cancel2 2022
Canceled
Freddy Forsyth makes a powerful case for staying in Afghanistan and also says that Iraq was a bloody irrelevance.
http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/140111
HERE'S WHY I BELIEVE TROOPS HAVE TO STAY
Our troops must stay in Afghanistan to prevent al Qaeda returning
Friday November 13,2009
F
ON all sides we are told the electorate increasingly wishes to pull our troops out of Afghanistan. People revere the soldiers but cannot understand why they are there because our bumbling Government, in all those years, cannot convincingly explain. Well, let me try.
First fallacy: we have been there for eight years. Wrong: it is really four in two campaigns. We went in during the winter of 2001/2002 because we had no choice. The reason was not the Taliban but their honoured guests al Qaeda.
The attack of 9/11 was not al Qaeda’s first atrocity. It was at least the 10th attempt. It had long declared war on the West and vowed our destruction. That it was able to do so was almost entirely due to its extraordinary freedom to act at will out of its sanctuary in Afghanistan. That sanctuary was accorded personally by the Taliban government’s leader Mullah Omar.
It is hard to exaggerate the benefits to a terror organisation of the absolute run of a sovereign country: the training camps; bomb schools; indoctrination centres; travel facilities; disease laboratories; false passport workshops. The list of advantages goes on and on.
After 9/11 al Qaeda had to be stopped or we in the West would just become perma* nent target practice. We asked Mullah Omar to expel them. He refused. We went in. The Taliban was toppled and al Qaeda expelled. a quite small leadership cadre escaped to neighbouring Pakistan. It was not dead but it was crippled. True, it has spread its tentacles worldwide with now some 20 imitators and copiers but that would have happened anyway.
Then the big mistake: after a year we left Afghanistan except for a large recon*struction effort and a handful of guarding soldiery. We presumed the Taliban move*ment (it was never a political party or even a real government) was finished for good. Wrong. During 2002 -*2006 it surged back.
Three years ago it was threatening to topple the useless Karzai regime that we had unwisely left behind. It was also making the reconstruction programme –bridges, dams, roads, wells, power plants, schools, clinics – utterly impossible. So we (the West in the form of NATO) went back in. Very soon it became plain we were not in a peace*keeping role or even a programme *protection role, we were in a war. and the Taliban, plus their al Qaeda allies, had a four* year head start due to George Bush’s and our post *2002 absorp*tion with the bloody irrelevance of Iraq.
So let's be plain. Anyone who thinks we are in those deserts and mountains to create a functioning parliamentary democracy out of 2,000 years of violent tribalism has been smoking some* thing weird because that is a pipe dream.
We are not there to enable, we are there to pre*vent. That is the key it is unwise to forget.
When you are in the bar listening to another armchair general, ask him this. If we – Brits, Americans, all NATO – quit now would the Taliban take over Afghanistan within a year? He will have no choice but to say “Yes”. So would they then re*instate al Qaeda as their honoured guests? Answer: probably yes. So would al Qaeda be back at full operating strength within a further year? Answer: very likely.
Last question: when the first Afghan* trained AQ fanatic arrives here and takes out 100 men, women and children in a shopping mall, will you still think it was clever to pull out? at that point I think he’ll go quiet and buy another round. We have to prevent al Qaeda coming back or as they proved on July 7, 2005, we will pay a bloody price.
http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/140111
HERE'S WHY I BELIEVE TROOPS HAVE TO STAY
Our troops must stay in Afghanistan to prevent al Qaeda returning
Friday November 13,2009
F
ON all sides we are told the electorate increasingly wishes to pull our troops out of Afghanistan. People revere the soldiers but cannot understand why they are there because our bumbling Government, in all those years, cannot convincingly explain. Well, let me try.
First fallacy: we have been there for eight years. Wrong: it is really four in two campaigns. We went in during the winter of 2001/2002 because we had no choice. The reason was not the Taliban but their honoured guests al Qaeda.
The attack of 9/11 was not al Qaeda’s first atrocity. It was at least the 10th attempt. It had long declared war on the West and vowed our destruction. That it was able to do so was almost entirely due to its extraordinary freedom to act at will out of its sanctuary in Afghanistan. That sanctuary was accorded personally by the Taliban government’s leader Mullah Omar.
It is hard to exaggerate the benefits to a terror organisation of the absolute run of a sovereign country: the training camps; bomb schools; indoctrination centres; travel facilities; disease laboratories; false passport workshops. The list of advantages goes on and on.
After 9/11 al Qaeda had to be stopped or we in the West would just become perma* nent target practice. We asked Mullah Omar to expel them. He refused. We went in. The Taliban was toppled and al Qaeda expelled. a quite small leadership cadre escaped to neighbouring Pakistan. It was not dead but it was crippled. True, it has spread its tentacles worldwide with now some 20 imitators and copiers but that would have happened anyway.
Then the big mistake: after a year we left Afghanistan except for a large recon*struction effort and a handful of guarding soldiery. We presumed the Taliban move*ment (it was never a political party or even a real government) was finished for good. Wrong. During 2002 -*2006 it surged back.
Three years ago it was threatening to topple the useless Karzai regime that we had unwisely left behind. It was also making the reconstruction programme –bridges, dams, roads, wells, power plants, schools, clinics – utterly impossible. So we (the West in the form of NATO) went back in. Very soon it became plain we were not in a peace*keeping role or even a programme *protection role, we were in a war. and the Taliban, plus their al Qaeda allies, had a four* year head start due to George Bush’s and our post *2002 absorp*tion with the bloody irrelevance of Iraq.
So let's be plain. Anyone who thinks we are in those deserts and mountains to create a functioning parliamentary democracy out of 2,000 years of violent tribalism has been smoking some* thing weird because that is a pipe dream.
We are not there to enable, we are there to pre*vent. That is the key it is unwise to forget.
When you are in the bar listening to another armchair general, ask him this. If we – Brits, Americans, all NATO – quit now would the Taliban take over Afghanistan within a year? He will have no choice but to say “Yes”. So would they then re*instate al Qaeda as their honoured guests? Answer: probably yes. So would al Qaeda be back at full operating strength within a further year? Answer: very likely.
Last question: when the first Afghan* trained AQ fanatic arrives here and takes out 100 men, women and children in a shopping mall, will you still think it was clever to pull out? at that point I think he’ll go quiet and buy another round. We have to prevent al Qaeda coming back or as they proved on July 7, 2005, we will pay a bloody price.
