Afghanistan
Posted by Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley and Broughton, at 11:17, Mon 29 October 2012:
Who are the toughest interviewers? Who do politicians fear being interviewed by most? Jeremy Paxman, John Humphreys or Andrew Neil spring to mind, they are certainly tough cookies. Paxman might win a public ballot his recent reduction of Chloe Smith, the then Treasury Minister, to a jibbering wreck having gone viral on the internet, but most politicians agree that Paxman and co are not to be nearly as feared as a class of ten year olds. Their questions invariably get right to the heart of the matter. Any Member of Parliament who can’t give a clear, straightforward answer to a question in two or three sentences immediately loses all credibility with obvious and dire consequences. Ten year olds have in built, super tuned bullshit detectors. It is not just the MP who is tested during these scary ordeals but the policy being discussed. So I knew when asked recently by a ten year old boy ‘why have we got lots of soldiers in Afghanistan?’ that if I trotted out the bipartisan policy of the Labour front bench and the Government every ten year olds bullshit detector within hearing range would be triggered. It is simply impossible to explain and justify a war that has lasted longer than the Second and First World Wars combined, taking place more than 4,000 miles away. This is presumably why the justification for having nearly 10,000 soldiers fighting in Afghanistan has changed annually. The initial justification given by the USA and UK to the United Nations was as an act of self defence in response to the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers this would include ‘measures against Al Qaida terrorist training camps and military installation of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan’. To put it bluntly to find and capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. Enduring Freedom was the military operation to achieve these aims, launched on 7th October 2001. Bin Laden escaped through the Tora Bora Mountains two months later. He was finally killed in Pakistan in May 2011. Other reasons had to be invented for the continuing deployment of troops in Afghanistan. This list is by no means exhaustive; to keep our streets free of heroin, to educate girls who had been excluded from education on punishment of death by the Taliban, to reduce the chance of terrorism in the United Kingdom, to build democracy, to help improve relations between India and Pakistan, to bring stability to the region. Two minutes thought shows each of these reasons to be comprehensively bogus. Of course the real reason apart from inertia is our political parties lack courage. How can you tell the grieving family of a dead or seriously injured soldier that for more than a decade there has been no justification for this military adventure? The cold statistics about the war underline this. 67 British citizens were killed in the Twin Towers; to date 433 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan. As the war has lost focus the costs have increased exponentially. The net spending on military operations in Afghanistan in 2011/12 was £4.1 billion which is five times the amount of money spent during the first six years of the war. While nobody has a crystal ball it is unlikely that the corrupt regime of President Hamid Karzai will last more than weeks after the withdrawal of NATO soldiers. The honest answer to the school boys question is that adults make mistakes and this mistake has cost northwards of £21 billion and many more lives than were lost in the Twin Towers. It is better to be honest about this now and say sorry rather than wasting more money and lives. There is a real political and financial dividend for any government or potential government who are brave enough to take this stance. It is a shocking indictment of our politics how weakly the case for peace and withdrawal has been made when the supporting facts are so strong. Ed Milliband’s speech to the Labour Party conference in Manchester was a Tour de Force of virtuosity and power, but it wasn’t comprehensive. The applause in the hall which was warm and genuine would have been longer and louder had he announced that there was to be a bigger cut in the defence budget, he after all won the election as leader by claiming he had opposed the Iraq war. How much better to decry the £30 billion wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan and explain that now is not the time for this country to support a defence budget larger than Russia’s.
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Posted by JANIS DOLAN ADI, 13:19, Mon 29 October 2012: (Is this post abusive?) #
Bring the troops home. Those that are there are being shot by the Afghan soldiers and policemen who are terrorists and who have infiltrated the supposed peace keeping forces. It's time for us to leave. We tried, we have had marginal success. I don't know what would have happened if we had not gone in, and I can't remember why we are fighting in Afghanistan anyway, is it because that it is a strategically situated country? Is it oil, is it Islam? What is it.
War is awful no matter what the reasons. And I understand that the troops on the ground and in the air, are well trained, and fully committed to the task in hand, but, like Vietnam, you cannot tell who your enemy is,until he pulls out a rifle or explodes a roadside bomb. Yet, like the red coats in the American war of independence, the troops are walking targets.
Sure, not everyone is the enemy, but which ones are they?????
How about we tell them we are leaving, bring the troops home, and let the Afghanistan community get on with it. Yes, there will be blood-shed, but unless we are going to go in there and bomb the place until it is empty of all people, there will be no peace in Afghanistan.
Why are so many of these hot countries at war? Does all that heat make them mad? When is this world going to get it's act together and start living instead of making others die all the time.
The Hippies really had the right message. Make love not war.
Bring the troops home.
Posted by Lynne Leon, 21:30, Mon 29 October 2012: (Is this post abusive?) #
Afghanistan : this war will never be won.
How many of the politician's who decide where these brave YOUNG men are deployed have sons, daughters or family members serving in these war zones? All the money wasted on the defence of these countries makes no difference. 10 years on Afghanistan is still and possibly worse than it was.