Security threat

January 22, 2010 — admin

The Home Secretary has revealed that the level of terror threat to the public has been officially increased to “severe” by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. This comes a few days after flights to and from Yemen were suspended. Does anyone else see a pattern emerging here?

I have said before that I anticipate more and more security alerts as we run up to an election as Gordon Brown appeals to us to believe that he is the only person able to look after us.

But let’s look at how likely this really is. Today, the threat level gets raised to “severe”, meaning an attack is “highly likely”. Yet Alan Johnson accompanies this move by stressing “there was no intelligence to suggest a terrorist attack was imminent“. Eh? Of course we wouldn’t expect him to release details of operations being picked up by GCHQ or MI6 but it’s still an odd thing to say given that the reason that the threat level is raised in the first place.

In addition, the threat level has been set at “severe” or higher since August 2006. In that time, we have had one very amateurish attack on Glasgow Airport where the perpitrators were the only victims (and they were only 50% successful in that given that they had both intended to die and only one did). Another very unsophisticated attack in London was foiled - both were also probably connected to Gordon Brown becoming PM that week and so might not have happened but for that event.

Nothing else has materialised that even comes close to the level of violence seen on the mainland at the height of The Troubles. During that time, there was no terror threat indicator made public via the BBC and Prime Ministers made speeches not outlining in the gravest terms actions that were being taken against a perceived threat but of defiance in the face of enemy action and sympathy with those killed.

In my view, the decision to make public the UK terror threat level is little but a publicity device that keeps terror in the news and in people’s minds when actually the security services would be much better left to their own devices to fight the issue out of the limelight. What possible use can it serve to tell people that they are in danger when you absolutely can’t tell them why? During the Second World War, the very opposite approach was used by the government and people were told that they should simply keep calm and carry on.

And why were they not given more information? Because the government believed, rightly, that the result would be a scared and frightened population. Which can be the only reason therefore that this government has chosen the approach it has - and we ought to ask ourselves why.

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A matter of security

January 3, 2010 — admin

It seems that there were a few hacks back at the BBC yesterday and today as someone has had time to stitch together a toadying news story about Gordon Brown, giving him carte blanche to attack everyone else based on a tepid interview he gave to Andrew Marr. He’s also led the bulletins throughout Sunday by announcing the new full body scanners at airports – steering us gently back onto a massive over-reaction to a very specific and concentrated terrorist danger.

I had to laugh at the headline – not “Full body scanners on the way” or “Airports to get full body scanners” but “Gordon Brown promises full body scanners” as if the PM and the PM alone has the power to do this as opposed to the companies that operate our UK airports. It goes to show the subtle yet insidious bias that remains within the corporation’s coverage of UK politics.

The fact is that people have been getting on board aircraft and hijacking them for years. They have been planting bombs on them and evading airport security for even longer. If the UK government had been serious about this issue it would have acted far more strongly after Lockerbie to ensure that aircraft departing from this country are subject to far stricter and no less time-consuming security specifications. The Lockerbie bomb – if you accept it was such – could have been contained within bomb-strengthened luggage containers that are readily available but not commercially preferable to airlines.

The PM has had 12 years to bring forward these full-body scanning measures and although the technology in this field is advancing all the time, why has he waited to an election year rather than 2001 and 9/11 or 2005 and 7/7 to announced this? We’ve already had the case of Richard Reid when nothing was done. The sudden focus on tightened security is just a get-tough measure that Brown hopes to use to propel himself back into No 10.

What you won’t find on the BBC website is two things. Firstly that among the 

“Experts [who] have questioned the scanners’ effectiveness at detecting the type of bomb allegedly used on Christmas Day in an attempted plane attack over Detroit.”

is a Conservative MP who has advised companies on the design of such things and who no doubt knows a great deal more about the subject than Gordon Brown.

You also won’t find reference to the fact that the PM claimed he had spoken to President Obama about the “new” Yemeni dimension to the terrorist threat, something that turned out to be totally untrue. Funnily enough, there’s no story on this – apparently body scanners are more important than a PM who’s a liar – but you can unpick the angle from the interview transcript.

So we’ve got Yemen, the closed embassies, the airport scanners and top-level US co-operation. It sounds to me very much as though the Labour Party is spinning madly on the security line for a political hit to get the year off to a decent start. We can expect more bogeymen and women hiding in the shagpile – from Yemeni extremists to Conservative MPs – as this government enters into its final throw of the dice; a general election of fear.

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The leader following

December 13, 2009 — admin
British soldiers in southern Afghanistan

British soldiers in southern Afghanistan

I see that the BBC is placing a visit by the PM to troops in Afghanistan high up on the news agenda. That would be fine, were it not for the PM’s sake and a timely reminder of our troops’ ongoing stalemate in the country. The corporation is making a virtue of the fact that Gordon saw fit to “bunk down” in one-star accommodation while staying the night in the country.

You’ve got to be having a laugh – aside from the fact that there aren’t many five-star establishments in Helmand, I should jolly well hope so. The guys on duty in the province spend six months or more – night and day – in the country. Frankly, after what this government have done to our ability to properly carry out military operations, a Christmas visit and an overnight stay are just about the very least the PM can do for our soldiers. He certainly doesn’t deserve BBC plaudits.

More to the point, DC beat the PM there by a week. The corporation’s response was decidedly less sycophantic. The problem they have is that Cameron is a leader and knows where to be and when. Gordon is a follower who does whatever Mandelson/Campbell/insert advisor here tells him to. It would be interesting to hear the views of the troops serving in Afghanistan which man they would rather have making decisions for them. Until then, I guess we’ll just have to stick with the BBC’s opinion.

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Dying for stability

November 2, 2009 — admin
Staff Sgt Schmid - "the best of the best of the best"

Staff Sgt Schmid - "better than the best of the best"

I was listening to the radio today while discussion centred on the latest soldier to die in Afghanistan, Staff Sgt Olaf Schmid, who was killed defusing his 65th roadside bomb earlier this week. It is difficult to imagine more handsome tributes being paid to any individual. His commanding officer called him 

“simply the bravest and most courageous man I have ever met. No matter how difficult or lethal the task which lay in front of us, he was the man who only saw solutions.”

He continued by called him “better than the best of the best” and another colleague said he was a “once-in-a-generation” man. But the most moving tribute came from his widow Christina, who wrote that she had lost her “soulmate” and “best friend“.

“Oz was a phenomenal husband and loving father who was cruelly murdered on his last day of a relentless five-month tour. The pain of losing him is overwhelming. I take comfort knowing he saved countless lives with his hard work.”

Reading out her statement on 5Live, Peter Allen sounded as if he was struggling. It’s easy to appreciate why. Olaf Schmid faced danger and death every single day in his line of work, tackling explosive devices so that others didn’t have to. I’m in awe of anyone with such courage and selfless duty – I don’t know whether I would be able to muster the same in similar circumstances and am proud to live in a nation where others can.

To single out Staff Sgt Schmid – brilliant though he clearly was – is perhaps a touch incongruous because each of the 224 British personnel killed in Afghanistan have made exactly the same sacrifice. But his death co-incided with the absolute farce of the Aghan elections - or at least they were supposed to be plural before one of the candidates threw his toys out of the pram and withdrew in a move designed to embarrass the Allied Forces and Afghan government.

We are left with a president Hamid Karzai who is discredited because he never won the election outright, is seen as close to the Allies and has presided over corruption everywhere. We have an opposition that he been motivated by a sense of injustice and could create instability within the country. We have a resurgant Taliban using the elections as an excuse, as if they need one, for violence and US and UK forces trying to hold the whole thing together for reasons known only to their political masters.

I supported the original invasion of Afghanistan, mostly because Tony Blair told me that we would find Osama Bin Laden there and bring him to justice as well as cut off his major allies, the Taliban. It transpires that Osama is probably holed up in our “ally” Pakistan and the Taliban don’t particularly like him that much – most of his support comes from another one of our “allies”, Saudi Arabia.

So it’s on days like this I have to ask what on earth we are doing sending our brilliant young men and women with families and dreams to die in some scorched and featureless part of the world that we have failed to subdue before? It may not be on the scale of the Somme but Helmand seems similarly detached from meaningful objectives.

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Arming our future

October 28, 2009 — admin
The British Grand Fleet, 1916 by Fritz Wagner

The British Grand Fleet, 1916 by Fritz Wagner

I would imagine that things are pretty grim in the MoD this week. Not only has this country suffered further losses in Afghanistan but we learned yesterday that the RAF appears to assert little discipline over some of its staff and today that the fault for the fact that a Nimrod surveilliance plane blew up in mid-flight lay squarely at the door of defence officials.

“A systematic breach of the military covenant” was how Charles Haddon-Cave described the circumstances surrounding the Nimrod tragedy three years ago. But his words could have applied to any number of personnel losses since we entered Afghanistan and Iraq with no strategy except to follow the Americans. Our biggest mistake, obviously, was to assume that they had any more clue than we did.

One looks at the lack of footwear, appropriate body armour, military vehicles and even radios (in Kosovo)  that we supply to infantry. Then cast our eye over the fact that the Nimrod MR2 in question was nearly 40 years old. Very, very few civilian aircraft exist in service at that age – why should it be okay for soldiers to travel in ageing and poorly-maintained aircraft any more than civilians?

Our fleet, which even 25 years ago was sufficient to retake the Falklands, is diminishing with each spending review and looks set to be reduced further due to the recessive legacy of this government. Our air defence is manned by shaky, ageing aircraft from the Cold War era and cuts are being made to the Eurofighter aquisition programme. At the moment, we are committed to 16 planes to defend Britain. That’s one plane to defend every four million citizens.

Given all this, I’m not sure where we can still find the money for Trident II. We already have nuclear weapons – although there is a very good case for scaling back the number that we maintain. The future defence of the realm will not be against other nation states with designated armies – it will be the terrifying fight to stop radical terror groups with all sorts of agendas penetrating our homeland security and threatening us with chemcial, biological and nuclear weapons.

Therefore it makes sense to view our Armed Forces as something else. They simply don’t need to fight off an invading army any more. Instead the Armed Forces should be a source of education, inspiration and pride for young men and women alike from communities where other options are limited – it should be an enabling organisation to turn wayward 16 and 17-year olds into rounded and mature 25 year-olds with eight or nine-year service commissions.

It should be a peacekeeping force to help other parts of the world that cannot help themselves. For this, it needs to be versatile, mobile, organised and well-equipped. But it shouldn’t need to be over-administered, excessively large or armed with the latest nuclear weapons. Nor should peacekeeping stretch to regime change – ever again.

Moreoever, we need fewer gunnery officers and more intelligence officers. Resources need to flow from urban warfare into electronic warfare, intelligence gathering and to ensuring that terrorist cells do not have the chance to threaten our security. All the infantry in the world will be no good to us if their barracks become targets for terrorist attack.

At the moment, Labour is hanging on to a mess. They don’t want to properly reform the purpose of our Armed Forces and admit that we have to give up our pretensions of world power. The Armed Forces themselves are reluctant to admit that they are no longer the commanding presence they once were. But we have an army of just 95,000, only two capital ships (with a handful of Harriers now reaching 30 years old) and small number of airworthy RAF fighters that would be totally inadequate to defend this country against another world power.

We need to let go our ideas of military might, take brave decisions about what we need to defend ourselves rather than what we want. It would wonderful to have a Grand Fleet once again and to be able to send up 1,000 bombers each night to menace our enemies. But even if we could afford this splendour, our modern-day enemies would be nowhere to be seen.

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