Originally Posted by
BellEndBob
But sod all effect on the insurgents in the Middle East.
It is a question of priorities. The average Joe on the street will not be open to calls of overstretch/underfunding if we maintain an aerobatic team but do not support, adequately, the troops on the ground fighting on two fronts every day of every week.
So we have not got enough CAS (or indeed any worth the name) helicopters and transports. And I am sure that scrubbing the Reds would do nothing to remedy that situation. The average "Joe on the Street", whilst sympathetic to the Army's plight, is unconvinced of the need to fight on either front, let alone both. He might be more easily impressed by "overstretch" if there were not thousands of soldiers still deployed in areas where there is no conceivable threat (eg Germany). He might even wish that these soldiers were available to help sort out a major national emergency at home (terrorist outrage, flu pandemic - you name it). He hears on the radio that there is a real shortage of diamorphine in the NHS; and yet there we are in Aghanistan doing our best eliminate the main source of it. I do not believe that the public will ever again support a foreign intervention unless there is a real, immediate and demonstrable threat to the homeland or a vital national interest overseas.
To be cynical, the most sure ploy to guarrantee the Reds' survival would be to appoint a girl as Red 1 and, ideally, another as one of the soloists. Give them plenty of publicity and no government would dare to cut them. They would have the whole feminist pack baying for their blood.