What moral obligations flow from our 'wars of choice'?

Word spreads that the UK military want a 1,000-2,000 uplift in the number of troops deployed in Afghanistan. The news comes as America’s top man on the ground, General Stanley McChrystal, wants a considerably larger uplift in US forces.

Barack Obama is saying he will make no decision on any increase in forces until his overall review of Afghan strategy is complete. It looks very much as if the military on the ground “in country” are pressuring their political leaders in concert.

In Italy over the weekend senior Italian politicians told me they expected the 500 extra troops Berlusconi sent to help with the election will be brought home quickly. The rest of her 2,800 troops will remain.

But other European Nato governments want their forces out. On both sides of the Atlantic there is a political awareness of serious popular fatigue gathering momentum over the entire course of the war.

In the meantime there is the disgrace of the “jungle”, the mess of largely Afghan and Iraqi humanity scattered in the dunes outside Calais. The camp is in the course of being cleared by the French.

These are the human consequences of the allied adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. What is the moral obligation upon those who have participated in these “wars of choice” for taking in the huddled masses who have fled their activities?