Personal Blogs

no good morning today I'm afraid with the news from Afghanistan and the Miliband interview on the Today programme. Even Humphries does not understand something. One minute he is inetrviewing Miliband, almost the next minute he is reviewing the papers and laughing about 'Pies in Stockton'. I am not going to say that we should not be humourous but the Editors must understand the anger which is building-up with regard to the media.

Exactly how many of the people who flew planes into the World Trade Center came from Afghanistan. How many boarded planes in Afghanistan and took over the planes and flew them into the Towers on 9/11. The answer I think is none, the people who flew planes into the World Trade Center were from Saudi Arabia, but they left the kingdom and planned and perpetrated their atrocities in America. They lived in America for quite a long time, planning and plotting.

The problem was not with Afghanistan, it was with Saudi Arabia, that is the problem, we have attacked the wrong place. Only we could not possibly act against Saudi because of the oil.

So we went in Afghanistan with the Americans to 'get' bin Laden, only we still haven't got him. We got Sadam alright, he was captured and executed. But unlike what many of the American soldiers thought he had absolutely nothing at all to do with WMDs and nothing at all to do with the attack on the WTC. You look at the living accomodation for the American soldiers when they first went in to Iraq, the pictures of the burning WTC on the walls of the occupied palaces. So we thought we could forget Afghanistan and deal with Iraq, which was still not Saudi Arabia.

So, having gone into Iraq we started to round people up, detain them, arrest them, use enhanced interrogation techniques, use extra-ordinary rendition, allow sectarian civil war to break out, not defend the local population from attack, allow corruption, send prisoners to Cuba, maltreat people, insult them, beat them with sticks, beat them up and kill them, basically act just like illegal occpiers, after an illegal war, in a war based on lies.

Now we are in Afghanistan again. Only we can't arrest people, we can't interrogate them, we can't 'do' anything, we just sit there. So, we have to attack, we just kill, using drones, helicopters, high explosives, all of our superior technology. Only we have lost, we can't talk to the locals, they won't hand over the Taliban, we take no prisoners, we lose men, for what!

The trouble is the British got into a fight with the Taliban, or freedom fighters from a local perspective, and they would call up an air strike and innocent women and children were killed, usually by the Americans, because where is the British Air Force. Oh, that's right they have no equipment, they are nothing! Why? because you look at the case of the air force officer Fl Lt Kendall-Smith who was prosecuted and convicted for refusing orders in Iraq, the illegal war, the WMDs, and he was sent to prison, for six months, and dishonourably discharged. You ask soldiers why they did not call up British air strikes, because the British pilots, I think, would not bomb houses where there were possibly innocent women and children. Why do you think we are investing so heavily in Drones, flown with joy sticks from the deserts of America.

As for prisoners by the British, too much of a problem, we can't do anything with them, what with the case of Col Mendonca, who was left out to dry by his superior officers, by the people who gave the orders.

So, we are now mired in Afghanistan. It is a war we can never win, Brown will have to announce, in parliament, in a broadcast to the nation what is the point. What is the purpose. None of this is about Afghanistan being an incubator for terror, I have had enough lies, and half truths. There is no longer any point, it is not Vietnam, it is the killing fields of Passchaendale in WWI. During WWI, when it started the dead soldiers were brought home for burial. Then they realised we can't do this, we can't have a hundred burials a day, a thousand burials a day, ten thousand burials a day, so bury them where they died, if we keep bringing them home the people will rebel, they will revolt, bury them where they die. It is not only the dead, it is the injured, both physically and mentally. This is not acceptable, it is time to bring the soldiers home. We admitted our defeat in Iraq, eventually after much loss of life, and the loss of any moral authority, and we have no moral authority in Afghanistan. It is just killing for the sake of it, no point, no purpose, we again have become the problem and never the solution.