The Exile writes:
A hundred British soldiers are now dead as a result of the war against Afghanistan. According to Air-Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup, they died in a "noble endeavour". The Air-Marshall went on to say that "parts of Afghanistan which were once lawless, there is now governance and rule of law. Across the country, more than seven million children are now in school and increasing numbers of people have access to healthcare."
Actually they died so that Tony Blair and his Nu-Labour gang could continue to pretend that Britain is a great imperial power. Afghanistan will remain the way it is so long as foreign armies enforce the foreigners' writ. Once they leave, then the country will sink back into medieval barbarism.
The notion that we are all post-modern multiculturalists is something that only a Nu-Labour supporter could believe. The Exile is only sorry that a hundred British troops have had to die to ensure that this truism got rammed home.
What are we doing in Afghanistan? What, exactly, would constitute victory or defeat there? And why, exactly? We merrily grow opium in our country "for medicinal purposes". We are allied to Islamist smack-smugglers in Kosovo.
And the reviled "Taliban" are exactly the same people as the revered "tribal elders", depending on what we happen to think of them at the time. On the same basis, the "Ba'athists" whom we are in the process of "rehabilitating" in Iraq are exactly the same people as the "Sunni insurgents" or the alleged Iraqi branch of that non-existent organisation, "al-Qaeda".
Answers, please.
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We are there so that Afghan girls can go to school. Clearly a top priority in the defence of this realm.
ReplyDeleteWe're not at war with Afghanistan. We're fighting a proxy war with Pakistan, which created and is now giving sanctuary to the Taliban.
ReplyDeleteWe're in Afghanistan to prop up the Government - or rather to prop up the European Government in Brussels, which is dependent upon NATO (of which Britain is the second most important member) to keep the "peace" in Europe, which it needs in order to maintain the fiction that all the present material prosperity we enjoy has come about as a result of all the stupid and horrible laws they've been passing for fifty years.
Victory (for the time being) means we stay in until after Brown and Bush have gone. Then we can stay there for longer without it being a politically contentious issue. Defeat means we leave within the lifetime of anyone now living.
Funny what you say about the Ba'athists and al-Qa'eda, because in 2003 we were told over and over again that Ba'athism and the Islamic Jihadism of al-Qa'eda were completely different (because one was "secular" and the other was "religious", as if such terms have any meaning in the Arab world) and that therefore the two couldn't possibly have anything to do with each other!
Given that al-Qa'eda has now been almost entirely defeated (in Iraq, at any rate), there's something faintly Orwellian about its being airbrushed from history. ("Oceania is not at war against terrorists. Oceania has never been at war against terrorists.")
Oh, Ba'athism and "al-Qaeda" are not anything to do with each other. We just happen to treat them in the same duplicitous way. But they couldn't possibly be less alike. Ba'athism is totally secular, and there was no "al-Qaeda" in Iraq while it held sway.
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