terrorist attack in London is at least as high, if not higher, than it is in the United States."
Government officials state around three quarters of the most advanced plots monitored by MI5 have Pakistani links.
They said the security service is aware of around 30 serious plots at any given moment, suggesting that at least 21 of them are tied to Pakistani groups.
Again, we're meant to take it that Afghanistan and Pakistan are inseparable. Yet we have no military presence in Pakistan, and nor does the United States. The only thing that comes closest to it is the incessant drone strikes on alleged high profile militant targets. Afghanistan and Pakistan might be connected, but our military offensive is not, despite the recent AfPak change in emphasis by the Americans. The fact remains the al-Qaida doesn't need the freedom of manoeuvre it had in Afghanistan up to October 2001, both because it has something approaching that freedom in Pakistan and because its ideology has gone global, just as it hoped it would. 9/11 was mostly planned in Germany, having been first proposed years before by Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, just as 7/7 was mostly planned in this country. While attending a training camp is still integral to those who go on to become terrorists, most information can now be found and accessed through the internet. Furthermore, the fact that so many of these plots have roots in Pakistan is not always to do with how they can be linked back to the Taliban or al-Qaida there, but simply because so many of the Muslims in this country originate from Pakistan and have support or themselves support relatives back there.
And Afghanistan provides the bulk of the heroin on Britain's streets - with the profits funding Taliban guerrillas.
A staggering 93 per cent of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan - two thirds of it from Helmand, where British troops are fighting and dying.
Taliban chiefs often "tax" narcotics gangs ten per cent for providing security.
Afghan police chief Lt Col Abdul Qader Zaheer, 45, told me last year: "If it wasn't for heroin there wouldn't be a war here. It pays for Taliban guns."
Of course, this omits the fact that the Taliban themselves first almost eradicated the poppy crop. They only turned to it once they needed to. It also fails to acknowledge that solutions to the poppy crop, such as buying it to be turned into medicines have been ignored or rejected. That the Sun also objects to even the most timid moves towards liberalisation of the drug laws also means that the opportunities that legislation offers are completely off the table. Heroin itself though has nothing to do with our presence in Helmand - we're not fighting a war against drugs in Afghanistan - this is just another distraction.
The tentacles of jihad linking Britain and Afghanistan begin on the Helmand frontline.
One dead Taliban fighter was found with an Aston Villa tattoo. The discovery suggested the insurgent was from the UK and followed news that RAF radio spies picked up Brummie accents while listening in on Taliban "chatter" over the airwaves.
These UK-born fighters arrive through the mountainous and sieve-like border from Pakistan - the same desolate, lawless region where Khyam and Khan received their bomb-making masterclass.
We've dealt with these same, unconfirmedand impossible to verify claims before. There probably are some Brits fighting in Afghanistan, but if there weren't fighting there, they probably would be somewhere else. In a way, this actually gives some credence to the claim that we're safer due to our presence in Afghanistan - fight those jihadists who want to do battle with their own countrymen outside the actual country rather than here. This isn't though the government's case - their case is that through defeating the Taliban and preventing al-Qaida from returning they're making us safer, which was dealt with somewhat above.
It is believed Khan filmed his "martyrdom" video in Pakistan. In it, he glares at the camera with his hatred of the West clearly evident and declares icily: "We are at war and I am a soldier."
Pakistan is the next link in the chain of terror. British jihadis receive not only weapons training there but are also further radicalised by preachers of hate at madrassas or religious schools.
Khan's fellow 7/7 murderer, Shehzad Tanweer, is said to have worshipped at Islamabad's notorious Red Mosque.
This is more nonsense - the idea that jihadists go to Pakistan to be "further radicalised" is specious. They wouldn't have gone in the first place if they weren't already somewhat committed to the cause. If anything, this further undermines the case for presence in Afghanistan: if all the radicalisation, training and hatred is going on in Pakistan, why are we in Helmand province? How does being there make us safer than stopping what goes on in Pakistan would?
We're then treated to some boilerplate rabble-rousing from a cleric whom Harvey had the privilege to meet:
The Islamist radicals in Afghanistan and Pakistan make no effort to disguise their aim to introduce Sharia law to Britain. In the dusty Pakistani town of Kahuta, a cleric was happy to tell me last year of his desire to bring beheadings and stonings to our shores.
Imam Qari Hifzur Rehamn, 60 said of Britain: "Non-believers must be converted to Islam. Morals in your society, with women wearing revealing clothes, have gone wrong.
"We want Islamic law for all Pakistan and then the world.
"We would like to do this by preaching. But if not then we would use force."
The Imam of the town's religious school, where kids as young as nine are taught jihad or holy war, added: "Adulterers should be buried in earth to the waist and stoned to death.
"Thieves should have their hands cut off. Women should remain indoors and films and pop music should be banned.
"Homosexuals must be killed - it's the only way to stop them spreading. It should be by beheading or stoning, which the general public can do."
Again, this fails to even begin to back up the case for our presence in Afghanistan. If Harvey had met this imam in that country perhaps he might have a point - but he didn't. The idea that those taught similar things are suddenly going to be any sort of threat to this country except as an irritant is ludicrous - if they can't even begin to impose their beliefs on Pakistan, how are they meant to do it in a country thousands of miles away?
But the US-led coalition has vowed to stop the radicals from governing the desperately poor nation again and fermenting an ideology of holy war against the West.
The final link in the jihadi chain is a return to Britain.
Khan slipped back into the UK in February 2005. Just five months later he detonated his rucksack bomb at Edgware Road Tube station, murdering six people.
On the sun-baked plains and river valleys of Helmand today, our forces - some just 18 - are locked in deadly combat with a resilient Taliban army.
The prize in this bloody war, and the legacy for those brave soldiers who have returned here to heroes' funerals, is to snap the chain of terror for good.
Except there is no such thing as a Taliban "army", just as there is no such thing as one Taliban. This so-called "chain of terror" cannot be snapped by an army based in just one province, with just less than 10,000 soldiers on the ground, in a country which has been at war for almost 30 years. It would require an army at least 10 times that size to have even the slightest chance of controlling the whole of Afghanistan, let alone Pakistan, which this piece invokes repeatedly. The Soviets had over 100,000 units on the ground post-1980 and they couldn't manage it. How can such a fragmented coalition as Nato currently is even begin to?
The article doesn't even begin to consider any alternatives, let alone any counter-arguments. It can be argued that our very presence in Afghanistan in fact makes us less safe: it makes us a target for reprisals whereas if we were not involved we would not be. 9/11 and 7/7 did not occur in vacuums; they did not happen simply because "they hate us". The chain of terror would have breaks in it if we did not involve ourselves in battles in which we have no dog in. It would not completely remove the threat, but it would decrease it exponentially. That the Sun doesn't even start to imagine the opposing side even exists speaks volumes.
Despite numerous attempts down the years to paint those in power in Iran as "mad mullahs", they're not suicidal. The real reason why Iran must be stopped from becoming a nuclear power is because it will transform the balance of power in the Middle East, putting Iran on the same level as Israel and ahead of Saudi Arabia. This has always been about preventing a re-run of mutually assured destruction; only Israel can be allowed to have weapons which can decimate an entire region in minutes. You can be certain that were we to somehow go back to a time when war against Iran was potentially the next stop on the grand Bush regional tour, the Sun would back it to the hilt.
This tells you just how important the Sun remains, despite the arrival of the Twatter generation, in the estimation of politicians:
When Rebekah Wade, Sun newspaper editor and one of Britain's most powerful women, married horse trainer Charlie Brooks this weekend, she didn't so much invite a guest list to the reception as a power list.
Of course, they might have just turned up so they could chat to the actual boss, knowing he'd be in attendance, and while the Sun remains undecided about who it will support at the next election, despite it seeming more than likely that it will back the Tories, there is as they say everything to play for. Can you imagine both leaders of the main political parties being invited to say, the wedding of the Guardian editor, or the BBC director general, or even the Telegraph editor's do?
Stephen Brook also provides us with some apparent information as to when Wade herself might be moved upstairs:
But Murdoch has extracted a promise from her that she will continue to edit the Sun until the general election, before handing over the reins.
Not that the editor makes much difference: it's the master that sets the tone.
P.S. The Sun's editorial today deliberately conflates two completely unrelated issues:
You have to hand it to the writer of this leader column - that's a good connection, and one specifically designed to make the reader believe that Iran and the "terrorists in Afghanistan" are either one and the same thing or being funded by them. Iran might well support and fund Hizbullah, and to a lesser extent Hamas, which is a Sunni Muslim group, but the idea that Iran is doing the same with the Taliban is ridiculous, and not just because Iran originally co-operated with the overthrow of the Talibs in 2001. Iran might well sponsor Sunni jihadism in the form of Hamas, but it does so only because that group has no world view, and is instead dedicated only to the liberation of Palestine. Getting into bed with the Taliban, even the sections of it which are more moderate than the al-Qaida supporters which it also contains and connives with is similar to communists working with fascists (and before someone says Molotov-Ribbentrop, that was cynicism on both sides, knowing that war was inevitable but had to be delayed); they want to destroy each other, not work together.
Equally, the idea that there are "growing" numbers of Brits fighting in Afghanistan is plausible, but not especially likely. The fact that one "insurgent" had an Aston Villa tattoo is neither here nor there; in case the Sun hasn't noticed, the Premier League is global. In any case, I might be in the minority here, but that a tiny number of British Muslims might be fighting those they could have gone to school with, while a cause for concern, is not terribly terrible. Far better that they become insurgents and usually find themselves getting killed in the process than carry out attacks back here. The real problem, much more troubling than Brit Muslims fighting in Afghanistan is them coming back having been trained and graduated from the real "universities of terrorism" which are the camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan; security might be lax in some prisons, but they're not going to learn how to make TATP in there.
If we don't, we are simply playing into the hands of men like Ahmadinejad - who jabbers about democracy while locking up his opponents and supporting our enemies.
If the Sun wanted to do something useful rather than scaremongeringly bleat about terrorists, it would be supporting the young of Iran in what looks increasingly like a potential uprising against the Ayatollahs, but then you rather suspect that the Sun, like Israel and others in both Washington and London secretly wanted Ahmadinejad to stay in power so that the status quo ante, so important to all, stays unchanged.
The Sun, after its complete unwavering support for the Iraq war, has no credibility whatsoever when commenting on other countries' "wars of aggression", but that certainly doesn't stop it from doing so:
Indeed, it probably is. While we'll gloss over the fact that the Sun doesn't deign to mention that it was the Georgians that broke a ceasefire they had just arranged to launch an all-out assault on the capital of South Ossetia, the Sun ought to know about wars in blatant breach of international law: it supported one, in the words of Rupert Murdoch, not because of the suffering of the Iraqi people, but because of the benefits that a $20 barrel of oil would bring.
"Even if Mr Putin could claim provocation, the vicious reprisals which have left thousands of civilians dead, wounded and homeless are grotesquely disproportionate."
Here though is the Sun's real thoughts on what should have happened:
"America might have stopped Russia by swiftly flying troops into Georgia and calling Mr Putin’s bluff."
Ah yes, troops that America doesn't have to spare, fighting two wars which the Sun backs to the hilt, in order to start quite possibly World War 3. Less talks, more missiles and more deaths please!
"But why should they, when Europe has been so unwilling to help itself — or its greatest ally?"
And so we're back to Europe-bashing, when Europe has undoubtedly been right to refuse Georgia entry to NATO which would be the equivalent of a red rag to a bull, or in this case, a bear.
