Afghanistan: A True Conservative Writes

Specifically, Gerald Warner writes:

There’s high excitement among the chatterati as the polls open in Kabul and in such other areas of Afghanistan as can be ring-fenced from the Taliban, at a high cost in British lives or by the Afghan government buying the temporary goodwill of the local warlord.

This is what separates the sophisticates from the untutored: the former can detect a Great Leap Forward in this idiosyncratic exercise in “democracy” and are already preparing their approving soundbites for when the farce is completed.

“Despite all its admitted flaws”… “Serious instances of corruption notwithstanding”… “Clear progress towards a democratic solution”… “A definite improvement on the previous situation”… “Window of opportunity for economic activity”… “If Karzai can now seriously address the problem of corruption”… “Heartening level of participation by women”… “No quick or easy solution”… “Concrete evidence that the sacrifices of our troops have genuinely made a difference”… Permutate any combination of these fatuous delusions and you, too, can be a sophisticated commentator.

What is not permitted – “unhelpful”, “inappropriate” – is to state that our young men are being butchered for nothing, except to save the faces of incompetent politicians in Britain and to hold the ring while every variety of Afghan corruption junkie feathers his own nest. Claims that commercial activity is increasingly flourishing are not unfounded: apart from the massive heroin trade, a polling card for this electoral charade changes hands for $15. Or they are available in batches of a thousand from your local warlord, in which case you could probably beat him down to a price of $10 a throw. To examine public and commercial life in Afghanistan is to appreciate how puritanical are the prevailing mores in Palermo.

After Kabul was liberated in 2001 by John Simpson of the BBC (that missionary agency of democratic impartiality), there was a general assumption among the Western chatterati that installing satellite dishes would bring MTV as a civilising influence to Afghan youth (in fact they watched al-Jazeera). Secularism and “democracy” would carry the day. The British taxpayer even subsidised a bunch of Harmanesque harridans to “raise the consciousness” of Afghan women – a cultural provocation guaranteed to generate queues at Taliban recruiting offices longer than in Oxford Street during the January sales.

Now our troops are being defeated on the battlefield by the Taliban. They are being sent out, like trams on rails, along predictable routes, in inadequately armoured vehicles, on patrols designed to show we are “in control”. It is a shooting gallery for the Taliban bomb-planters. Our equipment is inferior because Labour has spent 12 years lavishing its largesse on Towerblock Tracey and her five children to eight putative fathers: the defence budget was not a priority since “militarism” is anathema to Labour backbenchers.

And, in any case, what is this “democracy” we are so patronisingly exporting? The Kabul-style corruption that reigns on Westminster’s slime-green benches? What have we to teach the world about democracy when our laws are made for us by foreign bureaucrats and MEPs in a foreign parliament in which our representatives are an insignificant minority?

The Afghan war, we are told, will eventually have the same successful outcome as the Iraq adventure. On a day when al-Qaeda killed nearly 100 people in Baghdad, this prognosis seems all too likely. Bring our troops home from Afghanistan and end this pointless slaughter which is no more than a holocaust to conscienceless politicians’ egos.