With Friends Like These

I was initially quite warm towards John McCain. Yes, the suggestion that McCain was against abortion was laughable. I honestly do not know why NARAL bothers to oppose Republican candidates. On the contrary, they should tell all their supporters to vote Republican at all times, since a Republican victory absolutely guarantees the continuation of totally unrestricted abortion, so that the wholly false promise to restrict it can be used to keep those blue-collar white votes, Catholic and Evangelical, coming in to the party of Wall Street, not Main Street. When the Presidential Election came round, the clear majority of Catholics, almost all black Evangelicals, and a hefty chunk of white Evangelicals had finally come round, too.

But a man of McCain's experience, like the decorated Jacques Chirac, struck me as likely to leave the warmongering to such draft dodgers as Bill Clinton and George Bush. However, the presence of Robert Kagan, John Bolton and the like around him struck me as more than reason enough to support anyone at all against him, even if there was and is still, mercifully, a sufficiently genteel and refined side to Senate Republicans that the utterly uncouth Bolton would have stood no chance of confirmation in any position whatever even if the Republicans has been in control, which they were never going to be. Robert Kagan as Secretary of State? A very lucky escape for the world there. Even Hillary Clinton - yes, even Hillary Clinton! - is better than that.

Now, though, we learn that President Obama is to send yet more troops to Afghanistan. And who is delighted? Why, Robert Kagan, of course.

Obama is very, very wrong about Afghanistan, and must be told so by British, other European, and other Old Commonwealth leaders. No more forces must be sent to that pointless, unwinnable conflict. Instead, those already there should be brought home forthwith, or else bring themselves home without further ado. Making the world anew at the barrel of a gun is not what they signed up for, not what they are paid for, not what they are sworn to do. Quite the reverse, in fact.

There are no "Taliban" distinct from the Pashtuns generally, and they have no desire to run anywhere beyond Afghanistan (or even only the Pashtun parts of Afghanistan) and the Pashtun parts of Pakistan. There is no "al-Qaeda" at all. Iran is not our enemy (and could not conceivably be allied to a Wahhabi, Salafi or Deobandi movement even if she were). Nor is Russia. And nor is Venezuela.

Our enemies are those who launched the attacks on 11th September 2001. They are busily buying up great swathes of our economies. They are in the Gulf. Above all, they are in Saudi Arabia.

But they are the paymasters of the Bushes.

And of the Clintons.

And, I wouldn't wonder, of Robert Kagan.