Murphy's letter from Edinburgh

 

Waiting for an answer

The length of time our overstretched troops have been in Afghanistan and Iraq has gone on longer than anyone expected, and no one seems too know how much longer they are expected to be there.  Given the circumstances of going into these counties seems to be getting lost in politics.

It has been reported that we have now been in Afghanistan longer than the length of the second world war, yet we are no nearer to a solution of bringing stability in our resolve to bring hope to this country.  These were UN led coalitions, yet we are being told that the troops undermanned.

In Iraq we were told that Saddam was on the verge of making weapons of mass destruction, yet when went in we found absolutely nothing.  Again this was on a UN mandate with many other countries refusing to endorse it, this again has led to the undermanning of our own and coalition forces.

Let's go through the case of Afghanistan first and try to understand why our forces and why our coalition forces are there in the first place.  There were a number of bombings against our allies over the years until 9/11 happened.  I remember the day like it was yesterday and was absolutely horrified when I saw the planes going into the Twin Towers.  I was in the house that day and happened to put the television on just after lunch time.  What I watched horrified me as this terrorist attack unfolded with the news that was being broadcast.

I watched it until I had to go out for an appointment with my doctor that day.  I ended up being late because it was compulsive viewing, and by that time we knew it was a terrorist attack.  When I went to my doctor and saw the receptionist I told here why I was late and told her what was happening, she looked at me strangely in a non believing way and told me to wait in the in the waiting room until I saw the doctor.

This had happened while she was in the surgery and she had not seen the news, and no one had told her what was going on in the wider world.  She honestly didn't believe me and thought that I had probably lost the plot.  I saw my doctor who thankfully believed me and didn't have me carted off to a hospital.  I couldn't get back home quickly enough to see what going on.

From that day I don't think Osama Bin Laden's name will ever be forgotten worldwide, this act led us into the realms of terrorism at its worst.  It shocked the world into action against these groups of extremists operating from Afghanistan with their training camps spreading their hate worldwide.  After many months of resolutions with the UN we went into Afghanistan to close these camps down and bring some kind of law and order to that part of the world, yet here we are five years later getting sucked in by the insurgents with no exit strategy in sight.  Part of the problem is down to undermanning of our troops and the regrouping of the insurgents.

The UN has let these groups reorganise and come back to fight another day instead of putting in enough troops  to sort the problem out from the start.  We have now given these resurgent's time to regroup and organise themselves again.  I now believe we could end up like the Russian forces who were the for about ten years and had to pull out because it was a war that they couldn't win.  Because we are a coalition of many countries, we should have sorted out that part of the world by now if we were to make any impact.  The UN along with the governments involved need to start telling us what their strategy is and how much longer our forces can expect to be there.

The decisions that we go in was right at the time, but the longer we stay the more danger our troops and our countries are in.  It now time for a proper reappraisal of what are objective are and how long we are going to remain there while the resurgence grows to a level that we can't control or do anything with.

Iraq is in the same situation as the resurgence grows.  We achieved our objectives there when we removed Saddam and let the Iraq people elect their own government.  This is now an Iraq problem, Saddam has been caught and sentenced to death for his crimes against the people of Iraq and we have established that this country has no weapons of mass destruction.  We also know that many countries have pulled out there troops leaving the distribution of forces to come from less countries.  That leaves our remaining troops in a more dangerous position, and how long our troops should remain there?  The people of this country are now asking these questions, but they don't seem to be getting any answers.

Our troops are hero's, each and every one of them along with the coalition forces. They take their orders and carry out their duties, but again the people back home - even those that supported our government - are starting to ask questions.

It's now time for answers to these questions and what is intended for the future?

Written by Andrew Murphy 17 November 2006

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