Afghanistan: 10 reasons the troops should come home
A new Stop the War pamphlet argues that British troops have been sent to kill and be killed in a pointless US-led war which is making Britain, less, not more safe, as Gordon Brown keeps telling us.
Written by Steve Bell Stop the War Coalition
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Preface by Paul Flynn MP
"I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it."
Siegfried Sassoon's words are as true about Afghanistan 2010 as they were about the Great War in 1917.
No Nato government believes a military solution is possible. All are a seeking an exit than can be spun as a victory. Until then, deaths and costs soar inexorably.
It is easier to repeat old lies than reveal new truths. Politicians of all main parties have their mouths bandaged by their own guilt. To change tactics now is to admit to failures of policy that have killed thousands and wasted billions of pounds.
Vietnam veteran and US Senator John Kerry asked at the end of the Vietnam war in 1971. "How do you ask a man to be last one to die for a mistake?"
British politicians should be haunted by the same nightmare. I asked David Miliband if he had ever talked to the Taliban and asked them why they are killing our soldiers. He said he had not. Neither have our generals.
Would their answer be: (a) we are killing them so that when the last British soldier dies we can go and plant bombs in Birmingham, or (b) we are killing them because they are Ferengi infidels in our country; it is our sacred duty to drive them from our country as our fathers and grandfathers did. Our justification for war is that the absurdity that answer 'a' is true.
The vain hope of the new strategy is also based on the other fiction that Nato can leave when security can be safely handed over to the Afghan Police and Army.
During a recent conflict seven Taliban attacked a convoy defended by 300 Afghan soldiers. The majority of the soldiers fled. Their Afghan General Jabbar Karaman said that Afghan soldiers do not believe in the government, the system or the international community.
Speaking in the Commons former foreign office minister Kim Howells recalled a 24-hour battle in which an Afghan force changed sides three times.
The Afghan Army is a mercenary force that is reluctant to risk their own lives or to slaughter brother Afghans in the causes of a corrupt president or foreign powers. The Afghan Police has a long tradition of criminal depravity, extortion, theft and endemic corruption. In Georgia, a corrupt police force was disbanded and new one recruited from scratch. That worked. In Afghanistan Nato is building on a force that is beyond reform.
There is a further chilling warning sign. The Washington Post reported that $1 billion in bank notes is being flown out of Kabul annually en route to Dubai and other Gulf States. Afghan passengers took more than $180 million to Dubai during a two-month period, including one Afghan diplomat who was detected with over two million dollars worth of undeclared euro Afghan leaders continue to move their families and fortunes out of Afghanistan in expectation of the collapse of the Karzai regime.
Meanwhile Nato's brave soldiers and Afghan civilians carrying on dying.
Order your copy £2.50 inc p&p. Call 020 7801 2768 or buy online:
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