Gordon Brown And The Generals
Nov. 23rd, 2007 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI'm guessing Gordon Brown has an old-fashioned, 60s radical, Old Labour distaste for the military. I'm more or less of his generation and I have it too. This might explain why he was so bloody rude to the Generals when he was Chancellor.
I'm all for being bloody rude to the Generals.
But it's all on the surface with him. He retains the attitudes of a bolshy undergraduate but he doesn't carry through. He didn't resign over Iraq or cancel Trident or pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan when he succeeded Blair.
So it's not actually war he objects to or the hardware of war- just soldiers.
And because he didn't want to deal face to face with soldiers we're now in a situation where our military are overstretched and underequipped and ill-cared for.
We're fighting two wars and he thinks the Minister of Defence has so little to do that he makes the job part time. Unbelievable.
They used to say he was deep- I guess because he sulks a lot and reportedly reads books- but there aren't any principles there or real ideas (witness the last Queen's speech) just an Emo attitude and massive self-regard.
I'm all for being bloody rude to the Generals.
But it's all on the surface with him. He retains the attitudes of a bolshy undergraduate but he doesn't carry through. He didn't resign over Iraq or cancel Trident or pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan when he succeeded Blair.
So it's not actually war he objects to or the hardware of war- just soldiers.
And because he didn't want to deal face to face with soldiers we're now in a situation where our military are overstretched and underequipped and ill-cared for.
We're fighting two wars and he thinks the Minister of Defence has so little to do that he makes the job part time. Unbelievable.
They used to say he was deep- I guess because he sulks a lot and reportedly reads books- but there aren't any principles there or real ideas (witness the last Queen's speech) just an Emo attitude and massive self-regard.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-24 11:05 am (UTC)But I'm afraid I can't give them the benefit of the doubt over Iraq. I was following that story closely and I knew at the time the WMDs were being used as a pretext and probably didn't exist. The evidence just wasn't there. And No 10 tacitly admitted as much by "sexing-up" the dossier in house.
I have never ever voted for the Tories and it bothers me to find I'm considering doing it next time round. But Cameron has positioned himself on the right (by which I mean the left) side of the argument too many times now for me to dismiss him out of hand.