Sunday, July 12, 2009

Told You So (Again)

This is not one of those 'told you so's' that I can take any pleasure in.

This blog on Afghanistan, 2006 :

If we had a huge army, flush with success in many theatres, full of highly-motivated officers, loads of the latest technical kit, a hugely supportive public at home, total self-belief among the political and administrative class, no worries on the diplomatic front or the 'court of world opinion' , should we go in so that Nooria can go to school ?

Well, in the latter half of the nineteenth century we had all these things in spades. We chose to keep out - to restrict our visits to the punitive 'butcher and bolt' expeditions - pretty much what the Yanks are doing now. Perhaps we had good reason.


Rory Stewart in the Telegraph, 2009 :

Sir John Lawrence, the new viceroy, persuaded Lord Derby's government that Afghanistan was less important than it appeared, that our resources were limited, and that we had other more pressing priorities. Here, in a civil service minute of 1867, he imagines what would happen if the Russians tried to invade: "In that case let them undergo the long and tiresome marches which lie between the Oxus and the Indus; let them wend their way through poor and difficult countries, among a fanatic and courageous population, where, in many places, every mile can be converted into a defensible position; then they will come to the conflict on which the fate of India will depend, toil-worn, with an exhausted infantry, a broken-down cavalry, and a defective artillery."

He concludes: "I am firmly of opinion that our proper course is not to advance our troops beyond our present border, not to send English officers into the different states of Central Asia; but to put our own house in order ..."

Lawrence might have been expected to have a more confident or arrogant view of British power than policy-makers today. But he believed that the British government lacked power, lacked knowledge (even though he and his colleagues had spent decades on the Afghan frontier) and lacked legitimacy ("the Afghans do not want us; they dread our appearance in the country... will not tolerate foreign rule").

The argument is contingent, cautious, empirical and local, rooted in a very specific landscape and time. It expresses a belief not only in the limits of Russian and Afghan threats but also in the limits of British power and capacity.

Laban, January 2009 :

One of the strange contradictions of NuLabs regime is the willingness to upset Muslims overseas while bending over backwards to avoid upsetting them in the UK (apart from the said overseas upsets). The retreat from Basra would at least be a mark of consistency, of bringing foreign policy into craven line with domestic, were it not for the fact that the withdrawal is almost certainly aimed at facilitating an additional troop movement into Afghanistan. Our boys will go from being blown up in under-armoured vehicles, short of body armour and helicopters, in Iraq, to being blown up in under-armoured vehicles, short of body armour and helicopters, in Afghanistan - all so that little Nooria can go to school.
Times :

A shortage of helicopters has forced troops to resort to supply convoys that are up to 100 vehicles long and stretch for two miles, leaving them easy prey to Taliban roadside bombs.
As for the armoured vehicles, EU Referendum is your one-stop shop for the full, tragic story.

That's the military side. I'm not against having troops there on a 'butcher and bolt' basis to give Al Quaeda a hard time. But what we're trying to do is establish a modern democracy in Afghanistan at a time when legitimacy is seeping away from our own democracy. Hubris or what ?

Laban :

I was never a fan of the project to democratise Afghanistan. The politics and culture of that fascinating nation are nearer to those of fourteenth-century England than to modern America.


Stewart :

The new UK strategy for Afghanistan is described as: "International... regional... joint civilian-military... co-ordinated... long-term...focused on developing capacity... an approach that combines respect for sovereignty and local values with respect for international standards of democracy, legitimate and accountable government, and human rights; a hard-headed approach: setting clear and realistic objectives with clear metrics of success."

This is not a plan: it is a description of what we have not got. Why do we believe that describing what we do not have should constitute a plan on how to get it? In part, it is because the language is comfortingly opaque. A bewildering range of different logical connections and identities can be concealed in a specialised language derived from development theory and overlaid with management consultancy. What is concealed is our underlying assumption that when we want to make other societies resemble our (often fantastical) ideas of our own society, we can.

14 comments:

JuliaM said...

"But what we're trying to do is establish a modern democracy in Afghanistan at a time when legitimacy is seeping away from our own democracy."

Spot on...

Rob said...

Democratising Afghanistan is the soppy excuse for public consumption. The real reason we are there is that we either fight them there or here. Obviously no-one wants to see the Welsh guards fighting house to house in West Yorkshire.

JuliaM said...

"Democratising Afghanistan is the soppy excuse for public consumption."

Is it, though? I'm beginning to wonder. I think Blair's (and now Brown's) hubris is just that great...

Regardless, if we are fighting them over there to prevent them from fighting us here, the troops need to be equipped to do it. Properly equipped.

"Obviously no-one wants to see the Welsh guards fighting house to house in West Yorkshire."

At least they'd know the language and culture here. Well, sort of.. ;)

Sgt Troy said...

"Democratising Afghanistan is the soppy excuse for public consumption. The real reason we are there is that we either fight them there or here. Obviously no-one wants to see the Welsh guards fighting house to house in West Yorkshire."

Obviously this disasterous mess will have to be dealt with here, and all those Pakistanis with dual nationality ultimately repatriated - that's 700000. They are simply too alien, too dangerous to have around. Their multplication rates are frightening.

It is a pointless, tragic irrelevance to take casualties for nothing in Afghanistan

Brown is a lying scumbag

"New vehicles purchased to protect British troops in Afghanistan have already been rejected as unsafe by the US military.

The vehicles failed basic 'survivability' tests, which showed soldiers would be left vulnerable to roadside bombs, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

But although the Pentagon rejected them, the Ministry of Defence has ordered 262 to replace the controversial Snatch Land Rovers."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1199118/MoD-troop-carriers-U-S-rejects--1-10-soldiers-die-Afghanistan.html

Sgt Troy said...

Personally I don't give a shit about little Nooria. And nor apparently do the lads unfortunate enough to be there

'We don't care about the future of Afghanistan,' he stated with some vehemence. 'We don't care about democracy, clean water, schools for girls or the political overview

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1198958/All-care-getting-mates-alive.html

Some time ago I read the accounts of Alexander's campaign - by Arrian and Curtius Rufus. When the Greeks got to what is now northern Pakistan/Afghanistan they found the people there to be the most backward, wretched and benighted primitives they had encountered on the whole trip

Plus ca change really

Anonymous said...

Democratising Afghanistan is the soppy excuse for public consumption. The real reason we are there is that we either fight them there or here. Obviously no-one wants to see the Welsh guards fighting house to house in West Yorkshire.

If that were true we wouldnt be letting them settle here and we would focusing on repatriation in a humane a manner as possible.

But we won't do that because it would 'racist' and 'fascist' ie inhumane. Thats why at some point, sooner or later, the Welsh guards will be fighting house to house in West Yorkshire anyway. The campaign in Afghanistan will have been for nothing.

Sgt Troy said...

His wife, Nikki, said: 'Lee was not only my husband but my best friend, ask anyone who was lucky enough to have met Lee and they'd all tell you the same, he was the most loving, kindest, thoughtful person you could ever meet.

'He was so full of life and permanently had a cheeky grin on his face. I am so proud to be his wife. As well as the army, his family were his life.

'He was the best daddy to Kai and Brooke and he will live on through them. Lee will always be in our thoughts and hearts and greatly missed by his Dad, Mum, Kelly, Dean and Denise.”

http://www.lastingtribute.co.uk/tribute/scott/3112607

Damn you and your "patriotic duty" to hell Brown

Anonymous said...

If we have done nothing else, we have at least got to the bottom of a number of issues:

1. The Afghans themselves have demonstrated that they won't stand up for their own children, so their civil rights are not worth the loss of a single British life.

2. When we were still furious about their al qaeda attack dogs, we were at least focussed on why we were there. They had supinely allowed a foreign fighting force to use their territory as a safe haven, from which to unleash hell on civilians on the other side of the world. We should have bombed them and then left, with a warning that we can always come back and do it again.

3. We have been killing folk over there because we are too timid to get on with the job of deporting them from over here. And it isn't an either/or situation at all. While our troops are over there, the islamists have already started killing people over here.

Nation building is just another word for mission creep. We shouldn't make their democracy, education, or social progress our problem. All we ever needed to do was teach them the price of tangling with us, so they are too scared to let that happen again.

Eigen said...

Except... in the 19th century the Afghans didn't have any way to get nuclear weapons.

If little Nooria doesn't get any education I'm afraid we have to make quite sure that little Hussain doesn't either (which is rough on both of them).

Malthebof said...

Read Kipling & Flashman (G McDonald Fraser) this will tell you all you need to know about Afghanistan. After more than 100 years nothing has changed.

God Fearing Reactionary Nihilist said...

Huh?

Laban, I am a big fan.

IMHO you are one of the best bloggers out there. I'm supposed to be working right now so maybe I've missed something or not read this closely enough, but you don't really believe the Afghan nonsense is about little Nooria going to school or bringing democracy to the barbarians do you?

Come on, you're kidding right?

Thats for the children!

And as for other commentators here saying we have to fight them there or its house to house in West Yorkshire - sorry that is just rubbish.

This is about Geopolitics.

Look up the Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski. Yes that is the same Zbigniew Brzezinski who backed Obama.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/kw69zs

This is old (but we've Afghanistan a long time) this'll explain what its all about:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/mpqhnw

God Fearing Reactionary Nihilist said...

Get your self a copy of Sid Meier's Civilization, or better still, Hearts of Iron II.

Both very educational, very entertaining little games that can teach a lot about geopolitics and resource wars.

If you play Nationalist China from 1936 in Hearts of Iron II, you'll notice that while Nationalist China has a lot to be said for it and if properly managed can easily beat off the Japs, the Communists and the various War Lords, its got no bloody oil.

Where can China get some oil?

It can trade for it with the USA but then it'll always be under the thumb of the USA.

Or it can just take it.

But where from?

Well, there is the Dutch East Indies, or more do-able, there is Persia via Afghanistan.

God Fearing Reactionary Nihilist said...

By the way, my two posts above are not contradictory. Pissing off both the Russians and the Chinese are not mutually exclusive goals.

Its about us (NATO, EU, USA) versus them Russia and China.

I wouldn't mind so mush if I thought our illustrious leaders had my interests and the interests of people like me at heart.

But clearly they do not.

Sgt Troy said...

GRN

I wholeheartedly agree with your generous tribute to Laban.
I have a few observations to make on your observations

If the United States has the awesome strategic focus you suggest it sems odd to me that they have closed down so much of their industry, and that they have allowed production to move east - thereby effectively bankrupting themselves. They have turned in a generation into the world's greatest debtor, depending upon the Chinese for finance. True they do have a lot of leverage over the Chinese in termsof the immense sums already borrowed - but even so this is not a policy which would have commended itself to the Roman Senate vis a vis Carthage.

The United States, as a great power, surely suffers from the greedy short-termism of the Wall St banksters - securitisation whatever else wasn't about long-term strategy. These are the people who pull the strings; with Zionists having a good tug as well of course. In fact the decline of the US from 1945 to now, a blink of an eye, has been quite remarkable. Somebody once said that US government was almost always weak gov't - in terms of the seperation of powers and of the special interest groups pulling this way and that.

On Afghanistan if I remember rightly the Bush Admin was very keen to do a quick demolition job and then move to what they preceived as the real strategic focus of Iraq and its oil. It has been very plausibly suggested that Iraq was an oil war given the absolute necessity for Wall St and the City to recycle petro-dollars(given the diminution of real foreign exchange.

I am dubious about the pipelineistan motive we see so much of with regard to Afghanistan; it seems to me that given the essential ungovernability of this god-forsaken hole it would be permanently vulnerable to IEDs - there couldn't be an easier target.

On little Nooria well motives in human affairs are mixed - and some idiots in our political classes do think we should be teaching the world to sing Kumbaya, after all they really are twats; apparently the police have been instructed by the government, well Trevor Phillips' Stalinist mob at any rate, to recruit gypsies for instance. So it is a thorough going lunatic asylum

"And as for other commentators here saying we have to fight them there or its house to house in West Yorkshire - sorry that is just rubbish."

I can't really stress enough how incredibly stupid and dangerous it was to have allowed this enrichment to have built up as far as it has; and the outlook is truly appalling if nothing effective is done to halt, and reverse it