Do You Want A Politician In Your Trench?
They've all done it. Gone to visit the troops in the battle area. Churchill, Bush, Obama, Howard, Brown, Blair, Gillard and a host of others wanting the publicity and, possibly, the vicarious thrill of being where the action is.
Some have even gone further than that. I understand that US politicians can also be members of National Guard units and Britain has a form of politician embedding.
Recently, after the brouhouhaha over the Australian PMs lightning visit to the Australian troops in Afghanistan the leader of the Australian Opposition, Tony Abbott, requested that he be embedded with a front line unit for a week. It was refused on security grounds.
Top marks to the bloke for not wanting to do a pure publicity and point-scoring junket, but is it right to stop a politician from finding out what really goes on on the front line? Would we, and our troops on the ground, be far better off it was made compulsory for politicians of every hue to spend at least a week on the front line?