Labour on Afghanistan: Genuine mistakes or misleading the public?

I've posted here a few times mentioning that civil disobedience is the only way to get an accountable government, although it's usually po-poo'ed as either pointless or against the law.

This is the attitude that allows government ministers (your elected servants) time and time again to tell bare faced lies, act in the direct interests of the US at the expense of UK interests and generally govern badly.

We should all take note of the Hungarians respons to their elected leader being exposed as a liar. As the Hungarians have only had 'democracy' for 16 years many will remeber life without an accountable government.

It is a sad indictment of the British people that they willingly let their government lie to them. In fact, a population this disinterested in not only the domestic effects of this government, i.e. loss of civil liberties and basic rights, but also the wider effect of creating many enemies via illegal wars, probably deserve what's coming over the horizon.

The sad fact is most people are materially well-off and they prefer wealth to living in a fair and just society. Heaven forbid a news journalist should expose the truth of this government and then get sacked and be unable to meet the mortgage. Or the same for our Police officers, who enjoy record salaries and ridiculous overtime payments - they're all right jack, so screw civil liberties and social freedoms.

When there is an economic downturn and people loose much of their material world then I am sure they will suddenly appreciate the value of justice and freedom for everyone, and not just the well off. But by them of course it will be too late. The British people are a disgrace for knowingly selling out their birth rights (which millions died for btw) to a lying governemnt that does not even act in their interests.

Sack Paliament. 1pm Parliament Square 9th October.

I hope very much that Dr. Reid has to prescribe anti-depressiant medicine to himself to be able to cope with the guilt he is feeling over our servicemen being killed by his criminal misjudgements of the Afghan situation.
I nearly puked over seeing the smug bastard's comments last night on Channel Four news regarding fitting explosion suppressing foam to our C-130 Hercules fleet.
But I am sure he just files it all away in the same part of his conscience where he has buried honesty, morals, and respect for those who elected him.
It would appear to be some sort of involuntary reflex for NuLabia members to be unable to tell the truth. Own up to their mistakes. Or even have the moral backbone to be appear and take the flak when the brown stuff is flying.

The mass deception of the British public in order to engage in illegal wars is hardly a 'mistake', it's a very serious crime.

It's not just the needless deaths of our troops. It's the deaths of thousands of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of the actions of our misguided and (more than ever) lied to soldiers that REALLY gets me.

This Labour government has decayed to the same state Thatcher's Conservative government ended up in. They have been in power for so long and got away with so much lying, deception and criminal activity that they believe they are untouchable.
Remember the last months of Thatcher's government where the likes of Jeffrey Archer were exposed, convicted and sent to prison? The behaviour of New Labour now is no different, they are;
- Selling Peerages
- Lying to the public about Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran & Palestine
- Starting illegal wars on the basis of known forged evidence
- Shipping banned Armaments to Israel
- Lying about the 7/7 bombings, the 'evidence' presented is a joke
- Given government ministers veto over public inquirys so we will never find out what happened
- Lying about the shooting of unarmed civilians by the Police
- Banned any rights to protest
Thatcher must be crying watching this, she tried the poll tax and we rioted, Tony enforces martial law and we all go Baa Baa and carry on eating grass...

Afghanistan will undoubtedly become the United Kingdom's Viet Nam...

It's not going to be easy to chase all these AK47 wielding fighters home because they are already home. Can't think of anyone winning a geurilla war in someone else's country for a very long time, short of wiping out the entire indigenous population. I think that's called genocide and is generally frowned on as a realistic solution to conflict these days.

Spot on. Glad I moved to France.

I'd just like to remind everybody here about the differences between Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq was invaded illegally for various reasons, non of which were the reasons we were given. Afghanistan, on the other hand, was invaded because it was complicit in an attack on a key ally of ours, which, let's not forget, killed more people (all civilians) than the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The wisdom of a full scale invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is debatable, and personally I would have preferred a more punitive action on Taleban/Al Qaeda administration and infrastructure and their ability to do us harm. However, let's please not confuse this with Iraq. If we had not completely thrown away the moral high ground with the invasion of Iraq, I suspect the continuing action in Afghanistan would be viewed with more sympathy. And please let's not start seeing the Taleban with any kind of sympathy. They are vicious, murdering, medieval thugs, and we would be doing the Afghan people an immense disservice by surrendering power back to them.

"I'd just like to remind everybody ... Afghanistan, on the other hand, was invaded because it was complicit ..."

TOTAL W*NK!!

Afghanistan was invaded after the Taliban refused permission to the skanks to build thier oil pipline across the country.

Your sanctimonious drivel about "vicious, murdering, medieval thugs" presumably refers to the same "vicious, murdering, medieval thugs" which the skanks (and the UK) quite happily SUPPORTED when it suited us.

The CIA controlled global opium trade was almost totally run down by the taliban. Under renewed skank sponsorship, opium imports into the UK (specifically from Afghanistan) are now HIGHER than they were PRIOR to the Taliban regime.

"War on Drugs"??, "War on Terror"??
Get Real!

It is with a note of grim satisfaction that I would point out Lord Patel's insistent belief that the Afghan adventure of the next prime Minister / Labour Party Leader has been a leitmotif of Lord Patel's notes about Afghanistan since decemebr 04.

In January
http://postmanpatel.blogspot.com/2006/01/reid-sends-ill-equipped-troops-to.html

When he surveyed how heroic our troops were on Salisbury Plane Lord Patel wrote of "ill equipped troops sent to a certain death".

In June Lord Patel wrote "Reid, you were warned" now we have endless tales of spatchcock shoring up the breach with the English dead (plus the odd Canadian) , the ordering of even more inadeqaute useless equipment and the despatch 1 a month for 2 months of extra Chinooks. 1 Fucking helicopeter extra a month!

It is for this reason he uses as a heading

"Of all the happy and unhappy states to which a Prince or a Republic can be reduced is to come to such terms that they cannot accept peace or sustain war."

Nicolo Machiavelli The Prince Book 23

We dare not retreat, we cannot move forward. Lord Triesman - whom I remember in the 60-s as a screaming Trot was evasive last night when Jer. Paxman taxed him about sending troops to Darfur - it is evident to the meanest intellect we (the UK) haven't sufficient troops to organise a relief fire service any more.

Is it any surprise our NATO / EU allies are not up for the fight ? 2 Million men under arms in the EU and we can send 2 extra Chinooks in two months. All one can say with certainty is that the death toll of UK troops will rise with no military or political advantage.

End users of heroin will no doubt rejoice as the street price goes down. perhaps HMG should tap the drug barons for a few sovs. for a few Chinooks and training for pilots - after all it is in their interest to choke supply and drive up prices and profits.

British diplomat Lord Arthur Ponsonby (1871-1946) wrote in his book
'Falsehood in Wartime' about the perennial propaganda claims of wartime
leaders. Ponsonby's analysis, distilled into 10 principles is as follows:

1. We do not want war;
2. The other side is solely responsible for the war;
3. The enemy has the face of the devil;
4. It is a noble cause that we defend and not particular interests;
5. The enemy commits atrocities knowingly; if we make unfortunate mistakes,
it is involuntary;
6. The enemy uses unauthorized weapons;
7. We suffer very few losses, while the losses of the enemy are enormous;
8. Artists and intellectuals support our cause;
9. Our cause has a sacred nature;
10. Those who question our statements are traitors.

Baffling Des Browne quote (via the Guardian): 'Success won't be what we understand by security and prosperity and proper governance, but it will be progress and it will be massively worth achieving.' (source)

How to decipher this? Does he mean: something will happen, and as long as it does, it must be A Good Thing? Anything is better than the Taleban (including an open-ended anti-insurgency programme and/or being used for target practice by all and Afghan sundry)? That the Afghan people won't get the liberal democracy Bush/Blair promised them anytime soon?

And what does he mean by 'massively worth achieving' anyway? Is that a reference to firepower or the eventual number of dead squaddies?

I think Des Browne is trying to lower our expectations of anything positive coming out of this adventure whilst at the same time trying to convince us that we have to continue. It seems like an admission of failure to me... not unlike Iraq in that respect.

Anyone remember a chap called Hoon at the Labour Party Conference in 2002 - Saddam has weapons of Mass destruction , 2004 Ditto etc.,

Fast Fwd to Des (another bloody Scot called Browne)with his mantra of the day.

Wholly confident that Des will have the same message in Manchester - although what message is waiting for him there at the site of Peterloo remains to be seen.

So, our strategy has been discredited, so much so that they've admitted it, we have no measurable goals or mission aims and no exit strategy.

"Afghanistan, on the other hand, was invaded because it was complicit in an attack on a key ally of ours, which, let's not forget, killed more people (all civilians) than the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor."

This is total rubbish and the sooner people wake up the sooner we can implement real change. If you can watch THIS VIDEO AND/OR THIS VIDEO AND/OR THIS VIDEOand still come to the same conclusion then we really are in trouble.

The northern alliance criminals have legged it back up the mountains with their shiny new guns and left our troops in the mess Blair has created. The Afghanis waited 5 years for reconstruction and eventually lost their patience, we have no support and the whole of southern Afghanistan has been compromised. The reports of 500 dead taliban is misleading, 500 dead civilians with some taliban is more accurate. When air support becomes the deciding factor "the battle for hearts and minds" has been lost.

The only reason our troops are still there is to cover Tony Blair's arse and they will be back as soon as he steps down. This is a truely desperate state of affairs. If you think that we will be the first to conquer Afghanistan (with the mismanagement/lack of of "reconstruction" projects) against the will of the 25 000 000 Afghan people then think again.

We only hear NATO and US army reports because no journalist would even consider stepping foot in that hell hole that Blair has created, the Russians will be arming the resistance, Musharraf has given up fighting them in Pakistan so they will have space, time and funding to bring about perpetual coordinated guerilla warfare until the dwindling NATO forces are either massacred or driven out. One clear examle of our naivety is congratulating ourselves on reclaiming territory. Territory is irrelevant in guerilla warfare and hit and run operations are the norm. The more large scale bombing campaigns we inflict on the Afghani people the more the resistance will grow.

Even if we commit the most horrendous attrocities by carpet bombing the indigenous population defeat is still inevitable. They will regroup and in the end they will.

win. (continued from above)

Anyone with any knowledge of the history of foreign interventions in Afghanistan could have predicted this sorry outcome. No doubt our PM, with his ability to walk on water, thought it would be different this time. This dangerous lunatic should have been forced out of office a long time ago. Shame on the cowards in the Labour party for allowing this to continue.

40 dead British soldiers - but fatalities are always just a part of the picture. If total casualties were reported people would gain quite a different picture of scale of the conflict. The MOD is extemely keen that the true casualty figures for both the Iraq and Afghanistan adventures are not accurately reported. An attempt to document the true extent is ongoing here: http://craigmurrayfriends.blogspot.com/2006/09/mod-admits-failures-in-casualty.html

http://www.starstika.com/files/D-Notice%20-%20I%20No%20Better.mp3

Featuring Tony 'Hystery' Bliar & D-ream, specially mixed for the Party Conference. Very much 'on message' with this thread.

Cause trouble with your ipod. Pass it around.

Note: D-Notice homepage not up yet but when it is it will be black with a clickable 'd-notice' in the middle, and from it you will be able to download this tune in slightly more refined condition. The link above will by then be deleted. Thanks to our stablemates & antinazionista rockers Starstika @ dissential.com for hosting this temporary download 'til we get the rest of our act together.

Whilst I agree with you that the Taliban have no place on this planet, I just don't see much in the way of direct resistance to them coming from the Afghans themselves. You would have thought that the Afghan government could have put up a stiff enough resistance to this minority if they really wanted rid of them. I still don't understand why they need external help in the form of British military personnel, some of whom get killed doing it. I certainly wouldn't join the British Military to petentially die for a Afghan, however good he is to his mum.

think the Taliban had a very important place on this planet. They kept opium production right down and they were better than the alternatives like the northern alliance rapists. We are flooded with cheap smack thanks to people thinking "the Taliban have no place on this planet". They are a product of invasion after invasion just like Hezbullah. The sooner we recognise their right to exist the sooner they can progress.

No the total wank is the idea that that the mad mullahs are going to go away if only we are nice to them.

Do you really believe that being nice to all is going to make them like us and stop killing Copts and Somali’s or Indians or even Brits?

While we are killing the Taleban they are not shooting women in a football stadium with an AK47. Karzai is trying hard to bring some order to that country and we owe him some support whether or not it gets us a bloody pipeline. At the end of the day you will still use the crap that comes through it and the terrorist states in the Middle East won’t be getting the money.

As for this bollocks about the US arming the Taleban during the war against Russia that is largely dog poo. America’s greatest contribution to that war was the Stinger missile and there is no evidence that America supplied those arms to Arab fighters. America fought the NVA who were supplied by Russia and China, so I fail to see why in the context of the Cold War America was not entitled to give the Russians something back in return.

Yes we are wasting men and treasure in Iraq. That war as done nothing but give Iran an opportunity to turn Iraq into a puppet state. We should leave tomorrow and give our troops a rest. Let the bastard in Tehran have it.

But Britain will have an Islamic government over my dead body. I fail to see why my children should live under the rule of people like Anjem Choudary.

No the total wank is the idea that that the mad mullahs are going to go away if only we are nice to them.

Which mad mullahs are these? Expound their religious philosophy. Do you mean the Shia mad mullahs in Iran (who helped us in Afghanistan) who have no love at all for al-Qaeda. Or the Sunni nationalist insurgents who may be quite unpleasant but have no love for al-Qaeda (a large part of the Iraqi population wants all foreign fighters out of the country, whether they have beards or Marine Number One haircuts, and I can't blame them). Or the actual al-Qaeda people, who virulently hate Shia Iran. Gets a bit complicated there. The key points:

1) Iran is much more complex than you think. Actually being nice to them (we haven't actually got an option here, having given them Iraq) will hopefully deprive the conservatives of a rallying cry (the same 'only we can save you from these madmen' cry that John Reid uses here, of course).
2) Everyone who's tried to bring order to Afghanistan fails. Why on earth our homeopathic army is exempt from this rule I'd be interested to hear.
3) I fail to see why my child should live under the rule of Tony Blair. The difference is that he *does*, and has done for his whole life.
4) Again, where's the mechanism for an Islamic takeover of the UK? Expound, expand and explode, please.
5) It's not a matter of being 'nice', it's a matter of adopting realistic policies that minimise the risk of terrorist recruitment. Those policies would naturally be the opposite of the current ones, then.

As for the USA/USSR proxy wars, the generational legacy of hate and mistrust they engendered goes to show that the Cold War wasn't just the West and East panicking about nuclear holocaust. The USA clearly encouraged Islamic resistance in Afghanistan, and those boys haven't gone away. Stinger missiles? Only a weapon that allows a small band of irregulars operational parity with a hi-tech conventional force? Good thing they didn't learn from that experience that military might can be beaten with brains and speed. Blowback, blowback, blowback.

(Actually, the greatest thing the US gave the Afghan mujihadeen was probably intel, the CIA were up to their neck in Afghanistan at the time).

"I hope very much that Dr. Reid has to prescribe anti-depressant medicine to himself"

He's not that sort of doctor. He got history doctorate at Stirling, while a young communist (oh, the irony!)

I was checking this dimly remembered fact and found the following in a Grauniad article written in 2002...

"If we had a Politburo instead of a cabinet, Reid would probably be running the State Security Division"

And now he is!