Afghanistan highlights the two faces of Gordon Brown

Do you know what two things I dislike most about Gordon Brown? His face. The man isn't just incapable of telling the truth or giving a straight answer to a question. He's also unable to maintain a consistent position when he speaks to different audiences.

On Friday it was widely reported that Brown said Britain's military will stay in Afghanistan until the country's own security forces can fight the Taliban and al Qaeda without assistance, dismissing as the Wall Street Journal put it, a call from one of his government's defence aides to begin planning a pullout from the country. Yet from today's Independent on Sunday we learn that:

Gordon Brown has put the United States on notice that he wants to cut UK troop numbers from more than 9,000 to fewer than 5,000 in "three to five years, maximum", according to senior sources at the Ministry of Defence.

Our forces in Afghanistan are already overstretched and the training of Afghan security forces is not delivering the required results, but Brown's answer is to reduce the size of the UK force by nearly half. It's the clearest signal that the UK, having been effectively defeated in southern Iraq, is preparing to pull out from Afghanistan too.

Under Labour the size and capability of our armed forces has been slashed. Despite that our military has been sent all over the world to do much more in terms of operations with far less in terms of men and equipment. It's an insult for Brown to tell the British people that we're in Afghanistan until the job, whatever that might be, is done and at the same time tell the Americans we're going to run away again like we did in Iraq.

A Labour government put our men and women in harm's way without a clear mission and the Ministry of Defence failed them by buying unsuitable equipment for the task at hand resulting in deaths that were avoidable. The nation should be in a raging fury at the unnecessary deaths of too many of our soldiers, the incompetence of the MoD, and lack of leadership and weasel words we have witnessed from the government. It is a disgrace and a humiliation.

Obama's oil based contradiction on terrorism?

After the release of the Libyan bomber of Pan Am 103, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, are we now discovering the hypocritical side of President Barack Obama. On the one hand we see Obama denouncing al-Megrahi's release as a "mistake" because of the signal it sends terrorists about the type of justice they could expect if caught. But on the other we see Obama bullying Honduras into reinstating its deposed President, Manuel Zelaya.

So far the United States has suspended visa services for Hondurans and is warning that $135 million in bilateral aid to Honduras might be cut because Obama says Zelaya's removal as leader was not legal. Mary O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal puts the matter into context when she explains:

To recap, the Honduran military in June executed a Supreme Court arrest warrant against Mr. Zelaya for trying to hold a referendum on whether he should be able to run for a second term. Article 239 of the Honduran constitution states that any president who tries for a second term automatically loses the privilege of his office. By insisting that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power, the U.S. is trying to force Honduras to violate its own constitution.

What makes this all the more remarkable is that, as O'Grady points out, Zelaya is allied to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, a man whose example he was trying to follow in a strategy to become president for life. And Chavez is a sponsor of terrorism as he equips and provides safe haven to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC as they are better known. FARC is the group waging a terrorist campaign against the Colombian government. Why is Obama trying to prop up a key member of Latin America's left-wing alliance by claiming Zelaya was deposed illegally, even when the Honduran constitution gave legitimacy to the action?

Could it be perhaps that Obama thinks it would be a "mistake" for the interests of the United States to upset Chavez because America needs Venezuelan oil? Obama's Democrat friends have certainly gone out of their way to keep their ally Colombia at arms length as tension between that country and Venezuela has increased.

If that is the case then surely it is rank hypocrisy on the part of Obama to criticise the UK/Scottish decision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. After all, as we are learning, the decision (disgraceful as it was) was supposedly made in the interests of the United Kingdom's oil industry. In the circumstances maybe Obama should stop putting on his morally superior indignation. After all isn't this a case of what's good for the goose...?