It's less troops we need in Afghanistan, not more helicoptors

Those of us who both voted against and opposed the war in Iraq and also questioned our over commitment in Afghanistan faced harsh critics in Parliament, and in the media. We were labelled 'disloyal', and as 'acting against British interests', and we were told more times than I choose to remember that we were 'unpatriotic' and in acting in the way we did, putting the lives of British Soldiers at risk.

All of this of course was hogwash, and as an example my refusal then to disclose papers leaked to me of Blair and Bush's secret pacts and crazy plans had little to do with me defending the dynamic duo, but everything to do with the need to protect the lives of British troops whose lives would have been endangered at that time if the document had been released.

Today though, 9 years on, the world certainly doesn't feel any safer? Iraq is still divided, Afganistan even more dangerous and Iran and North Korea have been added to the list of potential future engagement zones.

And yet we as a country, and as individuals seem confused and drawn between conflicting needs of both giving praise to those calling to better arm our troops and at the same time retaining a distaste for war which led millions to oppose it in the first place, and many still calling for quicker withdrawal.

My own opinion for what it is worth, is that at a time of austerity and of high unemployment and of threats to cut public spending on our public services coming from all three of the political parties, than an additional invoice to UK Government for more helicoptors, more military hardware and an upgrade to the Trident programme is fundamentaly wrong and about as welcome as the world outbreak of Swine Flu.

Britains problem isn't that its armed forces are under equipped, it is that they are overstretched and forever performing a role as "World Policemen" which far exceeds our capability, our purse and our true standing in the world. Our troops are some of the finest, if not the finest in the world, but there are too few of them and the cost of keeping them in the theatre of war is greater than the country can afford and the cost of losing them too high a price for families to pay back home.

So is it simply national pride which continually places us and our troops on the frontline? or is it a misguided notion of us still being the world power we were in past centuries?

Whatever it is, the cost in pound notes and in the loss of British life gets higher and higher by the day and someone in Parliament at some time will need to be brave enough to question the constant calls for more money, more equipment and more troops and say "can we really afford all this? isn't there a better way? Shouldn't other NATO Countries be doing there bit?

There can be no military solution to the problems of religious extreemism be they Islamic or Christian, problems of indifference by minorities in whatever country are best dealt with on home soil by those in authority and who have been given authority through the accepted will of the majority within there respective nations. Iraq and Afghanistan will only begin to heal their wounds once American and British Soldiers who are seen as occupiers, are removed from the scene.

In the meantime chasing the Taliban around the Pakistani mountains is only aiding their ongoing recruitment campaigns and driving a further wedge between the West and the Islamic world.

And Britain needs also to realise that we are no longer the biggest kid in the playground and that we can no longer afford to involve ourselves continually to the levels we do. I would rather we played a smaller part in a bigger Nato engagement than continue to put British lives at risk by asking our troops to enter the theatre of war hanging on to the coat tails of our better equipped and more cash rich american cousins.

And we would do well to remember that whilst no war is ever truly won, humanity is always, inevitably the loser