Britain must tell Obama: the alliance of denial has to end

[Bragi]

Diplomacy, your hour has come. There is no way soldiers will find an exit from Afghanistan. They can deliver defeat or they can deliver bloody stalemate. They cannot deliver victory and every observer knows it. This conflict will end only when the courage being daily demanded of soldiers is also shown by politicians.

Those who said that sending an army to Afghanistan was madness can collect their winnings and go. But diplomacy is a relativist ethic. Its practitioners cannot say, "Do not start from here." They must face the fact that Barack Obama and Gordon Brown are entangled in a mess from which there is no easy release.

Obama made a serious error on coming to power. To honour his pledge to disown Iraq he felt obliged to "adopt" Afghanistan. What had begun as a punitive raid on the Taliban for harbouring Osama bin Laden morphed into a neocon campaign of regime change, counter-insurgency and nation-building. Obama rashly identified himself with this crusade and leapt from the frying pan of Iraq into the fire of the Hindu Kush.

The president now owns Afghanistan. As a result, he and his British ally, Gordon Brown, are sucked into mendacity on the scale of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. They talk of "clearing, holding and building" Afghan territory, to make the world safe from terrorist bases. Brown talks of fighting "to prevent terrorism coming to the streets of Britain". His helpless defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, tells troops they must stay until the Karzai government "can tackle the threat of the Taliban on its own", which he knows is never.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/14/afghanistan-obama-gordon-brown-taliban

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This is one of the best articles I've read in a long time about the mess in Afghanistan. I highly recommend it.

- B

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Very recommended!

[tekisui]

2. I like the guardian. They report the uncomfortable truths.

knr!~

[kiva]

3. K&R

There is no way soldiers will find an exit from Afghanistan. They can deliver defeat or they can deliver bloody stalemate.

We need to get out NOW.

[crickets]

4. K&R