Quality | 2009.11.10
Gordon Brown and Afghanistan: The hardest call of all
Gordon Brown can be blamed for many things about the way he has run the war in Afghanistan: not having a proper strategy, failing to communicate, failing to earn the respect of his senior generals or to anticipate a critical demand for helicopters or vehicles. But what he should not be attacked for is trying to talk honestly and honourably to Jacqui Janes, whose 20-year old son James was killed fighting in Helmand. Encounters between prime ministers and voters can be pivotal. No one will forget the encounter between Diana Gould and Margaret Thatcher over which way the Belgrano was sailing when it was sunk by a British submarine. Nor when Sharron Storer nobbled Tony Blair about cancer services during an election. But this was not one of those encounters.
Mrs Janes argued powerfully and movingly that Mr Brown had underfunded the army, from the point of view of someone who is in favour of the war. She said her son bled to death from his injuries because of the lack of helicopters. There is no doubting the understandable scale of her grief and anger at her son\'s death. But there is much to question about the exploitative and unpleasant way that the Sun newspaper has treated the conversation. Mr Brown does not need the press to remind him there is a war going on, or to whip up hysteria about whether he bowed properly at the Cenotaph. What is "bloody shameful" and cynical is the Sun\'s campaign . It is the visceral personalisation of the conduct of a war by latching on to every misstep, whether relevant or not, Mr Brown makes. As we all know, he did not start this war, though he was in the government when it started. As we equally well know, he has limited power to control it, because the key decisions are made in Washington. He can unhitch Britain and British troops from a sinking bandwagon, but that it not what either the Sun or Mrs Janes is arguing for. So if you want to see what a 21st-century version of a ducking stool looks like, it is here on a newsstand near you. However Mr Brown reacts, he is doomed.
Mr Brown will not have wanted his premiership to be dominated by a war that is going wrong. The man may be shy, not particularly good at empathy, and strikes an awkward, suited, heavy figure in front of troops. Henry V he is not. But whether he is good at it or not, being a war leader is part of his role now. There are signs he is starting, belatedly, to appreciate the need to communicate a cogent policy over Afghanistan. Last Friday he set out five benchmarks by which the new government of Hamid Karzai should be judged; the provision of security for the Afghan population; improving governance by combating corruption; appointing qualified officals; reconciliation with reconcilable elements of the Taliban; economic development and stabilising relations with neighbours.
There is a good chance that none of these benchmarks will be met, but it is on this turf – not on the quality of Mr Brown\'s handwriting – that the prime minister should be challenged. If Mr Brown now believes in the need to appoint an international adviser of substance to work with the Karzai government on anticorruption, why did Britain roll over so easily when Mr Karzai rejected Lord Ashdown\'s very public nomination for the post? And on the subject of helicopters, if Mr Brown is right to maintain everything possible was done to get Chinooks into theatre, why the leak to the Financial Times that he is considering "fast-tracking" a big order of the heavy-lift helicopters, cutting low-priority defence projects to fund them?
Growing public opposition to the war is not just the result of the procession of coffins through Wootten Basset. It is the consquence of Mr Brown\'s failure to say clearly what this war is about and why it is being run the way it is. That is his task. What he says in private to a grieving mother in the most terrible of circumstances is not a matter for the nation.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]fghanistan-letter-jacqui-janes
