Political balance.
Shot one, well spotted. Probably true. For balance then, both Labour and Conservative MPs have indeed made some, could we say errors, in the last few years? Do they equally share the blame? The blame-game scorecard may look like this:
Are we saying Labour=Iraq. Labour=Afghan. Conservative=End of afghan./ Conservative=Libya. Conservative=Syria (rejected).Conservative=ISIS (partial military action).
I used to think, long ago, that the Conservatives probably tipped the balance their way in having enough knowledge and experience to take the responsibility of controlling the military- I no longer think this at all. If I've raised a hackle about this with then......The Conservative Party is trying to carry on under a legacy of having former soldiers turning into politicians and ministers who can carry out the act that they still know what they are talking about, and in a way they were good at that illusion. But not now.
For what its worth anyway (and that's zero same as everyone's on here) I don't think we as a nation are actually up for training anybody, anymore.
We have neither the military budget, available skilled instructional staff manpower on the payroll and now, no longer have the credibility to manage the medium to large scale training programmes of other countries soldiers (most especially the Arabs). Might have been different a few years back, but post-Iraq we sure as hell lost the plot on this, and it isn't coming back soon.
Continuing failure of this recent nature has now brought derision in the press.
(We haven't the credibility because any smart Alec young chap being trained by the UK Armed Forces can simply stand in class and say we were finally beaten, twice- by irregulars, insurgents... this is what people are actually saying.
We in the UK, at least our political leaders, still cannot seem to acknowledge this in public. And that is why we seemed doomed to keep rolling along on this treadmill of continuous war-fighting involving UK personnel, and failing. Stand to be corrected, which no doubt I will be, but I've got to log off.