British Taliban
A few posts down I noted that Talibanisation of Basra. Via Anthony Cormack I see this chilling story, which implies that this is happening without any British protest.It is of course important that the military intervene as little as possible in the affairs of Iraq, otherwise the elections will have been meaningless. Nevertheless it is a strange policy of a government to say it is fighting islamic terrorism as hard as possible, whilst allowing an fundamentalist islamic state to be created under its watch.
It has been argued that we just don't have the troops. This was clear before the invasion of Iraq, so it is no excuse. If the government believes we need more troops it should budget for more troops. I'll note that the entire Army costs £5.4bn a year, so scrapping Trident would allow at least (it will be more because the marginal cost of an extra soldier will be less than the average) an increase in manpower of nearly 1/5th.
posted by Matthew @ 7/17/2005 09:20:00 AM
Comments: 0
