Brit outrage over government's handling of forces in Afstan

There's been a lot more like this recently in the British media (see Defence of the Realm):

Afghanistan: Who is going to stand up and fight for Britain's short-changed soldiers
Nick Clegg is right to break the all-party consensus on the Afghan campaign, says Con Coughlin

It says a great deal about the parlous state of political leadership in this country that it should fall to Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, to articulate the mounting anger and frustration our Armed Forces feel about the Government's disastrous handling of the military campaign in Afghanistan...

the Lib Dems are...Britain's most accomplished political opportunists. In normal circumstances, one might expect criticism of the Government's handling of a major military operation overseas to be dominated by the main political parties. But the failure of both Labour and the Conservatives to address the glaring shortcomings in our Afghan campaign has left the field wide open for Mr Clegg to take centre stage. And, for once, the Lib Dem leader's blatant act of opportunism in breaking with the cross-party consensus on Afghanistan is utterly justified. By highlighting the Government's failure to provide our troops with the equipment and force levels they require to succeed in Afghanistan, Mr Clegg is merely stating the widely held view within the military that this Government is guilty of the most shameful betrayal of the covenant between the nation and the Armed Forces.

When Tony Blair announced in 2006 that Britain would take a leading role in the Nato mission to rebuild Afghanistan, and stop it becoming a safe haven for drug barons and Islamist terrorists, he promised to give British forces everything they needed. Three years later, and with the death toll rising by the day, nothing could be further from the truth.

The Government has failed to provide the armoured vehicles and helicopters necessary to protect our forces from the Taliban's deadly roadside bombs. Even worse, it is now refusing – on cost grounds – to send the additional 2,500 troops senior commanders say are essential for the mission to succeed. As a result of Gordon Brown's parsimony, the British forces in Helmand find themselves in the humiliating position of being bailed out by the Americans.

The facts concerning the Government's abdication of its fundamental duty of care to our Servicemen and women – to give them the best possible chance of avoiding death or serious injury – are well known throughout the political establishment. And yet, until Mr Clegg's long-overdue intervention, the criticism had been muted, to say the least...

I think it fair to say that our government has done rather a better job meeting the CF's needs in Afstan (e.g. see here, here and here--though it took the Manley panel to get helicopters and UAVs. And we simply do not have more soldiers to send (even if the government wanted to, which it manifestly does not).

Update: Tough times:

8 British soldiers killed in Afghanistan



Gordon Brown insists British soldiers are succeeding in Afghanistan

British troops giving their lives to secure Britain's future, says David Miliband

And a long piece to make one think:

Afghanistan: a war we cannot win
The threat posed by al-Qaeda is exaggerated; the West's vision of a rebuilt Afghanistan ultimately flawed, says former soldier, diplomat and academic Rory Stewart
...
*RORY Stewart has been a soldier, diplomat and academic and has travelled extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As a student at Oxford, he was a summer tutor to Princes William and Harry. After a short period with the Black Watch, he joined the Foreign Office. He was British Representative to Montenegro in the wake of the Kosovo campaign. After the coalition invasion of Iraq, he was appointed deputy governor of Maysan and senior advisor in Dhi Qar, two provinces in southern Iraq.

His first book, The Places in Between, a New York Times bestseller, was an account of a walk across Afghanistan in the winter of 2001/2. In 2005, he founded an NGO in Afghanistan and moved to Kabul. He is Ryan Family Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University [a previous director of the center].