{"id":36525,"date":"2021-09-06T23:30:23","date_gmt":"2021-09-06T14:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/sep\/06\/uk-afghanistan-inquiry-accountability-iraq"},"modified":"2021-09-06T23:30:23","modified_gmt":"2021-09-06T14:30:23","slug":"there-will-be-a-uk-afghanistan-inquiry-just-dont-expect-any-accountability-frank-ledwidge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=36525","title":{"rendered":"There will be a UK Afghanistan inquiry \u2013 just don\u2019t expect any accountability | Frank Ledwidge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We know from Iraq that those with responsibility for 20 years of strategic disaster won\u2019t actually be held responsible<\/p>\n<p>On the morning of 14 March 1757, one of the Royal Navy\u2019s most senior serving admirals, John Byng, was marched on to the deck of the warship HMS Monarch, forced to kneel and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.historytoday.com\/archive\/months-past\/execution-admiral-byng\">shot by a firing squad<\/a> of marines. At the time, during the Seven Years\u2019 War, the execution divided the establishment and the country. But he had failed \u201cto do his utmost\u201d to comply with his instructions to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Battle_of_Minorca_(1756)\">take the island of Minorca<\/a> in the Mediterranean, and during a global war that was not good enough.<\/p>\n<p> <span>Related: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/sep\/04\/afghanistan-britain-worst-failure-since-suez-uk-foreign-policy\">Was Afghanistan Britain&#8217;s worst failure since Suez? It&#8217;s a comforting fiction | Charlotte Lydia Riley<\/a> <\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/sep\/06\/uk-afghanistan-inquiry-accountability-iraq\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We know from Iraq that those with responsibility for 20 years of strategic disaster won\u2019t actually be held responsibleOn the morning of 14 March 1757, one of the Royal Navy\u2019s most senior serving admirals, John Byng, was marched on to the deck of the wa&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2546,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,937,938,4,61,52,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-british-army","category-military","category-politics","category-south-and-central-asia","category-uk-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2546"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36526,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36525\/revisions\/36526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}