At last a general worthy of command

General Sir Richard Dannatts interview in the Daily Mail has stated that Britain needs to withdraw its troops from Iraq sometime soon as their presence is only making the security situation worse.

That Dannatt is prepared to put his own career on the line for the sake of those he commands shows that at last the armed forces have a worthy leader. The government will no doubt be furious and accuse the general of stepping over the line by publicly voicing his opinions. He will be accused of trying to subvert the will of a democratically elected government.

So is the general right to voice his opinion publicly? Yes, he is absolutely right.

Firstly, he is right to speak out because he has a obligation to serve those he commands and to protect the effectiveness of the armed forces.

Secondly, he is justified because the government have already broken the traditional relationship between themselves and the army; they have abused the position of the army and its traditional subservience. The government politicized the public rhetoric of the army. They have turned the army's spokespersons into mouthpieces for government policy, even though they never gave the army what it needed to effectively carry out those policies. They have also used the army as a shield to defend the Iraq policy by implying that those who criticized were unsupportive of our service personnel. In short the government have exploited and betrayed our armed forces and as such cannot expect the relationship to be respected by the army either.

The objective of the army has never been met with sufficient resources and that the general now favors a withdrawal shows that he believes its unlikely to be. There were never enough troops to provide security even when the insurgents were small in number. Due to our lack of manpower those few created a larger phenomenon and any attempt to counter it now would only be too little, too late.

We now need to learn the lessons and look to the future. We must make sure that not only are our armed forces equipped with a lethal cutting edge but also that their number are great enough to cope with the countless operations to come. The days of politicians demanding so much from so few must end. Wartime armies aren't cheap and they aren't small.