Do British troops die in Afghanistan to show willing in Washington?

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from the Telegraph UK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/4700613/Do-British-troops-die-in-Afghanistan-to-show-willing-in-Washington.html


19 Feb 2009

Do British troops die in Afghanistan to show willing in Washington?

In the land where we should be fighting al-Qaeda, we are chasing ghosts, says Michael Burleigh.

Although it has yet to come clean on the issue, the Government believes that our commitment in Afghanistan will last for generations. Our ambassador to Kabul blithely mentioned us being there for "30 years".

But what are we there for? Any discussion of strategy among commentators tends to revolve around one of two opposed views. The first adheres, doggedly, to the post-9/11 mission: to ensure no return to when the Taliban harboured the mass murderers of al-Qaeda.

This view is bolstered by considerable evidence that terrorist plots in Europe involve Anglo-Pakistanis "holidaying" in the badlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan; it is overlain with the liberal interventionist belief that we should not allow the Afghan people to revert to the clutches of demented creatures who throw acid in the faces of schoolgirls after they have burned down their schools.

Problems in that mission, though, have given rise to the second view: that we should cut our losses and get out.

It is as well to spell out these problems; they are grave indeed. On their walls, US commanders have maps of Afghanistan dotted with red and yellow squares illustrating the allied nations' undertakings. Yellow indicates what missions individual Nato governments might allow their troops to perform; red that, for example, the Luftwaffe will not be flying at night. John Hutton calls on Nato allies to pull their weight, but the existing command structure is hopeless. Different forces are pursuing mutually contradictory, rather than compatible ends: some are building villages, while others get blown up in error.

In the prevailing climate of uncertainty, the Taliban have taken advantage of the no-man's-land that is the amorphous Pashtun belt, and of the opportunities provided there by the failed state that is their Pakistani neighbour. For fear of alarming Islamist sensibilities, any co-operation between the US and Pakistani armed forces has to be virtually invisible – always assuming that the armed forces are loyal to Islamabad rather than the Taliban. Each stray missile that kills a Pakistani civilian (another 31 dead a few days ago) makes that co-operation less likely, regardless of the money showered on the Pakistani armed forces.

But the second view is voiced less often – except by generals in private. That is because a depressing uniformity of outlook prevails among politicians in the two major parties, namely that a critical view of what is happening in Afghanistan might undermine the western alliance. Our young soldiers are being killed just to show willing in Washington, doubly so now that a popular Obama has replaced Bush . . .


read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/4700613/Do-British-troops-die-in-Afghanistan-to-show-willing-in-Washington.html

[Hangingon]

1. The Brits have a stake in the terror war too.

[RC]

2. How can we "Win" the war on terror when we keep making so many terrorists?

Bring our military home.

[bigtree]

3. looks to me like their 'stake' was aggravated by Bush's military decisions

. . . moves which put their nation at greater risk of retaliation than needed be, one individual driven to attack their nation using the Iraq invasion and occupation as his rallying point.

Certainly Brits are well aware of the counterproductive nature of Bush's swaggering military politics abroad and have indicated they've had enough. They are actually in a more comprehensive examination of the actions which led them to support Bush in Iraq. I envision their nation responding with much more caution to Obama's call to action than they did in the past. That's why we haven't yet seen a clear new commitment to Afghanistan which has originated on Downing St.. I think they will have to be dragged further into this to get their full cooperation, beyond their actual will.