Apparently, other NATO countries are not "pulling their weight" in Afghanistan. Good for them. This is an unwinnable war, seemingly consisting of endlessly taking and retaking the same town, against entirely the wrong target. The 9/11 attacks came, not from Afghanistan, but from Saudi Arabia, paymaster of the Bushes and the Clintons.
In any case, those responsible have from the outset made it clear that it was not some "Western way of life", but simply American support for Israel, to which they objected. In probably the only good thing that he ever did, Bush withdrew the troops that his father had stationed in Saudi Arabia; there has since been no further attack on American soil.
And the hysterical reaction to President Obama's election on the part of those who take the old line on Israel more than suggests that the original grievance no longer exists. There will still be attacks on Israel. But why bother attacking America? Or indeed Britain, once we have followed America's lead and withdrawn from Iraq? The only reason would be if we were still in Afghanistan!
Thank God for Sir Peter Tapsell, the splendidly anti-war Keynesian and Eurosceptic who dared to tell the truth yesterday, and who is one of the very, very few conservatives still left in the House of Commons.
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The main reason this war is "unwinnable" is that none of the allies fighting it (certainly not Brown and Obama) particularly want to win it.
ReplyDeleteThe 9/11 attacks didn't come from Saudi Arabia, they came from Germany. Bin Laden himself, who hates the Saudis, was in the Sudan and Afghanistan at the time but had very little to do with 9/11. The intellectual roots of his movement are Egyptian.
Bin Laden's chief objection to America was the American occupation of Saudi Arabia, followed by the sancions against Saddam's Iraq. Israel was actually only about third on the list, I seem to remember.
There have been hardly any al-Qa'eda (let alone Taliban) attacks on Israel ever. (Off the top of my head I can only think of two, and they were both pretty minor.) Israel is simply not an issue to do with Afghanistan.
Britain is withdrawing from Iraq before America is, but that's because Blair and Brown have been opposed to the Iraq War since the outset (with the full support of most of the MSM).
Even (or especially) under Obama, America will continue to support the new democracies in Iraq, Pakistan and Israel, as well as the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies. Domestic terrorists in this country, more to the point, will continue to claim the al-Qa'eda brand in order to justify their atrocities. There's still plenty to fight for under the al-Qa'eda logo.
At the moment of course the real war isn't even in Afghanistan. It's in Pakistan. And it's getting steadily worse.
"Britain is withdrawing from Iraq before America is, but that's because Blair and Brown have been opposed to the Iraq War since the outset (with the full support of most of the MSM)."
ReplyDeleteDraw you own conclusions, dear reader.