Ummm yes I'm aware what the SAS are and what they do. It might as well be on the GCSE curriculum
However my point was that despite their greatness, terrorism was a fairly regular part of UK life for all of the 26 years I lived there. They might well be the best counter-terrorist force in the world (I reckon they are, but then I'm just another biased Brit), but the terrorists still managed to carry on their campaigns of terror in the UK.
So what's going on? Perhaps the terrorists haven't read up on the SAS, and don't know it's impossible for them to do this? Or are the politicians holding them back?
I reckon the terrorists have almost certainly read up on the SAS.
I don't think the politicians were holding back their use in Northern Ireland, as politicians are a pretty unprinicipled lot, and it would have been a major boon to any government to end such a long-running campaign of terror. And in a country as secretive as the UK, where it is within the government's legal rights to seize all the copies of a newspaper and jail the journalist and possibly the owners for decades just for revealing what the Prime Minister had for lunch [well, that is unless they drastically revised the Official Secrets Act to be more lenient in the last couple of years], covering up the odd bit of hush hush killing should be a piece of cake.
So I reckon the thing that dictates the SAS's or any counter terrorist group's effectiveness at dealing with terrorists before they strike is intel. Without any intel, the SAS can only be used when the terrorists go public by taking hostages or what have you.
And if intel was so easy to come by, the "War on (some) Drugs" would have been won years ago. As it is, illegal drugs are cheaper and more plentiful today than when the "War on (some) Drugs" started.
MI5 (for internal)& MI6 would provide a lot of the intel, I'm guessing [as the SAS is a kind of small, and it's men probably too qualified in combat stuff to waste them on a big intel gathering centre] and Kim Philby et al serve as a great testament as to how on the ball they are. Besides the MI stands for Military Intelligence - 'nuff said
.
In short, the SAS are great at dealing with the symptoms, but they aren't a terrorist panacea - which is understandable, because they weren't meant to be. They are a military unit, and primarily a commando force
expert in LRRP, sabotage, guerilla warfare and the seemingly impossible
. Counter-terrorism is an important role, but on the whole their role is reactive (most likely due to the lack intel).
And rightly so, IMO the SAS should be reactive - state-run hit squads are not a good idea. Which is why the Euro court thing is, I'm afraid, a good thing - because even (or perhaps especially) when it's a government, killing people for being terrorists or revolutionaries without a trial or some form of accountability [even if they're right] is something that should not be encouraged, because if you go down that path, you wind up in a military dictatorship, and terrorists are the least of your worries then.
What I was really trying to point out was that the Afghanis are pretty good at kicking arse too, and any country which attacks them should be prepared to have a long drawn out war and one they will likely lose if they invade.
So the SAS are indeed best, but we should still think long and hard before doing anything military in Afghanistan.
To quote that Churchill bloke "Jaw, Jaw, Jaw..."
That said, if it spirals down into fisticuffs, I'd trust the SAS to do it right a lot more than any air strike.
