Peace activists insisted on Sunday that the military must never again be deployed without the support of the British people after army chief General Richard Dannatt warned over the growing gap between the nation and the army.
In a speech to top think tank the International Institute for Strategic Studies on Friday, Gen Dannat said: When a young soldier has been fighting in Basra or Helmand, he wants to know that the people in their local pub know and understand what he has been doing and why.
In America, appreciation for the armed forces is outstanding and, frankly, I would like to be able to mirror some of that here, he added.
But the army chief later went off message, contradicting US and British government claims that occupation forces are solely battling fanatical Islamists and al Qaida terrorists.
Gen Dannatt admitted that British troops are currenty fighting Iraqi nationalists, most concerned with their own needs - jobs, money, security - and the majority are not bad people.
And he acknowledged that, in Afghanistan, the great majority of the people we are engaged against are those who are fighting with the Taliban for financial, social and tribal reasons.
A Stop the War Coalition spokesman noted that Dannat is implicitly admitting that the army is now engaged in unpopular and illegal wars.
He insisted that the army should be under rigorous democratic control, noting that the problem that Dannat has identified is that British troops have been dragged into wars that the majority of the British people disapprove of.
If you really support our armed forces, you should be campaigning for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, added the spokesman.
That is why we'll be out marching against the wars on October 8, the day that Parliament reconvenes and Prime Minister Gordon Brown is scheduled to make a statement on Iraq.
