The Anger of Parliament (temporary)

PippaZ

Whitewavemark2

So Raab

He would now have us believe that he couldn’t make THAT call because he was working at pace (love that word??) and tirelessly to secure the Kabul airport, when we know that it had already had an agreement to be secure with the USA and the Taliban.

The FO officials have also told the world that Raab had indicated that he didn’t want to be bothered at all because he was on his hols.

HE IS LYING.

The Raab case attracts criticism as much because it sums up the general political anger at how the UK government prepared (or didn't) for the expected crisis in Afghanistan.

The problem is that it is an example of a wider sense of a British government being slapdash and inefficient. There are now reports from government sources in the Times suggesting that hundreds more Britons and Afghans could have been flown out of the country by now had the Foreign Office acted more swiftly.

This is the sort of thing that will decide Raab''s future and eventually the Governments.

Add incompetent, untruthful, corrupt, immoral to slapdash and inefficient and you begin to get an idea of the nature of the U.K. government.

Whitewavemark2

So Raab

He would now have us believe that he couldn’t make THAT call because he was working at pace (love that word??) and tirelessly to secure the Kabul airport, when we know that it had already had an agreement to be secure with the USA and the Taliban.

The FO officials have also told the world that Raab had indicated that he didn’t want to be bothered at all because he was on his hols.

HE IS LYING.

The Raab case attracts criticism as much because it sums up the general political anger at how the UK government prepared (or didn't) for the expected crisis in Afghanistan.

The problem is that it is an example of a wider sense of a British government being slapdash and inefficient. There are now reports from government sources in the Times suggesting that hundreds more Britons and Afghans could have been flown out of the country by now had the Foreign Office acted more swiftly.

This is the sort of thing that will decide Raab''s future and eventually the Governments.

Jabberwok all tanks, armoured cars and any other US military paraphernalia will have been relocated near hospitals, schools and residential areas by the Taliban it’s their long practiced MO.

So much for the “special relationship”??

Jabberwok

President Biden is apparently considering air strikes to destroy the weaponry left behind. I daresay the Taliban managed to work that out for themselves, but the President has kindly confirmed it. As someone remarked, undoubtedly the weaponry has now been moved to residential built up areas thus making its destruction impossible. As for the telephone call, as I understand it, it was impossible to make for security reasons by either men, but who knows what the truth of the matter is. What is for certain is that Boris requested an urgent phone call to President Biden on Monday morning and finally managed to make contact at 10.10 on Tuesday. The President failed to advise any of America's NATO allies of his intentions until the American ball was rolling and chaos inevitably followed particularly at certain embassy s, where staff scrambled to leave. Everybody including NATO were caught on the hop, not just the British Government.

Quite so.

But we of course are interested in our rats tail of a government.

As a matter of interest Biden is giving a speech at 1pm US time today.

President Biden is apparently considering air strikes to destroy the weaponry left behind. I daresay the Taliban managed to work that out for themselves, but the President has kindly confirmed it. As someone remarked, undoubtedly the weaponry has now been moved to residential built up areas thus making its destruction impossible. As for the telephone call, as I understand it, it was impossible to make for security reasons by either men, but who knows what the truth of the matter is. What is for certain is that Boris requested an urgent phone call to President Biden on Monday morning and finally managed to make contact at 10.10 on Tuesday. The President failed to advise any of America's NATO allies of his intentions until the American ball was rolling and chaos inevitably followed particularly at certain embassy s, where staff scrambled to leave. Everybody including NATO were caught on the hop, not just the British Government.

Rather difficult to have discussions with a Government Ministers which are not only fleeing from their desks but escaping the Country they were elected to Govern.

What thought or care did the Afghani Government have for it’s electorate?

Threads meander PippaZ as we are repeatedly seeing.

The government ( any government) is always responsible to UK voters for what it does.
Very true..... but what could they have done in the face of what we know just happened?
All the nonsense about Raab not making a phone call to an official in Afghanistan.... the government there was fast melting away ( who could blame them) and the administration there would hardly be concerned about their citizens who had worked for the UK in the chaos enveloping Kabul.
The government ( ours) did the best thing possible at that juncture, namely to ask embassy staff to work as fast as they could to get people out and to lay on military planes to fly them to Brize Norton.
It wouldn’t matter to me who was PM and what political
flavour of government we have here, in a situation such as we have found ourselves in I don’t think there would be much hope of anything better happening.

So Raab

He would now have us believe that he couldn’t make THAT call because he was working at pace (love that word??) and tirelessly to secure the Kabul airport, when we know that it had already had an agreement to be secure with the USA and the Taliban.

The FO officials have also told the world that Raab had indicated that he didn’t want to be bothered at all because he was on his hols.

HE IS LYING.

I wonder if when Tony Blair deployed U.K. Troops to Afghanistan he had an exit strategy. ?

I guess not as he is conspicuous by his absence on the world stage which he has tried very hard to make his own since leaving No.10.

your three posts
your last three posts--

This thread is about what the UK government has done/is doing Lemongrove. Neither of your three posts speaks to that.

You seem to be implying that because the US is the senior partner, the UK government is not responsible to UK voters for what it does and therefore, there is no point in discussing it from the behaviour of the UK government.

You certainly seem to be trying, again and again, to force the conversation away from discussing the UK government.

However, such an argument would be a fallacious one. There is a fallacy within it. It is not true that because the US is the senior partner, the UK government is not responsible to UK voters for what it does.

Continued discussion and blame on the US government and the relevant Presidents are not relevant to the thread. The only exception to this is if the US government were to begin running our country

Statement from Mr.Raab on Gov.U.K. Website

MaizieD It’s not lack of time ( for contingency planning)
Any and all countries with personnel in Afghanistan have had time and will have made plans.Biden asked for extra time to leave ( it would have been May under Trumps deal with the taliban) then Biden decided it would be done by the end of August.The taliban acted early and tore through the country like a dose of salts reaching Kabul and taking over.
Presumably the deal was that they waited until all foreigners were out of the country before making a move ( to power share with Afghan government.) That didn’t happen of course.
All the plans in the world by any country couldn’t do a thing given what happened.
All anyone can do now is to do what they are doing already.

The G7 is a formal high profile group of wealthy economies which provides a venue for discussion of, coordination of and agreeing strategy for tackling major global issues.

Afghanistan is clearly that.

This government has presidency and failed to tackle the subject at a G7 summit before this week.

It failed jut as it has failed on so much more.

JaneJudge
The US were aware of these deposits in 2010.
They called it the SaudiArabia of lithium. We all know how Saudi has had the world by the balls because of oil.

We have never been in the driving seat as regards Afghanistan.

It will be strained for a while under Biden, but he’s unlikely to serve a second term ( unless he pulls something brilliant out of his hat.)
We got into Afghanistan purely to assist the US in their quest to rid it of Bin Laden and cohorts, as did some other countries. It was successful as we know, but the allied force then had to stay to make sure they didn’t return and to keep the taliban at bay.A lot of progress was made and a lot of good done in that time.I really hope that people /taliban there have moved on a bit ( probably too hopeful there) but you never know.
The main problems seem to be that the taliban is not a cohesive force, but tribally divided in all kinds of ways.Some are more amenable than others, and some seem to have come straight from around the year 600.

As president of the G7, a founding member of NATO and with a permanent seat on the security council, what on Earth have the government been doing since the Trump agreement?

We should have been in the driving seat leading the strategy and not snoozing on a sun bed.

lemongrove

That’s a whole other thread PippaZ for discussion of the police bill.

Threads meander, lemon and Pippa's contribution had some pertinence. So many deferred inquires...

All of a piece with deferred planning for just such an emergency as the current one. The Doha Agreement was signed 18 months ago. Plenty of time for the FO to be working on planning for differing scenarios arising from the US pullout of troops. As one would surely expect them to do.

But I have read, in a different context, that Johnson has no liking for contingency plans, working on the dubious grounds that planning for a contingency is more likely to activate the contingency planned for .

Like Theresa May, I am 'surprised' that our intelligence failed to notice that since the signing the Taliban had been setting up agreements with the local tribal leaders in preparation for the US withdrawal and a rapid move to gain control of the country..

PippaZ

There was a comment just before the thread was closed for inspection, saying that we should not have an enquiry while (I think it was) the evacuations are going on.

The enquiry must happen now. We have had too many request for enquiries put on the back burner but the lying continues.

I have been reading the Unlock Democracy email:

It’s been revealed that the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, failed to consult the Police Federation on her controversial plans to limit peaceful protests.

That’s despite Priti Patel telling the House of Commons that, “I have worked closely with the Police Federation in developing this bill.”

This refers to the Bill Patel is bringing in against peaceful protest. How have we got to this point? If this is passed and we wanted to protest against the governments handling of the evacuation we would not be able to.

How much more do we want to risk our democracy? We need to look into these lies now.

Everything is let’s wait and see, or no time because of pressure. The need for enquiries are piling up. They can’t resist it for ever, although I suppose it gives them time to destroy or “lose” their phones etc with the evidence gone.

This period since 2000 will certainly come back to hit us - the U.K. in a big way.

We entered numerous wars which not only resulted in death and destruction but ensured that we helped to breed determined enemies and terrorists - including home grown ones.

We rejected the biggest economic and political influencers - the EU and managed at the same time to antagonise what we always thought of (very naively) as a special relationship with the USA.

At present we appear to be a sovereign country with no close relationships, facing a major world power with whom at present we have a very strained relationship.

I think you raise a very good point Meryl.

I thought that now was not the time for an inquiry into the Afghanistan situation PippaZ I would rather all energies and eyes were concentrated on the ongoing emergency than time spent in front of enquiry boards.

There should definitely be an enquiry though.