No such thing as an "unwinnable" war

If you've been paying attention to the news at all over the last couple of weeks you must have noticed that the term "unwinnable war" is being applied more and more to our mission in Afghanistan.

It's a stupid phrase because there is no such thing as an unwinnable war. At the end of 1940 the war must have seemed "unwinnable" to the British people. By the end of 1941 the war must have seemed "unwinnable" to the Soviet people - but both eventually prevailed over their enemies.

All wars can be won - it just depends on the strategy and tactics applied. What you actually have are losing strategies and tactics or winning strategies and tactics. If your strategy is failing to achieve the objectives and the tactics are resulting in severe casualties then you need to address that strategy and those tactics - or take advantage of your enemies mistakes in their strategy and tactics.

The truth of Afghanistan - regardless of whether you think we should be there or not - is that our strategy is undefined and our tactics are obviously wrong. First of all, you can not win a war with a political strategy. The overriding strategy must be military. If we insist on pursuing this mission we must face the fact that the Afghan people are neither ready nor capable of governing their country themselves.

The discredited President and his abject, corrupt government must be replaced by a military governance. We ARE an occupying force and an occupying force must take control. Military commanders must have complete control over all areas and be free to take the decisions necessary to achieve objectives.

As for our tactics - well, we keep taking areas which we then withdraw from allowing the enemy to reclaim that land without any effort. Imagine if we had done the same against Nazi Germany? We'd still have a million soldiers camped on the borders of Holland, Belgium and France today!

Our strategy and tactics in Afghanistan are not working. It's always hard - if not impossible - with this style of warfare to achieve success. The only way you can do it is to apply tactics that work and we have only one example where this has been done to a successful conclusion - Malaya.

What we need is an updated version of the "Briggs Plan" - whereby the strategy was to deprive the enemy of resources and safety. Deprive them of food and people and harass them at every opportunity so that they never have a moments respite.

We're not doing that now and as long as we don't do that this war will remain unwinnable.

Ranting Stan's Irrational Hatred of the Week: 'gates

Not the five bar things you're supposed to close behind you in the countryside or the metal things at the end of your garden path - but the media's insistence on appending the word 'gate' to any story that has the whiff of scandal about it. For heaven's sake - why?

I suppose it all started with the Watergate scandal of the early 1970's that eventually led to the impeachment of President Nixon, but as that centred on an office complex called "Watergate" there was a genuine reason for it. And as far as I remember there wasn't a sudden flurry of scandals having the word 'gate appended to them immediately after that. In fact, the earliest example I can recall of this strange journalistic quirk was the "Dianagate" (Squidgygate) incident of the early 1990's - but since then it seems to be happening more and more.

More often that not it doesn't catch on with the general public, but this doesn't seem to stop the press from doing it. It's typical of the lazy, jokey style of modern journalism which continues to amaze me with its ever lowering standards.

Just stop it.

Never the twain

If there is one thing that we can learn from the Moslem Major rampaging through a US camp shooting some forty people and killing thirteen, it is that Islam and liberal democracy are totally incompatible.

Here we have a man who had risen to the rank of Major - a doctor and supposedly moderate Moslem - who chooses to massacre his fellow countrymen because he sees them as a threat to his true nation; the nation of Islam. It's nothing new. We've had doctors and primary school teachers in this country do similar things.

Of course, the authorities will try and play down the role that Islam played in this. Just like we've seen in this country when Moslems kill fellow citizens indiscriminately the Islamic "community leaders" crawl out of the woodwork to express their concerns - their concerns that their religion will be blamed - and the national leaders fall over themselves as they rush to explain that this is nothing to do with Islam.

It is everything to do with Islam. There may be moderate Moslems, but there is no moderate Islam. Until there is then we will have to accept that the west and Islam can not get along together. As long as we pretend otherwise they will keep killing us and we will keep killing them.

We should get out of their lands and they should get out of ours.

Will UKIP take the opportunity?

Despite the best efforts of the media to minimise the damage to their appointed successor to Tony Blair becoming Prime Minister at the next election, David Cameron's Tory party is in complete disarray.

Call Me Dave's "cast iron pledge" has turned out to be nothing more than a sandcastle washed away by the tide of EU integration and he knows damn well that his promise of a referendum over future powers being ceded to the EU is pure hogwash. The Lisbon Treaty is designed to make it possible for the EU to take new powers without the need for future treaties and therefore bypass member states requirements to hold referendums.

Meanwhile, many current and experienced Tory MPs are furious over the way they've been treated by Cameron regarding their expenses. While Cameron has stamped hard on certain MPs for their misdemeanours he has let those close to him off with the merest slap on the wrist and Cameron himself is far from squeaky clean on this matter. Consequently, some MPs have decided to stand down at the next election while others have been forced out against their will .

All of this provides a huge opportunity for UKIP. I said after two Tory peers defected to UKIP a couple of years back that UKIP now need to get similar defections from MPs - but, as usual, UKIP missed the opportunity preferring instead to indulge in another round of internal wrangling and argument.

But now they have the perfect opportunity to snap up a number of disaffected and highly experienced Conservative party members. UKIP need to be reaching out to those Conservative MPs who feel hard done by and convince them to join UKIP and to stand for UKIP in the next election.

It will only take a couple of successful defections of former Tory MPs to make others consider their options and if by doing so UKIP manage to capture a seat or two in parliament then the conservative grass roots support which the Tory party relies on may well start to support UKIP in growing numbers.

Will UKIP seize this fantastic, once in a lifetime opportunity? I have my doubts. The problem is that the UKIP leadership will worry that a bunch of experienced former Conservatives - particularly if there are one or two well known names - will represent a challenge to their own ambitions.

It would be great if, for a change, UKIP could actually put the future of this country ahead of their own personal ambition, but I fear this will not be the case. It's a shame - because I believe this is a golden opportunity for UKIP and if they fail to take it then they will fail as a party.

A fatal flaw

Can someone explain to me why we have men risking their lives trying to defuse IEDs in Afghanistan?

I mean, surely the safest thing to do - once an IED is discovered - is to get everyone safely away and blow the damn thing up from as far away as possible?

I could understand why they would try and defuse an unexploded bomb in a London street - but in a dump like Afghanistan I really don't see the point. You find the things, you evacuate everyone, you blow the sodding thing up then you get the locals to fill in the hole. Job done - move on.

So who can you trust?

I suppose it depends on your viewpoint that decides how you would react to the fairly predictable news that the Tories are going to abandon plans to offer a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

There are people like me who were always sceptical of Cameron's pledge and never believed for one minute that he or his party planned to honour it - but then I think Cameron is a lying, manipulative populist who will say whatever those he is talking to at the time want to hear while meaning absolutely none of it.

Then there are those who still support the Tories and will accept the excuse that, once the treaty is ratified by all 27 countries there is nothing we can do about it. That same argument applied in 1975 when we last had a vote on our relationship with the EU, but somehow the promised referendum managed to be held.

But there are many who will see this as the final stab in the back. Once upon a time - quite a long time ago now, but still in my lifetime - a manifesto pledge was exactly that. If a party made a promise in its manifesto, then the leaders of that party felt honour bound to abide by that promise.

But honour means nothing to today's breed of politician. We're talking about people - like Peter Mandelson, Chris Patten and Tony Blair - who swear an oath that "no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm" which they then ignore and, worse still, they then go and work for that organisation which they swore an oath to defend this country from!

So who can you trust? UKIP or the BNP? Not really. Both those parties claim they want to take us out of the EU, but they then stand for and win seats in the EU parliament. I'd have more respect for their position on the EU if they refused to have anything to do with it - but they take their place on the gravy train like all the others. If they were genuine then why do they feel the need to stand for the EU parliament?

I really don't think there is a single political party in existence today that I feel I can trust. Does anyone disagree?

Isn't that the most damning indictment of modern politics possible?

Ranting Stan's Irrational Hatred of the Week: Dishwashers

Not so much a hatred - more of a "what's the point?". I mean, I can see the point of a washing machine. Doing the laundry used to take all day long, but with washing machines it can be taken care of in a couple of hours. Dishwashers, though ......

For starters, if the dishes are particularly soiled, you need to rinse them down first of all. Then you have to load them into the dishwasher - load up a ridiculously expensive dishwasher tablet and then two hours later you have to unload it all. It takes about two and a half hours in total - half an hour of which is manual labour and yet you could have done the washing up in 15 minutes!

Really - what is the point of a "labour saving" device that requires more labour than the task it is supposed to replace? Not only that, you can not out anything too large in there or things like roasting trays (they rust) so you end up having to wash those up anyway. So not only does it not save you any time, you end up still having to do the job it is supposed to do anyway.

Mrs Stan loves the dishwasher, though. It must be a woman, thing.

Progress

How come we were more effective at dealing with pirates 200 years ago than we are now?

I mean, we have ships, helicopters and aircraft with high powered radar that can spot a bottle top floating on the sea from a distance of 15 billion miles away, but for some reason we can't stop a rag tag bunch of sailors armed with nothing more than a rickety speed boat, a few AK47s and an RPG from stopping and capturing enormous floating warehouses as easily as they can capture a pleasure yacht.

Come on! Why aren't they stopping this? I don't think it is lack of technology or ships - it is the lack of will. Two hundred years ago they would have stopped the suspicious vessel with a shot across the bows - and if it failed to stop they'd sink it.

Now they are too tied up with red tape to do this. They can't do anything unless they have "reason" to do so - i.e. they actually see the bastards firing their machine guns at someone. They should be doing what they did 200 years ago - and with the technology at their disposal it should be easy to do. Spot a suspicious blip on the radar - send a helicopter armed to the teeth out to check it out - and if the suspicious blip fails to stop - sink it!

Why are we so pathetic today? If this is progress you can shove it.

Drug Nutt

The government have sacked their chief advisor on drugs after he went beyond his remit and started trying to rail road the government into accepting his policies by promoting his views on television.

And now he's been sacked he is doing the rounds on television playing the victim.

Who cares? Well apart from the BBC and the rest of the drug soaked media, very few people. This is the lead news on BBC television this morning - as if any of us care one bit if the government's advisor on drugs has been sacked. It's not important - though if you watch the BBC you could be forgiven for thinking it is.

Professor Nutt is claiming that some of his colleagues may quit in sympathy. Good! I think they should all be sacked. We don't need them, they don't serve any purpose and if they believe that they have the right to set government policy they should stand for election.

Campaign or coronation?

The prospect of a President Blair has reared its ugly head again over the last couple of weeks. As the EU Constitution edges ever closer to taking full effect (many parts of it have already been introduced) the talk has moved from if to when.

Cue various politicians and political commentators telling us why we should or shouldn't accept Blair as EU President - as if we have any say in this whatsoever!

The reality is that we have no choice in this matter. Blair may or may not be appointed EU President regardless of what we or anybody else in Europe think or want. There is no election for this post - just a simple coronation followed by a huge salary and entourage for the new President.

And don't fool for all this garbage that we're hearing from the geeky Milliband or grumpy Brown about Blair being there to represent British interests. The post of EU President requires that person not to represent the interests of any particular nation. What he will do is represent the politics of his preferred ideology - socialism - and with the vast majority of the EU in the thrall of socialist doctrine there is no doubt that the appointment of Blair (or any other candidate) will not be in the interests of Britain.

This isn't an election. This is the coronation of the new socialist Emperor of Europe.

All hail Anthony Blair - the new Charlemagne.