Another nattering nabob of negativism

Matthew Parris of The Times should try to reach an assessment based on something other than raw emotion:

...We should save our enthusiasms, our money, our international friendships and our soldiers’ lives, for what is doable.

Afghanistan is not. On Monday, November 5, Panorama on BBC One will show Taking on the Taleban: The Soldiers’ Story: not a crusade for or against Britain’s efforts, but a first-hand account of what we’re up against. Watch it and make up your own mind.

Paddy Ashdown seems to have decided already [see second part at link]. A stalwart supporter of the British military campaign in Afghanistan, Lord Ashdown, who is by no means an instinctive defeatist about the possibilities of intervention, now believes that Afghanistan is “lost”. He contends that we could have won had we and our allies put more in, early on. Perhaps. But we didn’t. Now we are at loggerheads with the Americans about the whole philosophy of nation-building there, and hopelessly underresourced in the Helmand province, which we try to control. Counter-narcotics has been an unmitigated disaster (the opium trade has more than doubled), and though we can win set-piece battles with Taleban forces, we seem powerless to consolidate what we have won.

I loved Afghanistan when I went there for The Times some years ago. I fell under its spell. But I was conscious even then of a vast and intricate web of human groups, feuds, ties, revenges and obligations, and an incredible fierceness in the air; and of how small were Nato forces, and how limited our understanding, in the face of such vastnesses of history and geography. I was conscious too that the Taleban is a way of thought first, an army second, and infinitely renewable. I wondered if we were out of our depth.

I am sure now that we must be, without a comparable commitment from others. We should be honest about that. If the rest of Nato is unwilling to do the heavy lifting, we should give up...

So the UK and Canada, each having suffered under 100 fatalities during a period in which the Taliban have regained control of not one major centre in Afstan, and during a period in which the Taliban have suffered major battlefield defeats, should just give up.

Certainly Afstan is a difficult place for any central government to establish its authority (murderous religious fanatics dealing with a civil-war weary country aside). Perhaps such authority, and our dreams of Western democracy, are not doable in any near future. But is that any reason simply to stop trying to prevent the return of a real enemy to most Afghans and, with its al Qaeda friends, to a much wider world? Particularly when there is now NO evidence that the effort to keep the fanatical elements of the Taliban from power is in fact failing. Just look at the north and west of the country. Just fight on, and reconstruct, in the south and east for a while longer. While the Afghan army and police are trained. Still, it is possible that in, say four years, it will be blindingly clear there is no reasonable prospect that Afghans--with diminishing future outside help--can prevent the Taliban from succeeding.

Surely though the cost in money and lives (minimal by any historical standard) to the West--even if much of Europe is essentially taking a pass--is worth that extended, major, effort. Do we want the Jihadists to have confirmed that they are indeed the strong horse? And if the Taliban and al Qaeda return will cruise missile and other bombings strikes, lord knows for how long, do the job for which the intervention in 2001 was required?

We are in Afstan above all else to protect ourselves. Secondarily we are there to help the Afghan people. Many may think use of this quote from Churchill too much; I think it is very relevant to the long run--and to the strong horse:

... if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science...

Earlier nattering nabob.

Update: A Dutchman, Dick Pels, political commentator and author from the University of Amsterdam, says things rarely said by our politicians and pundits:

There is also a more hard-headed aspect to the debate when it comes to terrorism. Two high-profile murders of over a half dozen linked to radical Islamists have solidified the threat in the minds of most Dutch.

"The sense that radical Islam is a threat and that the multi-cultural idea is a failure has become more deeply realized in the Netherlands than in Canada," said Pels...

"We didn't want to see that there are actually people in the world that want to kill other people because of nationalistic or religious reasons," said Pels.

"Now we are facing the threat by radical Islam and we were not prepared until very recently to realize, or face up to the idea that there are people who want to kill us."