Bruce Anderson: Gordon Brown bears some responsibility for these deaths
The only time he took a positive attitude to defence was when it involved his constituency
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Reddit
Google
Stumble Upon
Fark
Newsvine
YahooBuzz
Bebo
Twitter
Independent Minds
There are only two reasons for advocating withdrawal from Afghanistan: hatred of the West and thoughtless cowardice. Those who hate everything the West stands for – which still applies to many British lefties – would rejoice in its defeat. At least they are being rational, unlike those who are feeble-minded enough to assume that our mortal enemies would be appeased by our weakness, and who would inflict pale Ebenezer's fate upon the rest of us. 'Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight. Roaring Bill, who killed him, thought it right.'
It must be remembered that in 2001, President Bush's decision to invade Afghanistan was widely supported. The Taliban and Al-Qa'ida had turned a failed state into a training-camp for terrorists. There was little difficulty in persuading other Nato countries to support the mission, and the arguments which convinced them then remain valid now. If the West pulled out, the Taliban would regain control.
In Swat and other troubled areas, the government of Pakistan is not only displaying courage and determination. It is being much more successful than many observers expected. But a defeat for the West in Afghanistan would have drastic consequences in Pakistan and throughout the region.
And elsewhere. Confronted by the difficulties of rehabilitating criminals, those who believe in the widespread use of imprisonment will cite the merits of incapacitation. Those in prison cannot commit fresh crimes against the public. There is an analogy with Islamic terrorism. Those who are attacking Western troops in Afghanistan find it much harder to plan outrages in Western cities. Although Afghanistan is a long way from home, we are still fighting a defensive campaign.
The case for war is as strong as ever, and we must be realistic. Casualties are inevitable. Politicians are sometimes naïve enough to think that battles can be won without bloodshed. Soldiers know better. There is a phrase, regularly used by Wellington, which soldiers will repeat and which always makes civilians quail: "the butcher's bill". Soldiers have been there.
That does not dispense with the need to keep the bill down. War imposes moral obligations, especially upon those who send men into action. If they will the end, they must will the means. In Afghanistan, this would not necessitate vastly expensive space-age technology. It would merely require the basic tools of modern warfare, such as armoured vehicles whose armour is worth something, and helicopters. Without them, we are effectively reduced to Second World War methods.
The helicopter is a force-multiplier. While it cannot literally enable troops to be in two places at once, it could often feel like that to an enemy under the cosh. Rupert Thorneloe, the CO of the Welsh Guards, was driven to his battalion's front-line positions, as he would have been in 1945. If a helicopter had been available, he might still be alive. It is not as if there had been no warnings. In the House of Lords, the retired Service Chiefs have regularly expressed their dismay. In private meetings, they have reinforced the same points. Up until now, the Government has taken no notice.
In one respect, the army's greatest virtues have left it open to abuse. It is too loyal, too wedded to its duty, too reluctant to complain. Soldiers are used to operating on the basis of make-do and mend. Orders must be obeyed, tasks completed. If the right kit is not available, grab whatever is to hand. If this means additional risks, that is what soldiers are for. The battlefield is no place for committee meetings.
All that is ingrained in all three services. It has earned a gratitude too deep for words. It deserves awed admiration. This government has expressed its gratitude in cynical exploitation.
Wherever there is out-dated equipment, whenever men's lives have been endangered by a failure to spend small sums, one man's fingerprints are always to be found: Gordon Brown's. After 1997, the then Chief of the Defence Staff, Charles Guthrie, offered every Cabinet minister a briefing on defence. All but one accepted. Gordon Brown could not be bothered. The only time he took a positive attitude to defence was when there was a prospect of some warship construction at the Rosyth shipyard, in his constituency. Otherwise, Mr Brown was uninterested, negative and surly.
In part, this was just another way of wreaking his resentments on Tony Blair. Mr Blair came to admire the forces, and wanted to fight wars. Mr Brown did what he could to avoid paying for his rival's pleasures. Here, Tony Blair was greatly to blame. Well aware of Mr Brown's weaknesses, he chose to indulge them, at the cost of soldiers' lives. He expected under-equipped soldiers to stand and fight in Afghanistan, when he was too wet to stand up to his Chancellor. It is a stain on Mr Blair's reputation.
But he at least fell short of hypocrisy. Since Mr Brown became PM, there has been talk of services' days and a minister for veterans. The new PM has regularly tried to wrap himself in khaki, whenever he thinks that there might be votes in it. Yet he has done nothing to remedy the deficiencies which he spent ten years creating. His interest in military matters is on a par with his talk about values and Britishness: a contemptible abuse of language and decency.
Not that he is the only source of abuse. When 'H' Jones was killed in the Falklands, commanding 2 Para, the battalion had an obvious replacement. He was in the Falklands three days later. The Welsh Guards also have an obvious replacement for Col Thorneloe: an outstanding young Major who served in the SAS and won a DSO. He is still in the UK. These days, there are rules. Anyone going on active service must have a fortnight's training. Otherwise, there could be health and safety issues.
Imagine if someone had explained to Churchill that a much-needed and superbly qualified officer had to hang around for a fortnight, because Mr Jobsworth had invoked the Penpush Bill. There are moments when only one conclusion seems appropriate: that our machinery of government has turned into a lunatic asylum.
To be fair to the new Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, he would not claim to be Churchill. When John Hutton shamefully deserted his post, there was no obvious replacement. So Mr Ainsworth had to do. To paraphrase the First World War song, he is there because he is there, and it is not as if Gordon Brown would allow him to take any decisions. But Bob Ainsworth is a decent man with patriotic instincts, who could not be accused of wetness. He might be the man to stand up to the PM on behalf of the forces.
Labour MPs often talk about corporate manslaughter and the need to prosecute company directors whose employees are killed in accidents because of low safety standards. So what about an outfit where safety was known to be deficient and which had received repeated warnings from many experts? Could it begin to mount a defence? Gordon Brown must be aware of the consequences, yet he chose to perpetuate a regime of neglect which was bound to lead to unnecessary deaths. He is morally guilty of corporate manslaughter.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited
Comments
http://www.theodora.com/pipelines/asia_
Mistrust of the motives. Many people believe that, just as the Iraq war had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, the war in Afghanistan has more to do with control of pipeline routes than with preventing terrorism. And they resent being lied to.
Skepticism about whether this war is winnable, especially as our politicians seem to be having difficulty articulating what exactly counts as victory (beyond a vague goal of keeping the Taliban down).
Disbelief about whether nation building could really work in tribal Afghanistan, even if the war can be "won".
So far this week, The Independent has given us two columns in support of the war: retired Colonel Tim Collins, who is now chief executive of New Century Consulting, a "security" company that profits from the war in Afghanistan, and now Bruce Anderson. I genuinely admire this newspaper's desire to present a broad range of opinions. But is this the best the supporters of the war can do?
?Fat men are harder to kidnap?. That made me laugh. And that made him smile, and for a moment the world was a lovelier place. I mentioned this to my family and now they buy me lots of ?funny? T-shirts. I have one that blends the Sex Pistols? God Save the Queen single cover with the Jilted John classic. So it says, ?Gordon is a moron?. And I have another that says, ?I love animals. They?re delicious?.
I have one t shirt that says Brown is dead. Is that right. See today's cartoon He is up in the air frating the gas at all the innocent Afghans Bad smell everywhere all are runing hither thither and flies growth is immense WHY THe Kilt hides a lot I see
In my youth I thought of writing a satire on mankind; but now in my age I think I should write an apology for them. -Horace Walpole, novelist and essayist (1717-1797)
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla
We need to really rebel against this government and start demonstrating otherwise they will continue to tear down our culture and put more of our brave troops lives at risk.
If we hadn't gone in, on a lie, a very serious lie and invaded Iraq, on another lie invaded Afghanistan, killing all and sundry that walks in front of the guns, have you ever considered that if we had not done that, that those people would not be as you claim making IED's...
The Iraqis were at first genuinely pleased to see the coalition, but instead of the coalition heading to repair the hospitals, get the water running, electricity flowing, the Iraqi's watched as the US and the Coalition headed straight to the oil facilities, shooting the civilians who were wondering what the heck was going on, Paul Bremer's first actions were not to start repairing the infrastructure but to change the oil bourse back to dollars and arrange the plundering of Iraqi's many museums and religious sites.
Did you know that 2/3rds of Iraqi aid sent for rebuilding the nation has been stolen? That the Americans are still holding billions of Iraqi oil dollars and refuse to give it to them?
That is why the people in these countries are somewhat pissed still, now imagine too if members of your family had been shot up over there, would that not make you angry? Your little niece or nephew blown apart by a sniper bullet or your cousin disappearing into a coalition facility only to be found smashed and beaten to a pulp in some ditch several weeks later... You have got to understand that these are real people and they are going to get angry and fight back the only way they know, and you know what... they are winning too. So now, when we get booted out of Afghanistan, not only do we leave behind a massive mess BUT also a population that is going to have a legitimate grudge with us for YEARS!!!
The traitors are those that started this off, the ones that started the lies, the Afghans were quite happy killing each other until we got there and now we gave them a bigger and easier target and despite the propaganda uniting the warlords against the infidel, it may have been Taleban or Al Qaeda bullets that killed our people BUT it was Bush and Blair that lied and lied to put our people in front of those guns and bullets, and you notice of course that none of these people who have children of age have them in service...? Not one of them are actively serving in the military, shows you exactly what they think of us.
The Taliban amongst the most brutal of muslim regimes, and that takes some beating, had reduced the Afghan population to complete subservience with a full suspension of human rights. Ruthlessly and barbarically torturing and murdering people, and a complete suppression of the female population. Smashing schools, forcing women to wear burkahs and denying them education. Added to which this failed Islamic state harboured al-qaeda, which precipitated the invasion as you call it as in fact it was a liberation of the people and a hunt and destroy action against the taliban.
Our brave lads are maintaining the freedom of 32,000,000 Afghans, and fighting an enemy who is funded by muslims in other countries including Britain. The British Muslim traitors must be hunted down and imprisoned and the government that allowed this Brown and Blairs needs to be condemned for their failure to protect our heroes.
The job we and 41 other nations are doing in Afghanistan is vital for our security. 42 nations defending democracy, the Afghan way of life and ensuring the muslim terrorists do not regroup in Afghanistan.
Brown and Blair should also be condemned for allowing Islamic extremism to get a hold in Britain, particularly by allowing such a large influx of Pakistanis into this country. This has in effect undermined our security and this useless government seems unable or unwilling to root out the terrorists in our midst. This problem will grow and we already know from surveys that 25% of muslims support groups like the Taliban.
As for 9/11, do you really believe the Taleban did that? When there is so much evidence to a much darker and more sinister explanation.
You do wax lyrical on "our boys" but I somehow don't think they are "your boys", I perhaps think you are a "talkbacker", a paid shill that floods media outlets with the party line and challenges what is deemed as the "heavyweights" in that forum.
You spout word perfect the American line "of truth and freedom and democracy", this coming from a nation that supported regimes that boiled dissidents alive and executes young girls in public and funds the brutal ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, it is nothing to do with "freedom" or "democracy" because the Americans put the bloody Taleban into power in the first place, before 9/11 you didn't hear a word about what was going on in Afghanistan from the US or UK but the Taleban were doing what they were doing YEARS before 9/11 and you didn't hear a squeak out of the west...
And all the time the West abuse these double standards, then you will hear me shout out about it, we cannot tell the world we have the moral authority when our actions are on a level with those we are condemning.
Yes I am a patriot just like all my ancestors that have fought and died for our way of life. I am proud to be English and rightly so, and therefore they are "our boys", sons of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I even believe the Gurkahs are our boys, heroes every one of them, so I was doubly delighted that the British public forced this government into a humiliating retreat. If you do not believe the threat to us is real then more fool you.
2. believe it or not a guy in a cave in Afghanistan reelly peelly did not plan and execute '9/11'
'Our' Brave Lads? - don't believe the hype, they're not 'ours'. They don't work for 'us', they went to Afghanistan because George Bush sent them there. They are, therefore, not even patriots - they are fighting for a foriegn power and under a foriegn military command. Our Brave Lads are often lads, though, frequently eighteen years old and so desparate is the UK to find anyone who actually wants a life in Professional Violence that they will send these children to fight for the self-righteous US war of revenge for 9/11. Is a boy who walks around Afghanistan with a machine gun really brave or just foolishly letting himself be used by the US for purposes beyond his comprehension? Our own government doesn't even have a rational plan or goal in Afghanistan - Milliband says it's a 'defensive war' - possibly the most outrageously bogus statement ever uttered about this war without end.
Today they are fighting an enemy that would enslave a country, throw back people to the middle ages and has no second thought about torturing and murdering those who oppose their brutality. We are also fighting to ensure the terrorist training camps do not re emerge that the thousands of so called British Muslims attended. Radical Islam is the enemy of freedom, is the enemy of democracy and you had better wake up and smell the coffee before it is too late. I personally knew someone who died in 9/11 and had dinner with him a month prior to 9/11 in Brussels. A charming young man from Croatia who had survived the trauma of the Balkans, he had everything to look forward to. His life snuffed out, why did he have to die such a terrible death, he was completely innocent.
Those are the people our boys are fighting for to ensure that people like you can walk the streets without fear of Islamic terrorism or do you believe it is all a conspiracy. People who think this is a conspiracy are as bad as all those holocaust deniers.
I salute our brave lads and the work they are doing alongside 41 other nations in Afghanistan.
Yes, my sympathy to anyone killed in a terrorist attack, but my point is that my sympathy goes to anyone killed by violence whether it's done by Muslims, or Americans, or Israelis, by our brave lads, etc etc. The idea that terrorists are the only cause of violence is ludicrous. The USUK has killed many times more civilians since 9/11 than all the 'terrorists' put together - although perhaps in Iraq 'terrorists' have killed as many with bombs, but that wouldn't have happened if the useless USUK invasion hadn't destroyed the social fabric of that nation.
Well said Sir, well said indeed...
This is the same ancientoneuk, who says he is a Special Forces Sniper, but has never seen anything more dangerous than a PC game called Warcraft. A soldier who is so professioanl i have to be very careful incase i "end up looking down the business end of a M16 rifle". That was the best laugh in ages.
So old fake one, we need to take your Wahabi comments seriously do we? I will let others judge for themselves what you are, a Walt, fantan, jackanory retard.
And you have the nerve to call someone else a Shill?
The fact is, the UK and forty other nations are combating, and winning against terrorism, in a country where the people have been subjugated and submitted to countless horrors of the Taliban.
So, the people fight because of the image ingrained in their mind, of a cousin destroyed by a snipers bullet? But whose bullet was it? The Taliban shooting him in the back of the head for not wanting to fight?
Oh no, the people are fighting because they are happy the Taliban throw acid into the faces of their young girls, young girls who are so hot, they remove the Niqab and expose their face to breathe better, but it is OK, the people know Mr Taliban will educate her about her evil ways, acid is a great pursuader.
I should have realised the Afghan people are fighting the coalition because it is their fault that the Taliban cut off the fingers, hand, toes, foot, or even the nose of their children who dared to get medical aid for their cuts and sores. Nasty soldier offering first aid when asked for it.
Afghanistan is united against the coalition because they are gloriously happy that the Taliban are blowing up the schools, killing the teachers, murdering the students and preventing their children getting an education. Hooray for freedom of will and thought. Real progress.
Reality check Ian, most of the fighters in the Taliban are not Afghanis, they are Muslims from foreign countries, radicalised into believeing they are helping Afghani Muslims.
And if you check, we were asked for help from the democratically elected Government.
Libya have dropped support for the Taliban.
Pakistan, and their glorious army are now taking on the Taliban, seeing them for the cowardly terrorists they are. The Pakistani Government offered the Swat Valley as a Sharia area to the Taliban, but what happened, the Taliban in their normal, way carried out terrorist acts, murdered innocents, attacked and destroyed municipal buildings, to extend their territory and promote so much fear they were hoping to take the country over.
Syria have condemned them.
Iraq have condemned them.
Jordan have condemned them.
The world have condemned them, as has the whole of Islam.
Do not try to justify the actions of the Taliban, everyone is well aware of the retards they are.
So the roadside bombs are defensive? What about the young family killed last week when they "stumbled" into one of these defences? It helped them did it?
Attrition rates in equipment, casualties and expense will be high for the UK, but the Taliban will be toast at the end of it, and our soldiers will come home, head held high knowing they have done a good job, and Afghanistan will have the chance at peace they so richly deserve.
Soon it will only be you, your looney friends, and the twisted dreams you believe in, that the UK will have to "worry" about, but everything has a way of being resloved!
So schoolstudent, adroog, goat, sheikh, fin_d_empire,rat, and the rest of the wahabi warriors, volunteer now for your chance to obtain martyrdom in Afghanistan, before it is too late, comfortable in the knowledge your virgins will be waiting for you. Go on, you know you want to!
Inshallah Mohammed, Peace be upon him, will direct the hand of righteousness and strike down the preachers of hate who say they are doing this for fellow Muslims.
I agree that the man is a complete disgrace with his obvious hypocrisy calling for service's day and a minister for veterans. But what else can we expect? His continuous carping on about being the son of a Presbyterian minister and how it helped mould his strong principles and his honesty. What honesty? The man does not know the meaning of the word, he is an utter fraud. We all know when he is lying - every time his lips move. For years his ambition to be PM festered away and infected his mind with meanness. Now he has but one ambition - to remain in power at all costs and he will use anything including his supposed newly found love of the services if it serves his purpose.
I spent many years working with the army and they do not deserve Brown. They are a wonderful professional, dedicated industrious force and deserve much better.
I know it has become a popular on the right to propagate arguments which stretch the bounds of credulity and raise doubts about the intellect of the propagator, to then defend talking such tosh by intimating that the person speaking doesn't believe the ridiculous statements deep down, but they do support the outcome of spreading myths far and wide. That it encourages a society where the hoi polloi believe that tripe and don't question their betters who are too busy helping themselves to whatever is going to waste time seriously attempting to defend the indefensible.
How can anyone in this day and age seriously argue that any nation or group of nations has a moral right to attack, invade and occupy a nation which had been quietly going about it's business not threatening anyone.
Afghanistan's crime or so-called crime is to have been sufficiently self contained to withstand centuries of foreign interventions. They are dangerous example to other nations richer in resources which USuk needs to steal. If Afghanistan 'gets away' with it who wil it be next.
This is not about terror never has been. None of the blokes who took part in the WTC action had ever been anywhere near Afghanistan. Read the events of late 2001stripped of sensationalist rhetoric and you will she that Omar had agreed to turn over OBL and anyone else for trial if the US provided sufficient evidence. This is a much better deal that the US gives to countries requesting any terrorists haboured in amerika.
Check out what happened in 1998 when Cuba provided the FBI with all the evidence needed to arrest a group of terrorists based in Miami who had been responsible for a series of bombings in Havana and an air plane bombing where 41 school girls were killed. Did the FBI arrest the terrorists? No, they arrested the five Cubans who had gathered the evidence of the terrorists and sentenced them to life without parole plus 10 years.
The amerikan supreme court has just refused Tony Guerrero and his fellow law enforcement officers leave to appeal, without providing any reason.
If the UN is such an impartial adjudicator why didn't it raise a force, a coalition of the willing to go into amerika and grab Luis Posada Carriles and the other terrorists, forcing a regime change to rid the world of the type murdering blights on humanity that the amerikan government must be for harbouring so many killers?
Heroin is an important drug, it is the staple of the economic engine that powers the resistance to Allied forces in Afghanistan.
Afghanis are very poor, growing beetroot/tobacco/tomatoes/wtf is no substitute for the living to be earned from drugs.
We and the Americans are killing lots of Afghan civilians accidentally and otherwise, this tends to annoy the ones who are left.
Why do we not buy the heroin from the Afghanis, and distribute internationally to hospital authorities ( our own included) who cannot presently afford enough of it. Existing producers in Afghanistan would be licensed, encoraged to inform on new illegal producers, and warned that they would lose their trading status if they did not. The proceeds could be used by the Afghan Govt, under international supervision, to improve the general standard of living ( it's worse than Whalley Range, believe me!)
most of our troops could be returned home, probably by road since our air and sea lift capability is marginal, and we could all spend the money on other things,
Licensed heroin would also enable us to close a lot of prisons (and if prison works why do we have to build more of them?).
A courageous and visionary political leadership is needed.
Oops, I see the problem. Sorry. I'll go back to sleep again.
Drug-related fantasies about failed states wouldn't help anyone there with anything, I think.
Columbia has also had problems with drug cartels.
And Hillary Clinton admitted in Mexico that the US' addictions were part of the problem, but what would she know.
ColOmbia has an even worse problem with cocaine trade, amongst others yes, and Hillary Clinton's acknowledgement sounds like a welcome admission, since US policy in Colombia and Bolivia in the recent past has been to consider coca plantations as the root cause of the problem, rather than focusing on domestic US demand.
Oddly I understand, whilst the Taliban were in charge of Afghanistan, they throttled off a lot of Opium production on religious grounds. In a controlled market, local Tribal Chiefs and Warlords rather than the Central Government would control Opium production so, I don't think it would work.
If this money had been put in the defence budget then we would have had the helicopters and equipment to save most of the lives lost in Afghanistan.
The SOCIALISTS have blood on their hands and the Army and servicemen and womens families have every right to be furious with Brown,
The idea that we are fighting a "defensive" campaign I regard as a very basic misrepresenation and/or misunderstanding of the situation.
("Although Afghanistan is a long way from home, we are still fighting a defensive campaign.")
And since when did Afghanis become "our mortal enemies "?
"President Bush's decision to invade Afghanistan" was actually considered very unwise by many of us. So who does Bruce Anderson refer to exactly by "widely supported". Supported by the misguided peopel who also agree to invading Iraq??
And then there is the tired old canard of a "training-camp for terrorists".
("The Taliban and Al-Qa'ida had turned a failed state into a training-camp for terrorists.")
Erm... but wasn't it OUR "training ground" when the Russians were there (improving the lot of Afghani women BTW). Not that I condone the invasion and occupation of that country by the Soviets but lets not be so naive as to imagine that we are there just to protect ourselves from "terrorists". How I begin to detest that use of that word It is trotted out so often as if we all agree that there is some evil peopel out out there wanting to harm us for no apparent or rational reason. What denial. Its a word used more and more to ease our own consciences and justify OUR governments terrorisation of other peoples. We have for two centuries (and still continue) to manipulate their systems and use their natural resources and markets to further our own agendas and comfortable lifestyles.
THAT is what we need to acknowledge and make redress for.
I would be the first to say that the Taliban were, and are, unpleasant. They claim to be Moslems, and profess the religion extravangantly, but break just about every commandment. Their treatment of my Moslem sisters, in particular, is offensive. But the solution to that is to send in clerics to attempt, yet again, to convert them to Islam, in the hope that this time they'll get the message. I cannot believe that the Taliban are so bovine, that they can't understand the religion which they claim to follow.
The biggest problem with the occupation of Afghanistan is that, in essence, a skilled general always tries to 'maintain the objective'. That is to say, everything is bent towards achieving a certain specified goal. There is no specific objective in the Afghan war, and until there is, the British Army is just stumbling about. Lions led by donkeys, indeed.
Sun Tzu wrote this in his book 'The Art of War' (Mr. Anderson, please take note)
Strategy without tactics is the long way to victory;
Tactics without strategy is just noise before defeat.
Anderson should be ashamed of his attempts to politicise this war at a time when loyalty to our armed forces and our government is called for. If he had any real facts about a failure of strategy or materiel, he would use them in his column. In the absence of such facts, he resorts to pure verbal abuse. His whole article is premised on the "fact" that Anderson considers Brown to be "uninterested, negative and surly" about defence spending. Pure ad-hominem rubbish. Anderson is the vanguard of the death of honest journalism.
More troops, a lot more troops would help in a whole number of ways but after 'taking the ground', the holding operation will always be expensive in terms of casualties whether caused by IEDs or Snipers. As an IRA Commander said during the 'Troubles' about similar attacks: "We only have to get lucky once, the British have to be lucky all of the time."
Withdrawal in the immediate is not an option. The biggest single threat to the UK comes from Pakistan and the Tribal Region of the NW Frontier, as the Pakistani Army is making good progress and putting in a strong effort, we need to support them by putting in pressure from Afghanistan which is what these current operations seem to be about. However, the idea that we are going to stay there for the long haul is a total illusion, we most certainly are not. We have no more than 2-3 years maximum before the NATO and US presence becomes part of the problem rather than any kind of solution and transform into the "foreign invader" that unites them all.
Forget leaving behind a stable western type democracy, it just won't happen, as a society what we would describe as corruption, they describe as 'power'. Opium gives the local Warlord the funds to finance power through dispensing favours, jobs and so forth, to the Taliban it provides the funds to pay farmers between harvests to fight the "invader". There are fundamental Taliban but the majority of the tribes and groups that are 'sympathetic' to the Taliban are only so for their immediate self interest.
The only way Afghanistan can be held together is via the Central Government 'doing deals' with all the various Warlords, any idea that on the back of NATO bayonets the writ of the Central Government can be extended nationwide is total nuts. Neither cowardice, lilly livered lefties or any other thing will influence the withdrawal, but the reality on the ground will decide the timing. It also means we do need to make sure that the route back to and through the Khyber Pass is always made secure.
As to Gordon Brown being a moral and political disgrace, that is not news, it is a 'given' and hardly worth commenting upon.
So the British have to fight like in 2WW, it is still an advantage on the forces called loosely and mistakenly Taliban, they still fight wars like in the XIXth. Century, rifles and homemade explosives.
Doesn't their success tells us anything. They are fighting for their country. The British are not.
Good question. Is it:
a) To make the rest of the Independent look vaguely progressive in comparison?
b) because he did the editor's father a favour in the 1920s so thae family can never say no to him?
maybe there is a place where this editorial policy is clearly outlined, but where?
I thank you
Firozali A.Mulla
Do not let them or their families in, if they are here and found deport them and their families immediately back to where they came from. Deportation of any criminal and their family should not be a human rights issue.