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By Christopher King* 15 February 2008 Christopher King explains why British Prime Minister Gordon Brown should stop marketing George Bush’s war in Afghanistan and why Europeans should shun Washington’s attempts to get them more involved in the war against Afghans. Our unelected prime minister, Gordon Brown, has taken over Tony Blair’s job as marketing man for George Bush’s wars. The payoff for this is now established (see Tony Blair moves on), so the minister’s son from Kircaldy can look forward to making it big despite his ignorance of economic management. I used to mark papers in MBA economics for students like Brown who could parrot the textbooks but hadn’t a clue how to apply them. That’s why we have taxes and government debt at record levels (official debt figures trebled by off-balance-sheet liabilities!), taxpayers supporting Northern Rock at 55 billion GBP due to Brown’s useless supervisory structure and 2 billion GBP just paid for Metronet’s debts following his failed scheme to finance the upgrading of London’s underground railway system Anyway, it seems that Bush thinks that some NATO members aren’t pulling their weight in Afghanistan and more European countries should be sending troops willing to fight and die there. Brown thinks so too and has Tony’s glittering afterlife as an incentive. Most people would have trouble finding Afghanistan on a world map without the country names. Web photos show the place to be desert, hot in summer, cold in winter and very uncomfortable. Few would have any wish to go as visitors. Except for Mr Brown, it seems that European heads of state find the idea of ordering their fellow countrymen to fight and die there a strange and unwelcome notion. Nor is there any obvious reason why they should think otherwise. Why are our troops there at all, we may well ask and what is NATO doing there anyway? According to the NATO website, that organization’s purpose is mutual protection from external attack – an excellent objective. Now, Afghanistan has not attacked any NATO country, although to be sure, Osama Bin-Laden and Al-Qaeda were based there. Even so, we need to keep in mind that Osama and 15 out of 19 World Trade Centre (WTC) attackers were Saudis (one Lebanese, one Egyptian, two United Arab Republic). There was a better argument for bombing Saudi Arabia, except that at that precise moment US troops were already based massively there and key members of the Bin-Laden family were in the United States. Talking to George Bush about oil and money I would think, since the aircraft flying them out was the only one in the sky while all other aircraft in the country were grounded. After the WTC attack, someone other than Saudi Arabia had to be bombed; a massive show of force was necessary. The militant arm of the Bin-Laden family, Osama, was in Afghanistan; no-one liked the hard-line Taliban government, they were Muslims like the attackers, so it was a no-brainer. Afghanistan was going to get it. The WTC attack can hardly be called an Afghan attack on the USA. Terrorist, yes; Afghan/Taliban, no. Osama was already there when the Taliban took over and they probably had no knowledge of what he was doing and little of the world beyond their area. He had his own agenda and if only for security reasons would not have confided in the Taliban. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world with over 50 per cent of the population living below the UN poverty line of 2 US dollars per day. Many people will be getting much less than that. Its central government expenditure is about 280 GBP million. By comparison, the London Mayor’s budget is just over 3 GBP billion for the current year, or about 11 times greater. This is not the sort of country that will pick a fight with the most powerful military force in the world. The Taliban government was genuinely dismal but it didn’t warrant B52 carpet bombing. So what is NATO doing there seven years after the WTC attack? Let’s look back for some perspective:
Bush has suckered NATO into the same position as invaders that the Russians occupied over 20 years ago. It’s easy to identify an invader – never mind the spin – he’s in someone else’s country killing the locals. This isn’t a peacekeeping situation. It’s the same war the Russians fought and the British before that. It can’t be won. The only way to win a war like this is not merely to kill enemy combatants – it’s to kill everyone. The locals will always be our enemies, no matter how long we’re there, for a simple reason: we keep on shooting them. Let’s examine a typical firefight incident such as the BBC often reports. Say British troops have a firefight at a village, kill a few combatants and take the village. They go in, the villagers come out of their houses, our soldiers line the bodies up. The commanding officer says, “Who are these fellows?” This is a tricky question but the villagers know the answer. They don’t say, “That’s Ahmed, my brother-in-law” or “That’s Mohamed from the next village.” They say, “We don’t know. We’ve never seen them before.” The officer asks, “Are they Taliban?” The villagers say, “Yes. They came here with guns and made us do what they wanted.” The Afghan translator knows what’s going on, but why create complications? So the British officer writes up his field diary: “Village taken, three Taliban killed.” That’s what the BBC gets. The officer might not believe it, but what can he do? Shoot everyone? The Americans, by the way, don’t seem to mind this. They can bomb a wedding party or settlement and kill 20 or 30 Taliban at one stroke with, “No reports received of any women or children killed.” Even their installed president, Karzai, has raised objections. The main Afghan resistance is in the Pashtun areas which appear to occupy about half the country to the east and south, depending on which map you’re looking at, but also extending well into Pakistan. To the Pashtun, the Pakistani border through their area doesn’t exist. Why should it? It’s simply impossible to enforce control on this area without massive indiscriminate killing of the population as has been done in Iraq, for example, in the destruction of Fallujah and the use of air strikes and artillery within city areas. The Americans consider this legitimate. It should not need to be said that Europe should object to these actions. Let’s remind ourselves: the USA walked away from Afghanistan, not once, but twice. I myself heard George Bush say at the time of the invasion, “We won’t walk away from Afghanistan again.” That’s why NATO troops are dying there now. Morally, it’s a disgusting situation to be warring against some of the poorest people on the planet instead of spending the money on genuine development for them. In practice, because of our failure to fulfil economic promises, immensely expanded opium production will have a direct impact in Europe and the USA. The contradiction between winning hearts and minds while shooting these people cannot possibly be resolved. There’s no way the Americans can lecture Europeans on our responsibilities to fight and die, no questions asked, in a country that has not attacked NATO. Nor is NATO a tool for their use, directly or indirectly, in grabbing oil deposits, minerals or pipeline routes that they might want. This is the new Bush doctrine of “pre-emptive war” which means that the USA can attack any country that has oil or other assets that they want on the basis of a campaign of lies and deception – and demand European help in doing so. Brown’s marketing message about Afghanistan should be that the Afghans ought to be helped with genuine economic development and all troops should leave. It should have been done years ago. It won’t get him a Blair-scale payoff but he won’t have to change his religion to try to salve his conscience either. And economics whiz or failure, he’d get some respect for his ethics. *Christopher King is a retired consultant and lecturer in management and marketing. He lives in London, UK. Copyright © Redress Information & Analysis. All rights reserved. |
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