Dying for a PR win from Afghan war - The Australian/Australia

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

The war is now a pissing contest to show how "tough" and "determined" we are. By any rational estimate the war is lost. We are now "committed" to carry it on just so the administration doesn't look bad.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/dying-for-a-pr-win-from-afghan-war/story-e6frg6zo-1225885883965

THE unwinnable conflict is becoming a face-saving mission for Washington and London.

RECENT events confirm that the Western powers' main motivation in Afghanistan is not to "save the Afghan people", but to save face. From President Barack Obama's handling of the General Stanley McChrystal debacle to Prime Minister David Cameron's promise that Britain's "brave troops" will be home by 2015, it's becoming increasingly clear that the NATO forces remain in Afghanistan primarily to avoid admitting defeat.

They are not there to achieve any tangible goals, but rather to project a PR image of Western steadfastness and commitment as a disguise for the profound political and military defeatism afflicting their Afghan mission.

This PR imperative, this mission to save face, is giving rise to a new and dangerous kind of war: one driven not by any Western need for resources or any desire to boost the West's political clout in foreign fields, but by a desperation to spin disarray as determination and to make defeat look something like victory. Men are being sent into war, and Afghan positions attacked, primarily as an exercise in PR rather than in imperial expansion.

Everyone now admits the war cannot be won. They actually say this openly. Departing Afghanistan in October 2008, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the commander of British forces, said NATO should not expect to win a "decisive military victory". Brigadier-General Richard Blanchette, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force that oversees NATO's mission in Afghanistan, has said there can be "no military solution".