As the Iraq Whitewash (let's not kid ourselves here) continues, I just wanted to capture a forum post I made during a discussion on Remembrance Sunday which, inevitably, touched on current troop mobilisations. This neatly captured my feelings and I'm rarely as pithy, so I didn't want to lose it.
"There was a compelling argument for Afghanistan due to the September 11th attacks"
I rather suspect that history will record a quite different story. The training camps for insurgents that we've been attacked by (we being 'The West') are almost exclusively rooted in Pakistan but it isn't expedient for us to go there. All this WMD/Bin Laden/Axis of Terror propaganda is a front for our ambitions to control or at least limit the autonomy of the region I'm sure.
That said, we are there now and good, honest people are dying there (not just good, honest Westerners obviously) so now isn't the time to talk about the whys, we need to work out what happens next and I genuinely don't know whether staying in a war we can't win or withdrawing from the region having turned it even more vehemently militant is the best course of action.
How we can apparently demonise an entire culture and then act shocked when they react violently is beyond me. The only solution is bridge-building: a slow and painful process that (most importantly at the moment) won't win anyone any votes any time soon.
