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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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 Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 9:44 pm Post subject: Eyes on Afghanistan: George Galloway |
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Eyes on Afghanistan: George Galloway
From The "Morning Star"
GEORGE GALLOWAY urges the disastrous occupation of Afghanistan to come to an end.
EVEN the dogs in the street are barking it - the twin occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are nothing short of a catastrophe.
The decision by the British army to withdraw from the centre of Basra to an embattled camp outside Iraq's second city is nothing more than an official belated recognition of the reality that Britain has lost in the south of Iraq.
There are reports of constant mortar fire and small arms attacks on those patrols that do take place. So great is the groundswell for British forces to get out and quickly that, by the middle of this week, US generals were on parade on British radio urging us to keep our troops in the firing line and killing fields.
That, too, was the message of George W Bush's extraordinary speech on Wednesday. In what must be one of the most ill-advised allusions ever made by a US president, he uttered the V word - Vietnam.
The anti-war movement, of course, has drawn this parallel for some years and, throughout that time, we were ridiculed by the ever-diminishing pro-war brigade.
Now, Bush has made the comparison, but in a way that shows the ever greater distance from reality of the rump administration in the White House.
He said in his Kansas City speech: "One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields'."
Not since Dorothy set off down the Technicolor Yellow Brick Road has such a fantastical tale emerged from Kansas.
"Millions of innocent citizens" were thrown into the pit of agony because the US left Vietnam? What a monstrous inversion of the truth.
Millions of Vietnamese were killed or maimed on account of that occupation and war. Millions more suffered from the poison which was pumped into the country's rainforests and rivers.
As for the killing fields, so unforgettably revealed to the world by the peerless John Pilger, these were the product not of the US withdrawal from Vietnam, but of its destruction of Cambodia and then support for the butchers of the Khmer Rouge on the immoral principle of my enemy's enemy is my friend.
This is a desperate throw of the dice by Bush in the dying days of his administration to stretch out the surge of troops into the New Year, no matter what the cost. It means that, strategically, the pressure that can be brought to bear now to force the British government to pull out of the south of the country is critical.
That has to be a focus this autumn for all who have opposed this war. Does it matter whether British troops leave in the coming weeks or are gradually "drawn down" over the next nine months? It makes a huge difference in breaking the attempt by Bush to revamp the war drive.
In turn, it makes a difference to the possibility of the neocons adopting a Gotterdammerung option of lashing out militarily against Iran before they surrender the White House to those they have dubbed, somewhat ridiculously, as the Defeatocrats.
But, in upping the pressure for swift withdrawal from Iraq, we must also confront another argument which has been with us since 2001, but which has, for most of that time, been overshadowed by Iraq.
It is that the Afghan war - the precursor to the Iraq disaster - was in some way justified and that the occupation of Afghanistan is somehow a kinder, gentler, more humanitarian, occupation.
Some of those Establishment figures who want to bring our beleaguered forces out Iraq want to fling them into the hellfire of Helmand. They are casually informing us that "we could be in Afghanistan for decades."
We are being soft-pedalled into an escalating involvement in war in a country which we have attempted to occupy three times before in our history.
On each occasion, we have been driven out - in one case, suffering one of the worst disasters ever to befall Britain's armed forces. It's not surprising when you consider that every other attempted occupation of Afghanistan from Alexander the Great onwards has failed - and Britain's part-time Defence Secretary Des Browne is no Alexander the Great.
It is timely, therefore, that the Stop the War movement, which was born to oppose the Afghan war, is again increasing agitation around that question. It has called a special day school on Afghanistan and I understand that places are selling out fast. Book yours now.
The Stop the War day school on Afghanistan: Britain's Other War is on Saturday September 15 in the University of London Union. Speakers include Craig Murray, Dr Elaheh Povey and Lynda Holmes from Military Families Against the War. To book your place, phone (020) 7278 6694. Tickets are £6/£4 concessions. |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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| cheers for that Luke |
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Mandy
Joined: 07 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 11:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Yep, Thanks Luke |
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mickyv
Joined: 12 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 11:39 am Post subject: |
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Kim Howells (Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister) wrote a piece of crap (Government Spin) about Afghanistan yesterday in the Guardian. He got shot down in flames in the comments after, and this was before the news of the "friendly fire" deaths.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,,2155273,00.html |
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