At the risk of being branded a "Moonbat" by my learned friend, His Kennyness, I do think we should stop The War on Terror.
I'm not saying we should Hug-a-Mullah and we should definitely take steps to stop the keys to Air Traffic Control at Heathrow falling into the hands of Al-Qaeda.
But an accelerating climate of heavy-handed government with no end in sight is unacceptable.
Here's an idea.
* Pull the troops out of Iraq by the end of next year
* Triple the Foreign Office budget
* Quadruple our Overseas Aid budget
I'd rather make friends than shoot enemies. I'd rather spend my money on a War on Poverty than one on Terrorism.
Our troops in Iraq have tried to do an impossible job and have failed. Time to pull them out and give some Iraqis the resources they need to run their own country.
I'm not advocating a blank cheque. If they show any signs of misusing the money it stops and gets channeled elsewhere.
It's going to cost money, but the current fiasco is far from cheap and is delivering zero value.
Anyway - the new Thomas Pynchon book is out soon - I'm relying on him to have something to say about this
4 comments:
Isn't it his TBness's stated intention that troops are withdrawn from Eyerack by the end of next year and that the overseas aid budget be increased substantially? Not sure what the furrin office budget intentions are -- anything Gordon Brown writes about sends me to sleep.
I think the fundamental reluctance of the G8 regarding foreign aid is due to the mismanagement and abuse that has gone before. If you look at the African aid over the past 20 years, a substantial amount has been creamed off by corrupt officials. Once bitten...
I think my more conservative (with a small c) opinion is that a bit of both good cop/bad cop is needed in order to sort this mess out. I'm not so cold as to say "round 'em up, put 'em in a field and bomb the b******ds" without providing support for the innocent victims of the lunatic minority. I just tend to be frustrated that guerilla tactics seem, once again, to be defeating the best troops in the world. You'd have thought by now, that we would know how to handle such things. And I think that annoyance is reflected in my inane ramblings on the subject.
My policy suggestion is different in that :-
(1) there is a stated date : current Govt policy is to waffle and hope it goes away. I say 31st December 2007, 23:59 Zulu Time.
(2) The sheer magnitude of the increase in money. We (and the EU and the US) should be bankrolling the good guys to give them an even chance against the baddies. I'm even happy to settle for funding the slightly loopy against the positively barking. It's going to take time and you start with what you've got.
"Bring back Empire" .... Ye Gods, Sammy. How 19th century of you. I'm hoping you mean "bring back the Empire theatre, Halstead" http://www.empire-theatre.co.uk/about.htm.
I think we could all get behind that ...
Trust psycho to show the compassionate side of the moderate right! ;)
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