Losing in Slow Motion in Iraq and Afghanistan
07.07.07 - 03:49pm
Britain and America are involved in a murderous fiasco in Iraq and a growing disaster in Afghanistan, two conflicts the imperial powers simply cannot win
If the American disaster in Vietnam teaches us one thing, it is that an imperial political elite is institutionally incapable of ending a war on grounds of principle, only once it has had it bashed into its thick skull that its citizens are no longer going to tolerate a conflict it is never, ever going to be able to win.
America’s rampage in south-east Asia only came to an end after the nation’s military and security apparatus started fearing uncontrollable civil disorder in the homeland and the business sector turned against a never ending conflict which was actually starting to endanger America’s financial stability.
Sooner or later the “coalition” (or perhaps that should be “axis”) of foreign powers which invaded Iraq, committing the supreme war crime in the process, and are fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan will realise that they are not winning. Britain and America are involved in a murderous fiasco in Iraq and a growing disaster in Afghanistan, two conflicts the imperial powers simply cannot win.
America and Britain are losing in slow motion.
Highly motivated native guerrilla armies don’t give in, and while we continue to blow their sisters, brothers, cousins and friends into bloody pieces they will find no shortage of recruits. America and Britain are never going to “win” in Iraq and Afghanistan. The only question is when it will become politically impossible for our rulers to continue the bloodshed and how many innocent civilians and American and British soldiers will be killed and mutilated before that moment comes.
This is the most effective counterargument to that growing number of people who now realise we should never have attacked Iraq, a nation crippled by sanctions, with no weapons of mass destruction and which posed a threat to nobody, but who still feel that we should not “cut and run” and “abandon” Iraq and who cling to the idea that we can still even at this stage somehow sort out the destructive mess we have plunged that nation into. There will be no end to the violence in Iraq until the occupying forces have withdrawn.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, a resurgent Taleban are once again taking over parts of the country, while the Afghan senate has called for negotiations with the group rather than continuing war. One lesson from history is that foreign powers, no matter their strength and technological advantage, do not win in Afghanistan. Britain, at the height of its imperial power, could not do it. Neither could the Soviet Union. Nor can the Americans, British, Canadians and others now. All the time, innocent people are in the firing line, as America kills more and more civilians. An internal Afghan political settlement is surely the only way forward for that beleaguered nation.
You point out the flaes, my friend, but make no suggestions for a solution in either situation. It’s all well and good to comment that we should never have attacked Iraq, but we did and we are there. How do you suggest we stage our exit with the country dissolving into civil war and violence?