Everybody’s favourite red top has fired it’s first shot since declaring support for The Conservatives. But it wasn’t a very good one. It was certainly an old one. If they’d got General Sir Richard Dannatt to criticise Brown’s commitment to troop levels in Afghanistan during the whole helicopter based hoo-ha a few months ago, it might have hit harder.

No one is trying to say that the higher ups in the army don’t have many reasons to be extremely vex with the prime minister. But the whole thing is almost as false as News International claiming they’re jumping ship to the Tories because they are fed up with Brown and Labour, and not because Cameron has, it seems, made very clear he is on board to help them with their crusades against the BBC and Ofcom.

Once again, General Dannatt’s claim that the army was operating in Afghanistan with “at least part of one arm tied behind one’s back” has considerable merit.
 

At first glance it seems that the former head of the army is allowing himself to be used as a pawn. Or that he was so desperate to put the boot in that he didn’t care how he looked. The news that he is more than likely to become a defence advisor to the Tories, one that will be given a seat in the House Of Lords, reveals the real motivation.

Naturally, Downing Street denied everything, even though they messed it up a bit. Apparently, in the summer of 2007 there were 7,800 troops running around after the Taliban. Now, according to the spokeperson, there are “over 9,000.” That’s at least 800 short of the 2000 extra personnel that were requested. So a slightly half baked response.

However, if they’re lucky, the Americans may just come to their rescue, if only by being similarly reticent to increase the amount of boots on the ground. Before the news about General Dannatt’s new job broke, it was reported that President Obama told a specially convened, bi-partisan, meeting that he won’t be increasing troop levels either. General McChrystal, the top boy in the American forces, asked for around 40,000 extra troops – twenty times the number General Dannatt wanted. Until the many complexities are ironed out, the many problems surrounding the recent election being perhaps the most pressing, it doesn’t seem that the commander in chief is budging.

Meanwhile, another soldier was killed in Helmand Province earlier this week. The as yet unnamed poor soul died in an explosion while on foot patrol. Imagine what must have been going through his mind in the few seconds that passed between him realising that he’d finally got shot and the eventual death. No one should go through that. With that in mind, it’s good news that Brown and Obama are, for the moment at least, not committing themselves to sending more people to die, or, at best, return home extremely traumatised. Even if they are only doing it because it’s politically expedient.

Words: Russell Myrie. Russell is currently finishing off his debut novel and negotiating the early stages of a book about the life and murder of the one and only Jam Master Jay from Run DMC. He also wrote Don’t Rhyme For The Sake Of Riddlin’  the authorised biography of Public Enemy.

Photo: Woodbank House