Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Afghanistan British deployment is too little, too late

















Dear All

Sometimes people have an idea but the idea turns bad and rather than accepting failure they keep plugging on.

The defeat has already happened because they won’t change.

Afghanistan is lost.

It was never winnable because you cannot impose concepts that are alien to a culture and expect them to take root.

Change can only come from within.

Britain has agreed 'in principle' to deploy another 500 troops to Afghanistan according to Gordon Brown but with conditions attached.

The conditions to be met are nonsense, Afghans to commit new troops, all units properly equipped and the allied coalition to bear its fair share.

In a fire fight there is no place for negotiations, the priority of sending troops is to enhance British forces security that is the first and primary objective.

Gordon Brown also said the UK will provide an extra £10 million in humanitarian assistance for areas of Pakistan that have been "liberated" from terrorist control. That statement is more nonsense and shows how unaware he is about the nature of the threat.

No areas have been liberated; the problem keeps getting moved around rather like peas on a kid’s plate, end of the day, they are still there.

There is no justification for staying in Afghanistan as the “allies” have no clear plan for winning, containing the problems, restructuring the country and an exit strategy.

People on the ground, in parliament and in the country have no ideas.

To put it bluntly, we’re fucked!

The Americans have woke up to this notion and they have been having a rethink of where do we go from here. The reality is stark, destroying the country isn’t the problem, rebuilding is!

Armies of occupation always lose because eventually you will run out of fingers to put in the dyke.

The PR campaign to generate support at home has already been lost as well, the military aren’t happy, the Afghans aren’t happy and the rest of the “allies” don’t want to know.

So, the strategy really boils down to two options, all or nothing.

My preferred option and the most cost effective is to abandon ship, and leave.

Walter Cronkite had a famous quote when he called the ‘War in Vietnam Unwinnable’; it is the same in Afghanistan today.
What was true then is similarly true today.

What a pity people cannot learn the lessons of history.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

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