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The Conflict in Afghanistan


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This is exactly the 'problem'. Politicians seem to have come up with the new concept "war-lite", where you try to defeat the enemy but try and be mates with a population who may harbour and support that enemy. Try and win hearts and minds and change their minds. That'll fucking work.

 

I wouldn't condone it in this day and age, but can you imagine Alexander the Great or Rome carrying out their conquests in that manner. They wouldn't have got out of Macedonia or Rome. You either teach everyone a lesson they'll never forget (see Persepolis) or stay at home.

 

The Russians tried that. Mass slaughter. Even as far as herding entire villages into a cave, and then using flamethrowers to burn them into charcoal. Murdered well over a million (or 2).

 

They lost.

 

As did the British before them (bombing villages from biplanes, using mustard gas, etc back in the day).

 

They were butchered. (I recall one British army expedition having only one surivivor - a horse...)

 

Even Alexander, as soon as he conquered a particular town or region in Bactria (I think thats what that region was refered to as, back then), as soon as he moved on further eastward, would find that the town he just subjugated had risen up and tossed out his garrison.

 

If you take a tough, and very brave, bunch of people, who refuse to accept conquest by foreigners on any terms, then thats what happens.

 

Irrespective of al-Qaeda, or not. Pathans (or Pashtuns) don't lie down for anybody.

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If it'd been made clear from word go "look we're not arsed about the middle east, we just want the people who brought the towers down", I think America could have used a great deal of the goodwill it had at its disposal in 2001 to create a coalition, and from there the Taliban could have been replaced with a more benign regime.

 

You're making the assumption that the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan were simply for that reason.

 

Which is an assumption rejected by the vast majority in the Muslim world. The prevailing view is that the US has used what happened as an excuse to increase its hegemony.

 

2001 didn't happen in a vaccum. The Americans couldn't make the argument that "we're not arsed about controlling the Middle East, we just want to get along" even BEFORE 9/11.

 

Anyway, to answer your specific question, if it was ONLY about getting bin Laden, and those responsible for 9/11, then yes - they could have. In fact, they probably could have gotten that WITHOUT EVEN INVADING AFGHANISTAN.

 

Mullah Omar at first didn't quite appreciate the severity of the situation. But Musharraf pretty quickly put him in no doubts (you really have to appreciate just how disconnected the Taliban were from global events, and their implications). When the Taliban finally said "provide some evidence that they were responsible, and we'll hand them over", they actually really meant it.

 

Obviously, they didn't play their cards correctly. Very quickly, the spin became "Taliban = al-Qaeda", even though that actually wasn't true (if anything, its more true today - or should I say less false today -, than it ever was then).

 

It sounds weird to those used to diplomatic double speak. In any cirumstance, from any other governing body, it would simply have sounded like stalling, a polite "screw you". But thats the thing with the Taliban. They (especially then) used to take a very simplistic view of things. Very black and white. This is right, that is wrong, end of story.

 

Its part of what was good, and bad about them. Good, in that they weren't duplicitous bastard warlords, like the guys the Americans and Brits allied with to invade Afghanistan. They looked at something, worked out what they thought was right, said so, and then did what they said they would do.

 

Example. Drug industry = bad. Ok, lets stop it. Actually, they did. I believe that they had pretty much eliminated most of poppy cultivation in terrirtories under their control (a situation which has now been completely reversed)

 

Its also what was bad about them. Total inflexibility. Extreme rigidity. You all know the type of excesses I'm referring to. Plus, its not as if everything they said was good, or bad, really was.

 

Essentially, they were an extreme response to an extreme situation. A local, home grown militia to combat extreme lawlessness, etc. Could they have evolved into something better, over time? .....

 

Anyway, the main point here is that actually, I agree with you. If getting bin Laden etc was really the only aim, then that could have been done, without a n invasion, in 01/02.

 

But thats not how great powers work. Tragic events like 9/11 exist mainly to advance previously lain plans. Witness neo-cons - like Chaney, Woolsey, etc - constant writings in the late 90s (during what they saw as a decade of Democrats failing to take advantage of the end of the Cold War), proclaiming that America "needs another Pearl Harbour event, to claim her rightful place as global hegemon"

 

Well, they actually said "global leadership", probably with a follow on passage about "leading the rest of humanity towards a golden future strewn with liberty, rose petals, and eternal economic well-being", etc etc

 

(no mention of the millions dead, cities bombed out, countries destroyed, financial systems crashing at home ... pesky implementation details)

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Of my limited understanding of this war, I actually didn't think it would last longer than two years, this is the part that gets me. Why on earth are we allowing the Pakistan government to do nothing, and in some cases encourage this?

 

Declare victory and get out.

 

Allowing the Pakistani government to do nothing? Eh? Do you know how many casualties Pakistan has taken, civilian and military, since 2001?

 

Go back, check on it, then post back on what your definition of nothing. Granted, its not the same "Taliban" that they are fighting (see below)

 

Read the article mate. The Pakistani government is not a powerful force.

 

The civilian leadership is not. Never has been. The army, on the other hand, is. They clearly define the boundaries of what is, and isn't acceptable (in terms of foreign policy), and the civilians have to operate within that.

 

When Musharaf strayed from the army line, and allied himself too closely with the American line, he was done, politically, for that very reason.

 

The army did not want the Afghanistan invasion. And they knew, back in 2001, that the Americans would lose. We told them so, explicitly.

 

They went ahead anyway.

 

They (the Pakistan army) are not going to pick a long term fight with people (Pathan tribes allied with the Taliban) whom we don't really have a problem with in the first place, and have to live with long after the West leaves.

 

End of story. In terms of the army looking out for Pakistan (their no.1 job, enriching generals comes as #2), you can't really argue with that.

 

The ones whom they (the Pakistan army) have been fighting with are different groups, like the ones who were expanding from Swat, and Beitullah Masood's group of bastards. Because these were in direct conflict with Pakistan.

 

Unfortunately, for you in the West, all of these groups are labelled as "Taliban" (by your journalists who don't know their ears from their elbows) so you don't actually understand whats going on.

 

Amidst the 2001 invasion and its aftermath, Pakistan and India are still playing out their "big game". Witness India moving weapons in large quantities into Afghanistan, and arming Beitullah Masood.

 

Although he is labelled as "head of the Pakistan Taliban", he actually spent the majority of his effort fighting against Pakistan, not against the Americans.

 

Which is primarily why Pakistan in turn blew the Indian embassy in Kabul to shit. As a warning to knock that shit off, one which seems to have mostly worked. (Although the general belief in intelligence circles in Islamabad is that we really didn't have a hand in the Mumbai attack, before you ask).

 

So, witness the situation in Waziristan. Where Taliban fighters, who fight against the Americans in Afghanistan, have been HELPING the Pakistan army to destroy Masood, who is labeled as a "Taliban leader" in the West.

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  • 6 months later...
Guest Numero Veinticinco

 

Regarding the conflict itself, unlike Iraq which has overshadowed it, I've never had a problem with taking the Taliban down. They knowingly harboured a terrorist organisation - probably many more - and refused to surrender Bin Laden when offered the chance. I believe it's a just war, but can't believe it's become bogged down in the shit the way it has.

 

 

I don't think it is a just war. Armed forces are for defensive purposes. No Afghani ever attacked us. No Afghani has ever attacked America. The Taliban came out of our tactics there. They asked for proof of guilt in the case of Bin Laden, but America didn't give anything.

 

That's enough short statements for one post and should get the debate going again. It is simply the most ridiculous, unwinnable war I can imagine. We are propping up a man who recently passed into law that it is legal to beat your wife if she won't have sex with you.

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I don't think it is a just war. Armed forces are for defensive purposes. No Afghani ever attacked us. No Afghani has ever attacked America. The Taliban came out of our tactics there. They asked for proof of guilt in the case of Bin Laden, but America didn't give anything.

 

That's enough short statements for one post and should get the debate going again. It is simply the most ridiculous, unwinnable war I can imagine. We are propping up a man who recently passed into law that it is legal to beat your wife if she won't have sex with you.

 

Is that always the case? For example, was ousting Milosevic just? What would have happened if we'd stood aside.

 

How about WW2? Leaving aside the threat to the UK from Nazi Germany, would it have been acceptable to stand aside and watch the holocaust (assuming that we were able to do so with no threat to ourselves)?

 

Just War theory is a really interesting topic

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I don't think it is a just war. Armed forces are for defensive purposes. No Afghani ever attacked us. No Afghani has ever attacked America. The Taliban came out of our tactics there. They asked for proof of guilt in the case of Bin Laden, but America didn't give anything.

 

That's enough short statements for one post and should get the debate going again. It is simply the most ridiculous, unwinnable war I can imagine. We are propping up a man who recently passed into law that it is legal to beat your wife if she won't have sex with you.

 

No doubt things have gone tits up since the invasion, but that says more about the Yanks' ability to mismanage an occupation than it does about the original right or wrong behind the war itself.

 

Bin Laden was behind those attacks though, he was also behind countless others which led to that, the USS cole, the Saudi Barracks and the African embassy bombings to name but a few. They may have asked for proof but there was no way they didn't know he was behind the attacks.

 

Even Clinton, who was notoriously reluctant to commit US forces to combat (at least compared to those who came before and after) had planned to invade Afghanistan for that very reason, but the FBI and CIA wouldn't sign off on it.

 

1.44

 

[YOUTUBE]3L2513JFJsY[/YOUTUBE]

 

I genuinely can't remember anyone who thought going into Afghanistan was an unjust action, it was overshadowed by the criminal actions which followed in Iraq.

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Guest Numero Veinticinco

I could type out a load of stuff, but I'd just be rewording what is said in these:

 

4nAI7ShBQEk

 

iXBtrX2osAs

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Guest Numero Veinticinco
Brilliant. I like the way you open up an old debate and then when we respond, you post 12 minutes of Noam fucking Chomsky. I'm fucked if I'm listening to that while the golf is on; much as I admire the old get.

 

I can type it out in my own words, as I've done maybe 20 times since the invasion. I opposed it the time, for the same reason Chomsky is giving here.

 

I'm not sure what this 'we respond' thing is about, though. You went off on a tangent, which is why I didn't bother replying. Sec. replied to what I'd originally said, partly with a video, so instead of rewording what Chomsky is saying, I thought I'd do the same as Sec and post a video.

 

None of my points have been addressed. There has been no real justification for the war, either.

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I can type it out in my own words, as I've done maybe 20 times since the invasion. I opposed it the time, for the same reason Chomsky is giving here.

 

I'm not sure what this 'we respond' thing is about, though. You went off on a tangent, which is why I didn't bother replying. Sec. replied to what I'd originally said, partly with a video, so instead of rewording what Chomsky is saying, I thought I'd do the same as Sec and post a video.

 

None of my points have been addressed. There has been no real justification for the war, either.

 

Ok. I was only being tongue in cheek mate. I wan't really having a pop in case that's how it came across.

 

However, I don't think I really went off at a tangent. It seemed to me that the key to your argument of an unjust war was that military force should only be used for defensive purposes. I have a different view of 'just war' which allows proactive action in certain circumstances. There are quite strident examples where this can be seen as per my post.

 

Pedantic you may think, but I would disagree. If it was as simple as just defending our shores then the ethics of military engagement would be much more straightforward than they are, and we certainly wouldn't need the United Nations or any such like.

 

As per the specifics of Afghanistan, I think that there were strong arguments for an international military engagement at the kick off; not least the human rights atrocities that were being committed. Those arguments seem weaker now as we appear to have polarised non-Taliban Afghanistan. As such, I think that we should now withdraw as it seems to me that the mandate has not been gained for our continued intervention.

 

However, I still think that there is a role of international military intervention where there is a large scale atrocity to address, and where that intervention can make a positive and long term difference. I refer back to the holocaust and Kosovo at this point to exemplify what I'm saying.

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Guest Numero Veinticinco
However, I don't think I really went off at a tangent. It seemed to me that the key to your argument of an unjust war was that military force should only be used for defensive purposes.

 

It was only part of the argument, not a key. For any debate, it would need an outline as to way this war was just. I've given reasons as to why it wasn't.

 

I have a different view of 'just war' which allows proactive action in certain circumstances.

 

Surely more relevant would be whether it is or not this was justified? If you believe that this case was just, then say on what grounds. They are certainly not the grounds that the was actually was waged on, though.

 

As per the specifics of Afghanistan, I think that there were strong arguments for an international military engagement at the kick off; not least the human rights atrocities that were being committed.

 

But that wasn't even an objective of the war. In fact, the war has made this dramatically worse. The reason for the war was simply because Afghanistan, as per their right, wouldn't expedite Bin Laden without evidence. There was no International authorisation at all in October when we first struck.

 

However, I still think that there is a role of international military intervention where there is a large scale atrocity to address

 

There are, probably, cases for United Nations involvement in certain areas. That doesn't have much to do with whether the US/UK war waged in October 2001 in Afghanistan is a just war or not.

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NN, I would say that the Taliban Afghan regime is pernicious, both locally and globally. I'm not here to justify US foreign policy, thankfully, but I can see valid reasons for regime change to address both the internal and external consequences of said regime. Internally, the Taliban are clearly despots with tendencies to some rather extreme violations of human rights. Externally, they provide an incendiary fuel in a very unstable region. Neither of those elements are reflective of a national Afghan consensus but are the result of a socio/political power vacuum derived from generations of conflict that were largely the making of historical power struggles from colonial times (or failed attempts at British colonialism) through to the Cold War.

 

It was perhaps unwise of the coalition to ignore the lessons of previous attempts to dissolve Afghan autonomy, notably the Russian example. Regardless of the specifics of the ruling party, nationalist pride is very strong and that has certainly been under estimated.

 

As I said above, I think military intervention requires a validation of a long term positive benefit as a justification. The lessons of this particular war tell me that this is now unlikely, but I can see why a different view was held at the outset.

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Guest Numero Veinticinco
NN, I would say that the Taliban Afghan regime is pernicious, both locally and globally. I'm not here to justify US foreign policy, thankfully, but I can see valid reasons for regime change to address both the internal and external consequences of said regime. Internally, the Taliban are clearly despots with tendencies to some rather extreme violations of human rights. Externally, they provide an incendiary fuel in a very unstable region. Neither of those elements are reflective of a national Afghan consensus but are the result of a socio/political power vacuum derived from generations of conflict that were largely the making of historical power struggles from colonial times (or failed attempts at British colonialism) through to the Cold War.

 

It was perhaps unwise of the coalition to ignore the lessons of previous attempts to dissolve Afghan autonomy, notably the Russian example. Regardless of the specifics of the ruling party, nationalist pride is very strong and that has certainly been under estimated.

 

As I said above, I think military intervention requires a validation of a long term positive benefit as a justification. The lessons of this particular war tell me that this is now unlikely, but I can see why a different view was held at the outset.

 

But what I'm saying is that it was never even a warm aim at the outset. Regime change was never an issue 'til later in the war. Even if it was, then attacking a foreign country to overthrow the regime, just because you don't want it there, isn't justified. In fact, it is a crime.

 

It was clear to anybody that new the history of the region knows that the chances of a sensible definition of victory were, to put it mildy, slim to none. There are other things that have happened that make this an unjust war, too. But it really falls at the first hurdle.

 

International approval - fail. Real, definable, chance of success - fail. All other means exhausted - fail. Innocent/non-combatants must not be harmed - fail. International war conventions must be followed - fail. Just cause for war - highly debatable. Without bothering to look this early in this morning, these are the 'Jus ad bellum' and 'Jus ad bello' criteria for just wars.

 

We fail on every/nearly every account in this war. If we are seriously waging war because people like the Taliban are 'bad dudes', which is essentially the only argument being made here, then we are total hypocrites because why are we not waging war in others places? Places with much worse human rights, much more subjugation? It simply isn't enough for a war, and even if it is, it isn't enough to make it just.

 

I do appreciate that you've taken a stance that this war has, lets be kind as say 'hasn't gone to plan', because it means you're not a moron and I like people that are not morons. So thanks for the debate, even if I come across as I'm attacking your opinion on this - that isn't my intention.

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We also have to remember that our high-tech weaponry is designed for high-tech enemies. You destroy their infrastructure (power plants, transport routes,food production,water treatment plants etc) the country is on its knees and they surrender...the Afghans don't play by those rules and don't need those things. Short of flattening the whole country and everyone in it I can't see an end that could be called victory. (not that I advocate mass murder I hasten to add !)

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NN, I would say that the Taliban Afghan regime is pernicious, both locally and globally. I'm not here to justify US foreign policy, thankfully, but I can see valid reasons for regime change to address both the internal and external consequences of said regime. Internally, the Taliban are clearly despots with tendencies to some rather extreme violations of human rights.

 

Actually, no.

 

I know its accepted "standard wisdom", so much so that people hardly question it. Its also accepted "standard policy" to demonise a prospective enemy prior to launching a war against them. Which is pretty much where a lot of the above comes from.

 

The no.1 problem Afghanistan had since the defeat of the Soviets has been law and order. That was also the no. 2 problem, the no. 3 problem, and so on. All other issues (womens rights, etc) although real, were practically irrelevent in the face of that crushing first problem. Nothing else could ever be achieved without facing that first problem.

 

Afghanistan had become a patchwork of territories ruled by petty warlords, focusing only on personal enrichment (society be damned) through the drug trade. Rape and thievery on brazen scales went unchallenged. The majority of the refugees from the Soviet war couldn't return, because of this.

 

The Taliban were a grass-roots extreme solution to an extreme problem. And they were quite successful.

 

The Taliban were very strict, and pretty harsh if anyone contravened the rules. Were they too harsh? Yes.

 

But, to cut a long debate short, thats almost like quibbling over the details. The good that they brought far outweighed the bad. They were pretty near incorruptible (ie: honest), and brought law and order to all regions they had control over.

 

For the first time, people could start thinking about the future, and what they wanted it to be. Granted, for many, they wouldn't have been happy in the long run with the future the Taliban painted. But thats not taking into account the fact that the Taliban themselves would have evolved with time. As circumstances became less extreme, their policies would also lighten up.

 

In many ways, they had the difficult things right from the beginning (lack of corruption, clear policies, etc). The other stuff would have fixed itself, over time (it would have to, societal pressures and all).

 

For example, many of their restrictions against women in public life were really a simple, pragmatic, very harsh way of combating the wave of rapes that had gone unchecked prior - not an expression of some absolute principle.

 

Some of the other stuff was just simple minded thinking. For example, the defacement of Buddhist statues. They did NOT do this as an attack on Buddhism. You know why they did it?

 

1. Drought.

2. Food shortage.

3. Taliban appealed for some foreign aid, to alleviate this humanitarian problem

4. Not much response.

5. Japanese ask for an audience, to discuss aid. Taliban delighted.

6. Japanese explain that aid is actually for restoration of some crumbling monuments, not for assistance against mass hunger.

7. Taliban disgusted.

8. Taliban stuff some TNT into said monuments. Saying, that'll show them whats more important, living people in hunger, or some old statues.

 

Almost childish in its simplistic thinking. Yet far removed from the generally painted picture.

 

This is the part of the story which has been very carefully excluded from all public discussion in the West.

 

You guys allied yourselves with the REAL bad guys (much much worse than the Taliban), in order to oust them. Now you wonder why the people you're allied with are all busy looting the aid you give them, conducting fraudulent and expanding their takings from the drug trade.

 

Sure, you'll find some sections of Afghan society who truly hate the old Taliban. But what you're missing is that much of that was down to good old-fashioned ethnic bigotry (and you have no idea just how DEEP this can run). For example, Tajik's under Masood not liking the predominantly Pathan Taliban.

 

The entire premise that this was ever a "just" war is wrong from the beginning.

 

Ask yourself this. If the Taliban were really so bad, then after they had been removed from power (and so, their "hold" over the local people thereby diminished), why have people continued to flock to their banner ever since? In the face of, and in defiance against, the biggest armed force on the planet?

 

No, its not just a knee-jerk reaction against the foreign invasion. Yes, there was always going to be a local mass resistance against foreign invasion. But it didn't have to be under the Taliban (if people were really so glad to be rid of them).

 

There was no "Taliban" in reaction against the Soviets.

 

The resistance against the Soviets did not form under the banner of those who were initially directly ousted by the Soviets (ie: the previous home-grown leaders do not automatically become de-facto leaders of the resistance).

 

If the Taliban really were a post-Soviet "dead end", then the resistance movement against NATO would have formed under some different banner (plenty to choose from, the original tribal structure is still there)

 

But it hasn't.

 

Ask why.

 

Then you know why you're going to lose.

 

PS: in reference to the drug trade. All movements in Afghanistan who are in "resistance-mode" at the time (mujahideen v Soviets, Taliban v Nato) will grab revenue from any source they can. Poppy cultivation being the biggest one, its a natural source.

 

The key is to look at how those same people interact with the drug trade once they have taken power, and are no longer in all-bets-are-off resistance mode.

 

The guys you are currently allied with? Expanded the drug trade post-Soviets and post-Najibullah (the last Communist leader).

 

The guys you're fighting (the Taliban)? Almost completely eradicated poppy cultivation in all territories they controlled, once they were secure in power.

 

Remember that the next time the media complains of increased drug trafficking from Afghanistan ....

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There was a pretty good opinion piece by Johann Hari in the Independent about Afghanistan last week.

 

In this election campaign, there is a big blood-splattered hole we are all supposed to ignore. We are at war. It is a war that 64 per cent of Brits believe is "unwinnable" and should end now. It is a war that has killed 281 British people and an untold, uncounted number of Afghan civilians. It is a war that costs £4.5bn a year. It is a war to keep Hamid Karzai in power – even though he announced last week: "I swear I am going to join the Taliban." Yet the three biggest political parties are shouting their slogans over the hole as if it does not exist.

 

 

So what are they refusing to see? Karzai was picked by the US and British governments as the Afghan leader most likely to serve their interests, and his regime exists solely because of massive military support from them. Yet – in a sign of how Afghan opinion has tipped after eight years of war – even he now speaks with rage against them. He says the US and Britain's planned military assault on Kandahar this summer must not go ahead because the local population strongly oppose it. He warns that there is "a fine line between resistance and revolt" and soon "this revolt will turn into a resistance and I will join it."

 

Now that Karzai is following his own script, the authors of this war have dropped all pretence that they wanted an independent democratic government in Afghanistan. For example, Rudy Giuliani, who was one of the leading neoconservatives making the case for invasion, just said: "Karzai's there because of us, he's our creation, we put him there... I'm not sure we want to engage in the fiction that we're dealing with a democratically elected [leader]... that'd be a major fiction." He said that now Karzai fleetingly follows his people's demands rather than ours, there "might be grounds for shooting" him, and "we need to think about what comes after." He then added, with no irony: "This guy's a thug."

 

So – we are currently sending young people to kill and die in order to prop up a sort-of-kinda-elected President who (like his people) opposes almost all our actions and is threatening to defect to The Enemy. You might think that is worth discussing. Yet when Afghanistan comes up in this election, the sole subject of complaint is that our helicopters don't work as well as they should.

 

Why would Karzai, and so many Afghans, and Brits like me, turn like this, after welcoming the toppling of the vile Taliban in 2001? Here's a moment that distils why. Last month, General Stanley McCrystal, the Nato commander, was talking about how he guards the massive military convoys that move through the country. He said: "We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat."

 

That wasn't considered a story. It didn't dominate the headlines. It was considered a normal thing to say. But imagine somebody bragging that he had shot "an amazing number" of British people, but "none has ever proven to be a threat." How would we react? Ah, the main political parties say, but all these complications and casualties are worth it, because there is a wider driving purpose to the war. They say we must stay for one reason: to fight jihadism. If we don't fight them there, we'll have to fight them here. If we don't deprive them of bases, they'll be hitting our places.

 

At first glance, this may sound persuasive. But look closer. Al-Qa'ida's attacks don't originate in these "bases", and don't require them: 9/11 was plotted in Hamburg and Florida; 7/7 was planned in Yorkshire. Anything that could be done in a cave in Torah Borah could be done on a mountaintop in Yemen or a moor outside Manchester: it's highly mobile. If we charge in with Bazookas to conquer one of these places, they simply move to another – and goad us to follow. General Jim Jones, Barack Obama's National Security Adviser, says there are just 100 foreign jihadis in the whole of Afghanistan. They've simply packed up and gone elsewhere. So who are we fighting there? The CIA says they are "a tribal, localised insurgency" who "see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power" and have "no goals" outside the country.

 

But while the war is catching or killing very few jihadis, it is creating a huge number of them. After every bombing and every massacre, there is a swelling pool of relatives who scream at the camera that they now want to become suicide bombers. Those tapes are beamed back to Britain – where they are used to radicalise young Muslims. I have interviewed dozens of ex-jihadis – and they almost all named those videos as a key point in pushing them over from repellent religious bigotry into overtly planning violence. The 7/7 bombers themselves named it; the Detroit pants bomber was howling about Afghanistan as he tried to detonate his scrotum.

 

If you really loathe and oppose jihadism, you have to soberly assess the best way to erode its power over time. Charging around with a blowtorch isn't putting out the fire. Indeed, the jihadists say quite clearly that they want the war to continue for as long as possible. Osama bin Laden brags that it gives him extra recruits and will "bankrupt" the West.

 

The other arguments that used to be used to justify the war have become a polite after-cough. Women's rights? My friend Malalai Joya is the most popularly elected woman in Afghanistan. She has been expelled from the parliament and silenced in the media for pointing out that "things have not improved for women," because the occupiers have "transferred power to fundamentalist warlords who are just like the Taliban."

 

The defenders of the war are reduced to chanting "Back Our Boys!" To use the troops as rhetorical human shields to shut down democratic debate about whether they should carry on killing and dying is the worst insult to the soldiers I know. If the only way to Back Our Boys was to demand they stay on an unwinnable battlefield, no disastrous war would ever have been stopped, and we would still be fighting east of Suez. If you really want to back our boys, get them out of the crosshairs and into their homes.

 

You may think I'm wrong about all this. I respect that – but don't you at least think this should be part of the election debate? Don't you think you should be presented with a choice? Why has it been left to the small, unfairly marginalised Green Party to speak for 64 per cent of the public on this?

 

In Israel earlier this year, the former Labour MP Lorna Fitzsimons reassured the massed ranks of the Israeli establishment that growing British disgust at the military occupation of Palestinian lands was nothing to worry about because "public opinion does not influence foreign policy in Britain. Foreign policy is an elite issue." She was saying – don't worry; Britain isn't a real democracy – its foreign policy serves the interests of geopolitics and corporations and elites, not those messy, fickle, inconvenient majorities. It's a view that spreads far beyond our policies towards Israel/Palestine. In a fascinating leaked CIA report on European public opinion, they say they are "counting on public apathy about Afghanistan" and boast that so far leaders have been "enabled... to ignore voters". They are worried the charge into Kandahar could cause disgust, but the British election will be over by then.

 

This muffled cry from the caves of Kandahar is a useful counter-point to this election. It reminds us that, while the small differences between the main parties at election time do matter, they often aren't the primary force that transforms the country. Almost every civilising change in Britain – from feminism to worker's rights to opposing bad wars – came from ordinary citizens banding together and demanding it all year, every year, whether there was an election or not, no matter how unlikely it seemed, until they prevailed. The British Ambassador to Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill, says we will be there "for a generation" more. If you want to prove him wrong, then you have to demand it publicly – long after the terribly limited ballot papers are gathered into a fake middle and tossed away.

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The idea that we, and that we is the UK and the US, go into these wars as a force for good is to just put your fingers in your ears and cover your eyes to the actual reality. Afghanistan is no more about good and bad than the decision to prop up horrible fascist brutes across the planet is. If you're a strategically important country or have a handy resource then you can kill as many protesters and opposition members as you want and the military aid and media polishing will keep flowing. "This will help their fledgling democracy" we will hear; as requests for freedom from dicatatorship are met with rivers of blood and private military contractors help train their secret forces at the cost of the US taxpayer.

 

Like in Azerbaijaan.

Edited by Stu Monty
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One thing that fascinates me is the fact the Americans - behind closed doors at least - seem to be laying a lot of the blame on British military tactics. They think we're too soft apparently, but the fact that the yanks will bomb the shit out of anything, including weddings of 50 people, has turned the man in the street against them.

 

There was a large amount of people in that country who hated the Taliban, now they hate us more.

 

Reminds me of an interview with the leader of a Militia in Basra not long ago, he was talking about the Brits pulling out and he said "I am their enemy but I respect them, the British are clever - the Americans, they are not so clever."

 

The American military is like a big stupid Elephant which is trying to hoover up a single ant from an ant hill.

 

They should send in this guy. The war would be over after 3 days.

 

jack-bauer.jpg

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