How short is a really small period of time. You may think that a second has the quality of shortness. Yet a second (now technically defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of one type of radiation produced by a cesium 133 atom, I kid you not) is hardly that fleeting. There are much briefer units used by scientists — milliseconds (one thousandth of a second), nanoseconds (a billionth of a second) and then attoseconds (a billionth of a billionth of a second). The fastest possible occurrence, however, is believed to take place at the speed of Planck time (which is ten to the power of minus 43 of a second, or thereabouts).
Well it should have taken Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, about Planck time to realise that the decision to allow the 15 Service personnel to sell their stories to the media was a catastrophic mistake that he would have to reverse instantly. He did not and as a result he will have to face the wrath of the House of Commons today. For once, the anger that he will encounter there will not be manufactured. The Prime Minister may have denounced the idea of a witch-hunt, but the Conservatives and others will be collecting firewood to place around Mr Browne’s feet before igniting it. There will be calls for the Defence Secretary to take absolute and ultimate responsibility for this fiasco by submitting his resignation. Those demands will be entirely legitimate.
I do not recall ever using this space to push for a resignation. There have been incidents when I have predicted one (invariably, these then do not happen) or urged that someone be dismissed for ineptitude (they always survive) but asking for a ministerial resignation is the sort of cheap trick that oppositions use far too often and erodes their own credibility as a consequence. As a rule, those in high office deserve more sympathy than they get. They may look as if they command vast machines, but in reality they have to make choices based on insufficient information, unattractive lists of options and with too little time to think matters through properly.
The Iran captives saga is, though, an exception. It was not Mr Browne’s fault that the Revolutionary Guards conspired to seize these sailors and Marines or that they proved to be putty in the hands of the Iranians (more Folditz than Colditz) when intimidated. The process by which they were first permitted to sell their stories, then told that those who had not cashed in already should speak to the press without accepting money, and now, apparently, have been silenced completely is, or should have been, his lookout.
The only plausible argument in favour of letting the former captives tell their stories was that the Ministry of Defence would be able to “control” what appeared in print or on television. That claim was smashed to smithereens once the interview with Arthur Batchelor appeared with his admissions of “crying like a baby” and distress at the confiscation of his iPod and being nicknamed “Mr Bean” by his captors. Faye Turney’s account was only mildly less disastrous in its impact on the image of the military. A bad situation has been made far, far worse than it should have been. It would be profoundly wrong for the Secretary of State to remain in office any longer.
Just how bad is it? A review of some overseas newspaper comment is instructive. Those who write leading articles should not always be treated as deities (although that would be nice), but they do tell us how a situation is seen by others.
So let us start with The New York Sun, which opined: “There is no point in denying the terrible harm that the hostage affair has done to the British Armed Forces.” Worst of all, it mused, “has been the sheer incompetence with which the politicians have handled the whole sorry business”. The embarrassing episode, it concluded sadly, “has damaged the reputation of Britain’s Armed Forces as grievously as Abu Ghraib did America’s”.
Well, perhaps the Americans are inclined to exaggeration. How about the Canadians? To the Toronto Star the sale of these stories “sends the message that personal enrichment, not just the honour of the service, is the name of the game — even in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces”. Australia? The Canberra Times noted: “The outcome of the Iran-British stand-off is widely seen as a public relations victory for Iran.” New Zealand? The Nelson Mail fumed: “The spectre of military personnel acting like reality television stars and profiting from their captivity does neither them, the Armed Forces nor Britain credit.”
And these are our allies. One can only imagine what was written in the Damascus Daily, the Pyongyang Post or the Tehran Telegraph. It has been an abject, avoidable humilation.
If only that were the limit of it. The worst legacy of this farce is not that the Armed Forces have been rendered a laughing stock, but that the lives of individual men and women serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have been endangered by it. The notion of British troops as fearsome souls not to be crossed has been undermined and the incentives for kidnapping them have been increased substantially. The real spirit of the Armed Forces is evident in the four young recruits who died together in Iraq ten days ago and the admirable response of their families to their loss. But it is “Mr Bean” that will stick in the memories of the Taleban and Iraqi terrorists.
Mr Browne is a decent man and by all accounts an able administrator. Someone senior, nevertheless, has to acknowledge the enormity of what has occurred, not try to minimise it. Parliament is the place to admit to such errors and to account for them. The Defence Secretary should make his statement — then stand down attoseconds later.
Tim Hames