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We cannot afford another overseas adventure.



 http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/24/britain-to-send-military-advisers-to-ukraine-cameron#comment-48036283


Britain to send military advisers to Ukraine

 



David Cameron



This is a very bad idea. Not from any pacifist or pro Putin/Russia ideal, but from the viewpoint of practicalities. "Advisers" are invariably shortly followed by "support units" who are again invariably followed by "aircraft in a supporting role" and so on until, low and behold, someone suddenly realises that we have a full blown military presence in region. As was the case in Viet Nam through to Afghanistan and Iraq, history has always shown us that "mission creep" is not a question of numbers, it is a question of timescale.
There are those in this country, as many of the comments in this section demonstrate, who are clearly of a gung ho mentality and still believe that we should bomb and smash the Russians as that great political thinker Kenny Everett once said. However, we live today in a society where austerity is the over ridding economic philosophy and the compulsion to drive down public expenditure has been the mainstay of Cameron and his ConDem coalition for the last five years. The "success" of this policy is debatable, but the reality of its effects are plainly evident. We have the shame of over one million people reliant on foodbanks to feed their families. Nurses, ancillary workers and other public sector employees having their wages and salaries effectively frozen for almost five years. Services ranging from the NHS to social services from government through to street cleaning from local councils, have be reduced or even cut completely in the name of saving money.



 



In the case of defence expenditure, rather than save £Billions by cutting Trident and its replacement, this disastrous government is saving money by making thousands of military personnel redundant, providing second rate equipment and supplies to those who remain, building aircraft carriers without installing aircraft on them (because we cant afford them!) mothballing new ships to save money and placing all emphasis on reserve soldiers who in the majority of cases have not even been recruited yet.
Against this woeful background of ineptitude the government now propose to involve this country yet another intervention, albeit on a limited scale for now at least, in an overseas country which at this time is not even a member of NATO (which is what the American fervently desire and what this current crisis is really all about ).

Thousands made redundant


I repeat what I said at the beginning of this piece. UK military "trainers" be deployed to help Ukraine forces is a very bad idea and should be shelved immediately or on the morning of May 8th next.




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