Priorities, Principles and Prince Harry

Question for you - what's more important in 21st century Britain:

a) The freedom of the press to report from a warzone where British forces are heavily engaged in trying to prop up what looks like a busted flush,

b) The freedom of the second son of the heir to the throne to fire his gun at a bit of desert

If you answered 'a', you haven't been paying attention.  Obviously it's 'b', it's not like major UK press and broadcasters can afford to go around employing investigative journalists to report the truth from Afghanistan.  Much better to rely on MOD-issued propaganda, supplied in return for a voluntary total news blackout.  WTF?  It's not like there aren't enough real gagging orders (see previous story).

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

A big injection of foreign troops has failed to bring stability. The US has almost 50,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and - twice as many as in 2004 - while the UK has 7,700, mostly in Helmand. Another 2,200 US marines are due to arrive next month to combat an expected Taliban surge.

Expected Taliban surge?  We get this every year - the fabled 'Taliban Spring Offensive'.  If it's true, it does mean that Prince Harry just happened to be sent at the quietest time of the year to do a job that apparently can be done from a chair with your helmet and jacket off.  Hail the conquering hero, indeed.

All this PR flummery doesn't mean that Prince Harry lacks courage or other soldierly qualities, he probably does, he's got the right brains (few) and background (posh) to make a decent British officer, but this was never about Prince Harry.  Like Ross Kemp's Sky documentary, this was about presenting a narrow, controlled view of events in Afghanistan, framed as 'Brave Tommies Getting On With A Difficult Job' without peering too closely at minor issues such as the nature of that job, why it's so awfully important to us, why the central Afghan government appears to be so monumentally pissed off at us, why Lord Ashdown was rejected as 'envoy' and what those two 'diplomats' were doing apparently talking to the Taliban the other month.