Remember the US withdrawal from Afghanistan? There was a debate in the parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Boris Johnson and Kier Starmer delivered their talking points on the usual salad of parliamentary language; PM Johnson said that there was no international appetite for further international occupation of the country – now that the US had gone - but the UK had "an enduring commitment to ALL the Afghan people", and that "now, more than ever, we must reaffirm that commitment." That’s presumably the commitment made by Tony Blair when he followed George Bush into war twenty years ago. Theresa May wondered if it would not have been possible to put together a non-US NATO force to continue the occupation, despite the state of the armed forces and the defence budget. Stella Creasy's hair and outfit were immaculate. MPs fell over each other to demand more and more unassimilable refugees.
Tom Tugendhat - ex-solider, MP for Tonbridge and Malling, and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee - was widely praised for a moving speech. Several other ex-soldiers spoke, including Sir Iain Duncan-Smith, Johnny Mercer, and Sir Desmond Swayne. Iain Duncan Smith asked the PM if it was not shameful that President Biden had withdrawn all aircraft cover from the Afghan army and then blamed them for the US withdrawal. Desmond Swayne asked Keir Starmer how he would act if Britain were under invasion - fight or queue at the airport? Johnny Mercer talked about the necessity of loyalty and meaning in military service. It was reassuring to hear from them. We have a parliament, largely, of politicians with no life outside politics - activists, trade union officials, journalists, lobbyists. As other MPs admitted, soldiers who have put their lives in harm’s way for their nation have more moral authority to be heard on occasions like these. The moral weight of this debate is made of bodies, life-chances and lives. This, not pieties, is what protects human freedom, and human flourishing.
However, as Tom Tugendhat indicated, it would be a mistake to think that soldiers – that is, specialists in the use of force - are necessarily best placed to say what force should be used for:
“What we have done in these last few days is demonstrate that it is not armies that win wars. Armies can get tactical victories and operational victories that can hold the line; they can just about make room for peace—make room for people like us to talk, to compromise, to listen. It is nations that make war; nations endure; nations mobilise and muster; nations determine and have patience...”
While there's truth in that, it skips lightly past some apposite questions: Who is that nation? What is the nation that went to war, that endures, mobilises, musters, determines, has patience? Who says what benefits they were trying to gain, or trying to defend? Those are big questions with big consequences, and I can't remember hearing an answer to any of them in recent times.