This is the way the war ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. Not with a “can we keep this up?” but with a quieter question: “Do we really want to?” That quieter question is forming, half-unacknowledged, in the backs of many minds in Britain this September, not least among Members of Parliament, and not least in the party I know best: the Conservative Party. To them in a moment.
The weeks behind us began with an Afghan election that even when (for The Times) I was in southern Afghanistan in June was heading for the ditch. They have ended with the resignation on Thursday of a junior government aide, and with a wan and evasive speech yesterday by our Prime Minister at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The speech was pitiable. “Time-specific objectives” indeed — Heaven help us. And Gordon Brown’s failure even to mention the failure of the Afghan elections was cowardly. As Mr Brown wandered through a text that sounded more like one of his budgets — full of speculative statistics, pointless estimates and mad numbers plucked from the air — I found myself wondering why he thought that the annual cost of each British soldier in Afghanistan (£390,000 a year) was something to proclaim rather than hush up.
Millions will have the same reaction. These weeks may come to be seen as the end-of-summer moment when Britain fell out of love with our adventure in Afghanistan. The wind is changing.
As a politician the resigning aide, Eric Joyce, is negligible: a straw in the wind. But the wind matters. Mr Brown can spit into it — yesterday’s speech was more of a dribble — but the wind is stiffening, and the spittle will blow back at the start of every Prime Minister’s Questions, with every tribute to the last-killed among our servicemen. I wince for those poor dead soldiers, their final and involuntary function being to puff a little dignity into a politician’s Question Time strut.
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But this Prime Minister will be gone soon enough. What of the Tories? How are they feeling about Britain’s souring task in Helmand? Having once been one of them, I can tell you this: there’s no point asking. You won’t get a straight answer. There are three good reasons for this, and one bad one. The bad reason is that most MPs don’t stick their necks out or they wouldn’t have heads.
As an at-first heretical opinion gains ground among the Parliamentary Conservative Party (I remember the growing worries about the Poll Tax) the early indications are deeply coded: internal mutters, raised eyebrows and notable failures to volunteer the party line with any enthusiasm.
They duck. Did you see Liam Fox, chief Tory defence spokesman, trying unedifyingly to make some cheap “Support Our Boys” capital out of Mr Joyce’s resignation? Dr Fox seemed to be pretending that Mr Joyce was backing the present Tory line, which (so far as it is possible to abstract any policy at all from Fox populi) is to send more troops and equipment. This was safe, but it wasn’t honest.
But there are three better reasons for discretion. To admit failure in Afghanistan is to tell the families of all the troops who have died there that they died in vain. It’s hard — and arguably wrong — for a politician heading for government to do that.
It is, secondly, to tell the troops already there, whose withdrawal may take many years, that their original mission has been aborted — and what does that do for morale?
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Finally it is to pre-empt our senior partner in this exercise, the United States, who, as they led the charge, must lead the retreat, with a right to offer the first draft of a public explanation. The years between now and the day the last British soldier comes home, years in which scores, perhaps hundreds, more will be killed, could prove a very difficult time for responsible politicians to handle the message.
So if we are not yet to hear the sound of a frank U-turn on Afghanistan from influential Tories, what signals should we be looking for? Two in particular. The term “mission-creep” used disparagingly. This means “stop throwing more resources into failure” — but is more diplomatic. You hear it all the time. Second (and you heard it from Mr Brown, too, yesterday) “Afghanisation” used enthusiastically. This means “we can’t do it; let’s hope they can”.
Significantly, this was the central thrust of an article in Thursday’s Times by a senior and careful Conservative, Sir Malcolm Rifkind. There were two halves to his argument. The first (put compellingly and with conviction) was that the present policies aren’t working. That is what Malcolm really thinks.
The second (put more speculatively) was about the Afghans taking more control, and Hamid Karzai acting responsibly. That is what Malcolm really hopes. With what confidence this vastly experienced foreign and defence policy expert actually believes that an Afghan National Army larger than Britain’s, and costing many multiples of that country’s entire GDP, would prove a politically stabilising force in the long term, you must permit me to doubt.
We won’t be the first to run, of course. We have left that honour to the Dutch, the Canadians and the Spanish. Aiming a few derisive hoots in their direction, we British will hang around a bit, take our cue from the United States, and retreat only as and when they do. But in British hearts already, and in our heads as the mood of resignation sets properly in, we are waiting for Washington’s signal.
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Long military campaigns are rarely won or lost on a decisive pitched battle, even if that’s the way history’s camp-fire storytellers like to cast the tale. The fortunes of war rarely turn on events or moments that can be tagged neatly to a place and date. More often, doubt, anxiety and a calculation of loss build gradually in the back of a nation’s mind, until finally a newsworthy reverse trips a switch, the despair is projected to the front, somebody whispers “let’s get out of here”, and soon everyone is edging for the door, claiming it’s what they thought all along — which it sort of was.
The whispers have begun. Slowly but surely, tentatively at first, with many fits and starts, in flurries of denial, and protesting that all’s well and nothing has changed, we are on our way out of Afghanistan. If a dying Labour Government doesn’t begin edging towards the door, the next Conservative one will. Whatever they say.