Will Afghanistan crystallise Britain’s ‘Russian moment’?

The Russian Empire – otherwise known as the Soviet Union – was broken on the rugged mountains of Afghanistan. Many commentators, including Russian ones, have pointed to the eerie parallels between Britain’s and America’s engagement in military conflict against the Taliban, and the defeat of the mighty Red Army at the hands of the Taliban’s predecessors, the Mujahedeen. If we were to take heed of the lessons of history – not just the living memory of the Soviet Union’s traumatic humiliation, but the thousands of years of successful Afghan resistance to imperial invaders – then we would immediately reverse the build-up of Western troops in that country and accelerate our exit strategy, if we have one. Indeed, we would never have got ourselves embroiled in a conflict we cannot win.

But the question I wish to pose here is this: Gordon Brown has today spoken of his determination that Britain and its allies will indeed ‘win’ in Afghanistan, however victory is defined (which is part of the problem). However, he also conceded the possibility that Britain might lose: “We will succeed or fail together and we will succeed”. But will Britain stay together if we lose?

Clearly, while there are parallels, Britain’s situation is not exactly the same as the Soviet Union’s during the 1980s. However, I would argue that, like the USSR, Britain’s actions in Afghanistan betray an imperial mindset. Indeed, Britain itself is still an empire in certain fundamental respects: not in the, as it were, empirical (i.e. real-world) sense of possessing vast colonies, but in its view of itself – its identity, its status in the world and its systems of governance.

These all come down to Britain’s concept of ‘authority’ – political and moral authority combined: Britain’s ‘right to rule’ linked to the fact that it sees itself as inherently ‘in the right’. This then translates to our military interventions in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, which the British establishment would like to see not as examples of more or less arbitrary interference in other countries’ affairs for the sake of Britain’s strategic interests, but as illustrations of how our might is indeed right: military power allied to a moral mission, and applied to promote British-style governance and implant British values in some benighted corner of a foreign field.

As far as the governance of Britain itself is concerned, I would argue that this is also still conducted in the manner of an empire, albeit one whose boundaries are mainly those of the islands of Great Britain, and with limited concessions to democracy. I’ll probably return to this topic in more detail on another occasion. But my main proposition here is that one of the main reasons why the Westminster political class has become so disconnected from the people – indeed, the peoples – of Britain is that they still view the business of governance in the light of the imperial mindset. In particular, the insistence on the sovereignty of Parliament, and on the entitlement of Parliament and the executive to make all the important decisions that affect our lives without being fundamentally answerable to the people, and without having to take popular opinion into account, exemplifies the concept of British authority described above: those that possess British might see themselves as imbued with British right – the right to rule over us in imperial fashion linked to the fact that this rule in itself is seen as in the right and righteous.

So in Britain, we have an elected empire: a form of absolute rule, albeit moderated by a limited amount of democracy, whose sovereignty derives from a moral absolute: that of the Sovereign herself, who is the inheritor and embodiment of the medieval divine right of kings. Except, in our constitutional monarchy, it is our elected so-called representatives that re-assign that divine right to themselves in the form of the sovereignty of Parliament.

But to return to my point of departure, what could happen to the British establishment’s sense of its divine right to rule, both at home and abroad, if things go disastrously wrong in Afghanistan, as they did for the Soviet Union? By this, I mean not just hundreds of British dead, as now, but thousands, even tens of thousands. How far are we prepared to continue with this folly to prove to ourselves that we were in the right all along? And at what point do we realise that perhaps we didn’t get it right, indeed may not be in the right, and that history may not conclude that God was on our side this time?

Who knows what ramifications a truly disastrous defeat in Afghanistan would have for our already shattered faith in the authority that our elected rulers exercise in our name? It did for the Soviet Union; would it do the same for Britain?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not wishing for such a catastrophe to occur in my wish for the United Kingdom as presently constituted to unravel. I’d rather we pulled out now while we still have a chance. But the omens are not good.

Gordon Brown says our brave British soldiers are fighting for our national security in Afghanistan. They may also be fighting for the survival of Britain in a sense that Brown does not intend.

EU conspiracy update: Blair out; Plan B (Miliband) kicks in

Further to my previous post on this topic, it would appear from reports emerging out of this week’s EU summit that Peter, Gordon and Tony’s little plan to shoe Tony into the EU top job has been scuppered. Too bad for the Eurosceptic cause in the UK!

So ‘Plan B’ has kicked in: to get David Miliband – the present UK Foreign Secretary – into the post of EU Foreign Secretary High Representative. Apparently, he’s the ‘favourite’ for the job: meaning the most likely to be cherry-picked by the EU elite, not actually the candidate favoured by any electorate. I must admit I didn’t see that one coming up on the blind side; but it’s an obvious stitch-up. I can’t believe Miliband’s undeclared ‘candidacy’ did not emerge as a result of squalid trade-offs at the summit: ‘OK, so we can’t have Tony; but at least give us David (Miliband): he’ll support Britain’s entry into the Euro, and he’ll also help to sell the Lisbon deal to the British people, and we can hopefully get away without any sort of referendum’.

This is perfect for Mandy, too: get a potential rival for the soon to be vacant position as Labour Party leader / PM out of the way (assuming Brown steps down on the grounds of ‘illness’ before the election, and they find a way to enable Mandelson to be elected as an MP and then as Labour leader) while placing a grateful yes man in one of the top EU-State ministerial jobs who’ll be happy to execute Mandelson’s plan to lead Britain into the Euro and help set up a new G3 or G4 of the leading global economies – the US, China, the Eurozone and possibly Japan. At the same time, Miliband can indeed be sold to the British public (or the gullible members of it), perhaps more effectively than could Tony Blair, as ‘our man in Brussels’: batting for the British national interest in a post-Lisbon world in which the EU-State increasingly comes to take the place of former ‘nation states’ (as Britain is sometimes referred to) at the international top table, and in which real power no longer resides in the discredited Mother of Parliaments.

The Mother of all conspiracy theories, indeed. Watch this space!

The mother of all conspiracy theories: Blair for president, Mandelson for PM and Britain for the Euro

If you’re one for conspiracy theories, here’s one to keep you awake at night.

It’s already practically certain that Tony Blair will be appointed as the EU’s first president as soon as all 27 EU states have ratified the Lisbon Treaty. After the ‘yes’ vote in the got-it-wrong-do-it-again Irish referendum on Friday, only the Czech Republic and Poland have yet to sign above the dotted line, and this is expected to happen before the British general election, scheduled for May or June 2010. President Sarkozy of France is reported to have given his blessing for Blair to be shoe-horned into the post; and Angela Merkel is thought to be resigned to the idea.

Thinking about why Sarkosy would endorse Tony as president, it occurred to me that the plan might be to replace the so-called special relationship between Britain and the US with a new special relationship between the EU (headed up by the darling of the US political class, Tony Blair) and the US. In other words, Blair would be the ideal candidate to give the new EU job real clout in the international community, positioning the EU to become a global player in its own right.

Then I came across an article in the Mail Online that suggests that President Obama and other world leaders are planning to set up a new club of the world’s leading economies called the G4, comprising the US, Japan, China and the Eurozone countries. This certainly fits in with the idea that other EU countries want the EU itself to be elevated into a major world power in its own right.

The final piece in the jigsaw was suggested to me by a report in the Mirror, which indicated that Jack Straw’s House of Lords-reform bill will indeed remove the existing ban on lords becoming MPs for five years after resigning as lords. It had previously been mooted that this bill would remove the last impediment to Peter Mandelson’s glorious return to the House of Commons, and here was the confirmation.

So here’s the scenario: Mandelson is found a nice safe Labour seat at the general election as the heir apparent to Brown in the likely event that Labour loses. Or else, more sinister still, an incumbent Labour MP for a safe seat falls on his or her sword before the election allowing Mandelson to become an MP and then mount a coup to oust Brown; so we’d have Labour being led into the election by Prime Minister Mandelson. This would coincide with Tony Blair’s elevation to the EU presidency. If, by that time, the plan to form the G4 is on the way to fruition, the Labour Party would have a much stronger argument at the election for saying that Britain needs to remain at the heart of the EU in order to continue to have a powerful voice in the key economic decisions. They’d be able to claim with some credibility that a Mandelson premiership would be best placed to achieve such results given his long friendship with Blair, and his EU contacts and experience as the EU’s Trade Commissioner. They would certainly argue that a Euro-sceptic Tory government intent on renegotiating the terms of the Lisbon Treaty would marginalise Britain still more at the EU and global top tables. Indeed, Mandelson would be able to push for Britain’s entry into the euro, making it part of the Eurozone group of economies represented in the G4. Certainly, if the value of the pound continues to fall, thanks to Gordon Brown’s borrowing on our behalf, and drops below the euro, the economic arguments in favour of Britain joining the euro could become compelling.

And what of Gordon Brown himself? Perhaps he could then become the Eurozone’s special representative in G4 negotiations and day-to-day co-ordination of economic affairs: a reward for having damaged the British economy so much that it had to join the euro.

Even if Mandelson doesn’t succeed in ousting Brown before the election, as leader of the opposition, he could greatly reduce Prime Minister Cameron’s room for manoeuvre in his dealings with the EU, especially with his mate Tony in the hot seat there. And if Brown is given an influential role in the G4 or G20, it could make it very difficult to hold a referendum on Britain’s ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. Apart from anything else, it could be argued that we need big hitters like Blair and Brown batting for Britain at the heart of the EU and the G4 grouping; and if Britain withdrew from Lisbon, or even from the EU, then not only would Blair have to resign as EU president, but Britain would have no influence whatsoever.

But what those idiots don’t realise is that were they to achieve, or even just attempt to achieve, these objectives through such machinations, this would only demonstrate still more the importance of Britain, or at least England, pulling away from the EU, as this is the only way to preserve our sovereignty and freedom from an unaccountable EU and corrupt, power-hungry politicians such as Mandelson, Blair and Sarkozy.

The stakes could not be much higher. What prospect would there be of establishing self-government for England as a distinct nation if Britain itself loses control over the management of its economy and signs away its sovereignty through the Lisbon Treaty / EU Constitution, which contains an in-built mechanism for transferring ever greater powers to the EU Parliament and Council of Ministers?

All the more reason to vote for a party that will give us a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty at the very least, if not EU membership. But are the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats (who, as far as I can tell, still support a referendum on British membership of the EU) going to stand up and be counted?

Afghan War: How many British dead will there be after the next 40 years?

Today, the sad milestone of the 200th, and indeed the 201st, death of a British soldier was reached in Afghanistan. Gordon Brown came out with the usual blandishments on such occasions, re-stating that while these deaths were “deeply tragic”, they were still necessary: “We owe it to you all [the families and communities of those killed] never to forget those who have died. But my commitment is clear: we must and will make Britain safer by making Afghanistan more stable”.

If those deaths were really, deeply ‘tragic’, Brown and all the others in the political establishment that support this war (but not to the extent of supplying our brave troops with adequate equipment to ensure their safety as much as possible) would not effectively write off the lives lost with such seamless ease under the ostensible justification that it is ensuring Britain’s safety.

I have written about this conflict extensively before (see here, here and here). Suffice it to say that it is far from obvious whether and how this conflict is really serving the security of the UK. In some respects, it has helped to make us more of a target for terrorism and has destabilised the whole region, including Pakistan, which is the real threat to our security, as it’s a nuclear power. Plus it’s highly unlikely that we could ever ‘win’ a war in Afghanistan or even stabilise the country through military means. Afghanistan has never been subdued by a foreign army in thousands of years of history; and the fierce and proud fighters that are resisting Western interference today, and all of their fanatical jihadist supporters from around the world, will never put down their arms until the Westerners leave Afghanistan.

Perhaps it’s this sort of reflection that led the incoming head of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, to state last week that Britain might need to maintain a presence in Afghanistan for the next 40 years; albeit that he – grossly naively, in my view – thinks it may be necessary to maintain the present level of military engagement only in the medium term (so ‘only’ 20 years, then?); while the main task will be nation building. I’ve speculated before where people come up with this arbitrary ’40 years’ figure. I’m sure it’s some sort of subconscious echo of the nearly 40 years of the Cold War coupled with the biblical 40 years of exile that the people of Israel spent in the desert on their migration from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. Not a comfortable cultural reference to evoke in the Muslim world! But are we supposed to accept this figure with blind, biblical faith?

If you want to build a nation, there has to be the will among the people who live there to become a nation. But Afghanistan is a deeply divided land, ethnically, and it’s controlled by feudal warlords that aren’t going to sit back and let Westerners take over and transform their power base into a modern democracy. Unless we’re prepared to pour shed loads of dirty money into their pockets, that is.

Maybe I shouldn’t write off Afghanistan so cynically. Maybe ‘progressive’ forces in Afghanistan will win out. Maybe. But I think the odds are heavily stacked against them; and meanwhile our national security is being undermined, not strengthened. And our young men and women are being needlessly slaughtered – as are thousands of Afghan civilians.

And how many more grim milestones of hundreds and thousands of armed forces deaths must we expect if we do indeed stay in Afghanistan for 40 years?

England should side with the Palestinians: the possibilities for an English foreign policy

The dividing lines seem clear: conservatives (small ‘c’) and the British establishment broadly support Israel’s actions in attempting to eradicate Hamas as a military force in Gaza, taking their cue from the pro-Israeli US position; socialists and British Muslims back the Palestinians and even Hamas, to a variable extent; the liberal intelligentsia sympathises with the Gazan Palestinians while also conceding that, maybe, Israel has little choice other than to act as it is doing – a position based on the firm conviction that the continuing existence of a separate Jewish state of Israel is sacrosanct.

But what should English foreign policy be in the matter? Clearly, this is a paradoxical question, as there is no such thing, formally, as English foreign policy. As we know, foreign policy is a reserved matter, so that even if there were a devolved English government along the lines of those that presently exist in the other nations of the UK, that government would not have an official position on the events in Gaza or any other foreign-policy matter. That didn’t stop the Scottish First Minister’s pro-Palestinian assessment of the events from appearing on the Scottish Government’s website on 3 January, however: “The Israeli Government’s response to the security situation is totally disproportionate, and appears to be a general punishment of the people of Gaza”.

I actually agree with Alex Salmond: I think the readiness of the Israeli government to kill and injure so many innocent Palestinian civilians partakes of their general oppression of and enmity towards the Palestinian people, and their fundamental denial of the concept of a dignified, self-determining nation of Palestine. Only thinking of the situation in these terms can make sense of how the Israelis think it can possibly be justified to slaughter so many people in pursuit of their security objectives: they see their security and the defence of their own civilians as so paramount that the loss of Palestinian lives simply does not weigh in the balance. But beyond the demeaning trade-offs between the number of casualties on either side (how can you set a limit on the number of (Palestinian) human lives lost that is ‘acceptable’ or ‘proportionate’ to the aim of preventing other (Israeli) lives from being lost?), this attitude is comprehensible only when set against what is ultimately at stake: defence of Israel’s right to exist as an exclusively Jewish state is predicated on the denial of the existence of Palestine and, as a corollary (if necessary), on the destruction of the existence of Palestinians.

Note that I referred to ‘Palestine’ and not a ‘Palestinian state’. The point of the distinction is that the heart of the conflict between Israel and Hamas concerns whether the territory currently occupied by the state of Israel should remain a Jewish state or should become a new nation state of Palestine. Hamas and its anti-Israeli backers throughout the Muslim world – particularly, Iran – want to create a new Islamic state of Palestine, replacing the present state of Israel. Hence, the Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s infamous declaration that he wished to wipe Israel off the map, while chillingly evoking nuclear annihilation to Western ears, probably refers mainly to this aspiration to replace the state of Israel with an Islamic Republic of Palestine. By attempting to neutralise Hamas as any sort of military force in Gaza, the Israelis are trying to deal a mortal blow to general Palestinian aspirations towards the creation of such a nation of Palestine. The Israelis are aiming to negate any concept that they should be negotiating with Hamas ahead of the inauguration of Barack Obama as US president, as they doubtless suspect that he would have tried to cajole them into talks with an organisation they regard as a mortal enemy. Hence, if Hamas are taken out of the equation before President Obama can find his feet in foreign affairs, then only negotiations with the ‘moderate’ Fatah organisation leading towards the establishment of a two-state solution will be left on the table: a Palestinian state, separate from the Jewish state of Israel, and occupying a much-reduced territory to that of the Palestine that lives on in the hearts and dreams of the battered Palestinian people.

It’s easy to see why English people should naturally be inclined to side with the Palestinians. As I stated in a previous post, our aspirations towards the establishment of a distinct English nation, freed from subordination and assimilation to the UK state, are analogous to those of the Palestinians, even though the situation is clearly hugely different in other ways. We also share our patron saint St George with Palestine: the patron saint of suppressed nations, as I call him. The very fact that Palestine has a patron saint should tell us that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about much more than a fight for control of territory between Judaism and Islam, or between the West and Islam, for that matter. In a blog post on the subject today, Cranmer rightly reminds us that there is – or at least, was – a sizeable and ancient Palestinian Christian community, which is being persecuted and driven away from its ancestral homeland as much by Islamic hardliners as by Israel. And yet, Cranmer still persists in characterising the present conflict as just the latest manifestation of a mortal struggle between Judaism and Islam. Clearly, this is fundamental; and Cranmer does emphasise the way the religious conflict is wrapped up in beliefs about land ownership. However, more fundamental still is the struggle for nationhood: the fight to keep alive the idea and hope of a nation of Palestine that once occupied the territory now occupied by Israel. Hamas has hi-jacked those aspirations in the service of its own extremist Islamic agenda. But the Palestine to which the majority of Palestinians still aspire is not, I would suggest, a monolithic, Iranian-style Muslim state; but one in which there would be tolerance and protection of non-Muslim minorities, including the ancient Christian community.

And including Jews? Well, there’s the nub of the question. Is the maintenance of Israel as a Jewish state the only way to protect the Jewish people that live there from a terrifying new Holocaust or dispersion as the vengeance and hatred of the Palestinian people and the Arab world in general is wreaked upon it? This nightmare vision is what ensures that the West continues to back Israel, as we never want to allow another mass persecution and extermination of the Jews to happen again. But is a two-state solution really the only one that could guarantee the Jewish people’s security, while fulfilling – in part, at least – the Palestinian people’s aspirations towards nationhood? The English experience and, as I would say, the natural empathy we should feel towards the Palestinians, could suggest the outlines of a different way out of the impasse. After all, it was Britain that laid the foundations for the present morass by sanctioning the creation of a state of Israel without a corresponding Palestinian homeland while it was administering the territory in the wake of the Second World War. So perhaps England, as distinct from Britain, is in a unique position to atone for the failings of Britain and find a way through.

What if, instead of a two-state solution, England were to propose and push for a two-nation / one-state solution: an integrated, single, federal state covering the present territory of Israel and the Palestinian-controlled territories. The new Israel and Palestine would be divided into distinct self-administering nations, with re-negotiated land borders – e.g. the whole of the West Bank being incorporated into Palestine. Meanwhile, the city of Jerusalem could have a separate status as an international ‘free city’, rather like those of medieval Europe or, indeed, a devolved city-county like London. Effectively, then, Israel-Palestine would be divided into two nations plus a non-national city – Israel, Palestine and Jerusalem respectively – with governmental responsibilities being apportioned between the central state and the nations in rather the same way that they are presently between the UK state and the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (a structure that should also be extended to England, of course). The new state of Israel-Palestine would have to be secular – neither Jewish, Islamic nor Christian – so as to ensure equal rights and protection for all faith communities. The non-denominational, international city of Jerusalem could become a shining beacon and symbol of the peaceful cohabitation of the three great faiths for which it has such a privileged and precious status. If necessary, Jerusalem could become some sort of international protectorate, with its security being assured by a rotating international force made up from traditionally Christian and Muslim nations alongside those with other, non-Abrahamic faiths. And the fact that there would be a single state would mean that Palestinians could consider the whole of Israel-Palestine as their ‘country’, even if only a part of it were technically their nation. They would be free to live and work throughout the territory; as, indeed, would Jews be in the new nation of Palestine. This would make good some of the humiliation of the Palestinian people and make them feel that not only their nation but their land had been restored to them – although part of the agreement might have to be that all individual disputes over land ownership were formally ended.

‘It would never work’, I hear my readers say. Well, the present situation isn’t exactly working, either; and the single- and even dual-state solutions that have been advanced so far have not come to fruition. The above single-state / dual-nation solution is attempt to reconcile the conflicting claims of Jewish security and Palestinian nationhood. And it’s reconciliation that is so desperately needed; not bombs.

In any case, my main point is not this particular proposal in isolation. This is merely an example – but hopefully, an intriguing one – of what a distinctive English foreign policy might look like. We wouldn’t have to be hide-bound to the legacy of British foreign policy stretching back over decades and centuries; and we wouldn’t need to slavishly toe the American line. We could go with our instincts, our sympathies and our flair for pragmatic compromise. And just think; if England were able to mediate a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, just think how this could improve our relations with the Islamic world, and with the Muslim communities in our midst!

The possibilities, as they say, are endless. But it might require an independent English foreign policy, and indeed English independence per se, to bring them about. But the example I’ve just given is one where thinking outside the British box might enable England to play a wonderful role in international relations to which our genius for practical solutions and, perhaps, our Christian heritage suit us well.

Peace Day, 25 June: A Britishness Day Worthy Of the Name

There was confusion last week when it was first thought that the government’s plans for a new national British bank holiday – a Britishness Day – had been dropped, and then it was revealed merely that there were no definite plans or ideas for such a holiday but that the concept was still on the table. I am one who has derided the proposal for a Britishness Day, although I’m far from averse to an extra day off! Two, preferably: the most important one being St. George’s Day (23 April); and then, if they want to give us another one on top, I’m not complaining about the principle. It’s just the attempt to exploit such a popular idea to marshal the general campaign to expunge Englishness in favour of a spurious monolithic Britishness that I object to.

Let’s place ourselves in dreamland for a minute and imagine the government concedes the idea of public holidays in each of the UK’s four (or five, including Cornwall) nations coinciding with their Patron Saint’s Day. Is the idea of an additional holiday for Britain as a whole worth considering when we set aside all the Britishness malarkey? Some people have said they think Remembrance Day would be a suitable occasion; others have advocated a day celebrating victory in the Battle of Britain or even older battles such as Trafalgar or Waterloo.

It’s funny how so many of these symbols of Britishness have a militaristic theme! I think the Remembrance Day idea is not wholly inappropriate, and other nations celebrate military victories and wars of liberation as national holidays. France, for instance, has a holiday for both 11 November (which they call Armistice Day) and 8 May: ‘VE Day’, as we would call it. But the fact that we in Britain associate 11 November with solemn civic acts of remembrance would make it a rather sombre day to have a public holiday; and, in a way, it is a more eloquent tribute to our war dead if Remembrance Day falls on a working day and everything stops for two minutes’ silence at 11 am.

In addition, the use of Remembrance Day to try and whip up British patriotic fervour and identification with all things British seems cynical and inappropriate to me. Is Remembrance Day really a time to make us feel proud to be British? Sure, we can and should feel proud of the sacrifices of so many brave, and often so very young, men and women to safeguard our liberty, security and independence. But Remembrance Day properly is also a day to call to mind the tragic losses and destruction of life suffered on all sides, and by civilians as well as the military, in the conflicts of which Britain has been a part. Just as we rightly say of our fallen heroes, “we shall remember them”; so, too, we should also repeat to ourselves the lesson that so often we have failed to learn from war: “never again”.

The idea of using great national occasions and symbols such as Remembrance Day or the Battle of Britain to reaffirm and celebrate Britishness is of one piece with the way present conflicts and their victims are also exploited. We’re all supposed to rally round our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq; to buy the X-Factor single to provide the support for their families that the government should be providing; and to laud our lads as the Best of British and applaud them as they march through our towns to remember their fallen comrades. All of this amounts to using military conflicts, and the terrible loss of life they result in, to whip up national pride: you can’t object to the generous support and affection shown to those who are prepared to risk their lives for their country, and to their families; and therefore, you have to embrace all the militaristic Britishness that goes with it.

Let me make one thing clear: I’m not saying we should not support or feel proud of those brave members of the British Armed Forces as they slug it out with the Taliban or come up against Iraqi insurgents. I have the greatest admiration for them; all the more so, in fact, given their skill, genuine bravery and (generally) integrity as they cope with what is frankly a bum hand that they’ve been dealt by their political masters: futile, unwinnable wars that have earned Britain many more enemies, and brought us much more disrespect, than they have eliminated.

And this is really my point: to celebrate such valour and self-sacrifice as illustrating the intrinsic nobility of the British, and the justness of the causes for which they are prepared to go to war, always crosses over into a celebration and justification of those wars themselves. It’s as if we can’t be proud of the amazing skill and endurance of British forces in Afghanistan without buying into the war itself as something that is genuinely in defence of our national security and way of life, as the politicians would have us believe; and the more we express support for our boys in Iraq, the more we’re supposed to accept that it’s right that they are there.

In actual fact, I think it’s disrespectful to the lives lost in such conflicts to manipulate those sacrifices to nationalistic political ends. Maybe some, perhaps most, of the families of the young men and women lost in these latest chapters of the history of the British Army take solace from all the affirmation of the meaning behind their loved-ones’ sacrifices. But, in reality, they will all have to struggle with the unbearable grief of private loss and the inevitable anguish from thinking that, perhaps, their losses were in vain: for a cause that wasn’t worth it and that will not prevail. Such thoughts will hardly heal over time, especially if – as seems to me inevitable – the British Army eventually leaves Iraq still in a state of great instability and insecurity, and the Taliban send the Western armies packing, because they don’t have the same absolute will to win at any cost: making the cost paid by those British familes who have lost their sons and daughters even more appalling.

Yes, of course, we should remember the names of the latest additions to the Army’s roll call of honour. But such ‘remembrance’ is usually synonymous with forgetting the suffering that goes on among families and traumatised comrades for the rest of their lives; and certainly also with justifying the ongoing pursuit of questionable wars, and the continuing inflicting of death on ‘enemy’ combatants and civilians alike. In reports of the return of some regiments to their Colchester barracks last week, I was struck by the way the commentary referred to the large number of British casualties on the tour from which they were coming home, with fatalities running into double figures. And then, probably in the very next sentence, they casually mentioned the fact that the same returning heroes had been responsible for thousands of enemy deaths – as if that was a good thing. But what of the mothers and the families that grieve for them? What of the innocent civilians that will inevitably be included in the ranks of those thousands? Is it any wonder that so many in Afghanistan and the Muslim world hate us, and back the Taliban as liberating heroes?

The real purpose of remembrance, as I said, is firstly to express genuine sorrow and remorse for the loss of life – all life – that war brings; and particularly to celebrate those who gave their lives genuinely in the cause of freedom and justice, from which we have all benefited. And secondly, it is in fact to reaffirm our commitment to peace, not to celebrate and glamourise war in a manner that glosses over the real pain, horror and needless destruction it involves. Because that really is what is at play when remembrance gets shrouded not in the pall of death but in the bright colours of the Union Flag. It becomes a celebration of British values and the British sense that we are always on the side of right, backed up by our military muscle and memories of our proud imperial past. All of which conveniently brushes under the carpet the moral ambiguities and personal agonies of war’s violence, bloodshed and disaster.

So, by all means, let’s remember the dauntingly large list of British military personnel and civilians whose lives have been lost to war, military conflict or terrorism over the years. But, at the same time, we should reaffirm what is paradoxically the ultimate and only true purpose of war: peace. The purpose of war is the end of war; and this can ultimately and lastingly be achieved only when peace comes to reign in the hearts of men and women, and not hatred, mistrust and aggression. Until such time, we will continue not to learn the lesson of war: that war begets war; and that we must be at all times – in war and out of war – mindful of our absolute duty to seek peace and reconciliation.

Now that would be the kind of Britain that even I could be proud of: one that, instead of disingenuously celebrating and justifying its war-like genius in public acts of partial remembrance, were to resolve itself to be a genuine force for peace and reconciliation throughout the world – not a fomenter of hatred and violence. And that would be a Britishness Day worthy of the name: ‘Peace Day’. After all, my goodness, we need a bit of that.

Suggested day: 25 June. Neatly parallels Christmas; can be combined with celebrating and enjoying the summer solstice / Midsummer, which is such a lovely time of year. We also don’t have any other public holidays in June, and most people haven’t gone on their summer holidays by then. And there are many Christians, myself included, that hope that this will one day be a recognised feast – for all peoples – to celebrate the true peace that is our hope.

Campaign for Plain England (No. 2): Flag Flying, the DCMS and the PM in China

I have to admit to feeling a bit disappointed about the Department of (English) Culture, Media and Sport’s (DCMS) July consultation paper about flag flying on government buildings, which appeared on the new Governance of Britain website last week. I hadn’t really followed the detail of the government’s previous pronouncements on the issue, and I thought there might be some recommendations about flying flags other than the Union Flag, such as the Flag of St. George in England.

In fact, the consultation paper deals only with flying the Union Flag on UK government buildings in England, Scotland and Wales. What this effectively means is mostly government buildings in England, as the document “does not extend to Scottish Executive, Welsh Assembly buildings. The Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly government are responsible for policy on flag flying from their own buildings”.

What I want to know is, who’s responsible for plain, grammatical English (language, that is) in the DCMS? First of all, they omit the word ‘or’ from the first sentence, without which it is strictly speaking nonsensical. Secondly, do they mean that the Scottish Parliament is responsible for policy on flying the flag from the Scottish Parliament building only; or does this responsibility of the Scottish Parliament extend to other buildings of the Scottish Government (not Executive)? And if so, which flag or flags are we talking about (the Union Flag only or the Saltire or both, or others)? And what constitutes ‘their’ buildings anyway, as – technically – all Scottish Government buildings are UK government buildings (devolved not independent)? Unless ‘their’ has the legal sense of property ownership, in which case one might assume that at least the Scottish Parliament actually owns the premises where it convenes – but whether ownership of their accommodation extends to the Scottish Government and its various departments, I don’t know.

And ditto for Wales.

I suppose the consultation paper’s inability to address the English aspect of the flag issue (whether more frequent flying of the Flag of St. George on UK government buildings in England might help to foster a greater sense of national pride and engender a feeling that the UK government was at least trying to engage with the priorities of the English people) was only to be expected of the DCMS. As was its failure to communicate exactly which responsibilities in this matter are devolved to the Scottish and Welsh governments, and which are retained. This is because the DCMS is actually, in most but not all matters, the English Department of Culture, Media and Sport; as most but not all of the UK government’s responsibilities for these matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have been devolved to those countries’ own governments. Therefore, you would think that the DCMS would see it as a major part of its remit to promote, affirm, celebrate and defend English culture and sport; though not the English media, as Media is a retained UK-wide function. But that’s not how they appear to see it, or at least how they communicate what their role is. When you visit the Department’s website, you are met with what is a now familiar difficulty of disentangling which of its responsibilities are UK-wide, which of them relate to England only, and which of them relate to both England and Wales. Indeed, on the home page, there isn’t a single reference to England, even though the Department’s competency in some of the areas mentioned on the home page (i.e. culture, sport and tourism & leisure) is limited to England.

So here’s another example of the same old deception of presenting a government department’s activities as if they covered the whole of the UK when in reality they involve England only. In fact, the DCMS is a veritable patchwork of retained and devolved responsibilities that illustrates the complexity and asymmetry of the current devolution settlement. Or which would illustrate it if it wasn’t such hard work to find out which bits are UK-wide and which bits England- (or England and Wales-) only. For example, go to the misnamed ‘What we do’ page, and you get a listing of no fewer than 20 topics for which the department is responsible. But you have to click through to each one to find out how nationwide its responsibilities in each domain are. And even then, it’s not always obvious.

Take the case of architecture. I clicked the link to ‘architecture and design’, where it said: “We are responsible for the quality of architectural design in this country”. Which country is that?, I asked. It’s not clear, as neither ‘England’, ‘Scotland’, ‘Wales’, ‘UK’, ‘United Kingdom’ nor ‘Britain’ appear on the page. It took a visit to the Scottish Government website for me to work out that the DCMS’s responsibilities for architecture do not extend to Scotland; although they encompass Wales (I think). Therefore, in this instance, ‘this country’ means England and Wales, apparently. Another grammatical howler and logical non-sequitur.

I did eventually come across a list indicating which of the Department’s responsibilities have been devolved to Scotland (but not Wales) and which have been retained. There it says, “DCMS will be responsible for sponsoring the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, which will act in England as a Champion for Architecture”. Does this mean that the Commission will similarly act as a champion for architecture (why the capital letters?) in Wales? And is ‘acting in England as a Champion for Architecture’ the same thing as ‘acting as a champion for English architecture’? I think not; and I imagine that the same Commission (assuming it does have responsibility for Wales) wouldn’t be coy about saying that it was championing Welsh architecture. Note this preference for the phrase ‘in England’ over ‘English’. It means government departments, where they mention England at all, can talk about UK government responsibilities that are exercised ‘in England’ rather than about specifically English functions of government. The same applies to media reports about government policy or activities, where they say ‘in England’ as if to imply that those same departments had equivalent responsibilities in Scotland and Wales, which they don’t.

In the case of DCMS, what we have is not a department that proudly promotes the great culture of England (just as the corresponding devolved departments in Scotland and Wales so proudly affirm Scottish and Welsh culture) but a UK department looking after (UK) culture in England. So, to return to my point of departure, it’s not surprising that in the area of flag flying, they’re not an English government department making policy about flying the English flag on UK government buildings in England (unlike their devolved Scottish and Welsh counterparts, if I’ve understood the incoherent language of the consultation correctly); but rather, they’re a UK department making policy about flying the UK flag in England. Clearly, it’s not a department that’s interested in flying the flag for England.

By contrast, GB [Gordon Brown] was flying the flag for Britain in China last week. Or rather, he was promoting not British culture or values but British business, pure and simple. Note the ease with which any awkward questions about his hosts’ abysmal human rights record and their suppression of the Chinese people’s aspirations to a true democracy (such a pivotal British value, as Brown has frequently reiterated elsewhere) were not just brushed aside but swept right off the agenda and under the red carpet. Such a venal pursuit of privileged trading terms to me seemed a defeat of the much vaunted British values and a surrender of them to the mighty yuan. It was fitting, then, that the image of the Union Flag behind GB in a joint press conference with the Chinese Premier Wen was actually incorrect: it showed all four arms of the diagonal red Cross of St. Patrick closer to the horizontal centre of the flag than its outside. (See the video of the press conference; you’ll have to wait till almost the end for the flag to be flashed up.) When I first saw the image on the TV news, I thought the flag was actually flying upside down: the traditional military distress signal, indicating that a British position may have been captured.

Now where have I seen an inverted Union Jack recently?, I asked myself. I was reminded of the answer to that question when I visited the said new Governance of Britain website: they’ve adopted an upside-down Union Flag as their logo! What more telling symbol could there be that the government’s drive to create and reinforce a British-national culture and set of values is destined to defeat! Just as those values were defeated and in retreat in GB’s single-minded pursuit of Chinese consumers’ cash and Chinese investors’ funds last week. Perhaps the DCMS should produce some guidelines about the correct way to fly the Union Flag. Except they’d be so garbled that no one would be able to understand them. Certainly not the Mandarins organising the PM’s trip, it would appear!

If they want people to respect the flag, perhaps they could begin by respecting the values it’s meant to symbolise. Better still, replace it with the English flag, symbolising English people’s refusal to sell ourselves short and, indeed, auction our values to the highest bidder.

Saint Tony becomes a Catholic: a conversion of heart and mind?

Commenting on Tony Blair’s reception into the Catholic Church on Friday, the Vatican is reported to have stated that the decision by someone as authoritative as Tony Blair to join the Church can “only arouse joy and respect”.

Speaking as a Roman Catholic myself, I have to say that while I respect the former PM’s decision, it doesn’t fill me with joy. I’m with Ann Widdecombe, the Tory MP and Catholic convert, who wonders whether Mr Blair has now changed his mind over the many decisions he took and supported that ran contrary to Church teaching and advice.

Mr Blair is a profoundly ambiguous figure from a moral perspective: hero or villain; morally courageous or moral coward? The decision over which he faced the biggest moral dilemma – and over which he has been most condemned – is of course that of taking the UK into the US-led war in Iraq. What I’m concerned about is that Tony Blair’s acceptance into the Catholic Church could lend the impression, especially in the Middle East, that the Church endorses that decision. In fact, almost every senior figure in the Church, including the late Pope John Paul II, spoke out against the war and affirmed that it did not meet the criteria for a Just War.

Tony Blair is known to have prayed over his decision back in 2003. While this fact, or at least the public admission of it, provoked a combination of shock, derision and outrage on the part of many non-religious people in the UK, this behaviour is the minimum that would be expected of Christians contemplating doing something that would inevitably result in the loss of many thousands of innocent lives. Even so, Mr Blair went ahead with the war, ignoring the personal advice against doing so he’s known to have received from the late Pope along with the consensus in the worldwide Catholic Church and the opinion of most senior Anglicans.

Moral courage or moral cowardice? Probably a bit of both. Who knows, really, what motivated Mr Blair’s decision? Judgement is mine, says the Lord. All I can say is that, in my opinion, informed by my own Catholic faith, it was a profoundly wrong choice, both morally and strategically. It was not a Just War; it did result in the needless loss of hundreds of thousands of lives; it has destabilised Iraq and the whole Middle East; it undermined the political consensus and moral authority behind the USA and Britain in the ‘war on terror’; and it has increased support for so-called Islamist terrorism.

Elsewhere, I’ve expressed the hope that there may have been nobler, hidden reasons for Tony Blair’s backing for the USA in Iraq, such as the need to be ‘in’ with George Bush in order to exercise influence over his choices and steer him away from even more disastrous courses of action. Also, I wondered whether Mr Blair’s new role of Middle East peace envoy had been taken on partly out of a wish to make reparation for the damage to the whole region and the escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for which the Iraq War has been responsible. Mr Blair is a highly intelligent man, and his decision to become a Catholic demonstrates he’s also a man who is finally having the courage of his convictions. He must know that it’s the divisions in Israel-Palestine that are the ultimate source of Islamically inspired terrorism; and that bringing peace in the Holy Land, rather than bringing war to the Middle East, is the only way to defeat the terrorists.

Blessed are the peacemakers. The proof of Tony Blair’s religious conversion will be if he can show that he is one.

Afghanistan: A Liberal and Just Cause?

Am I alone in feeling disappointed at the statement of support for the war in Afghanistan provided in an interview on Sunday by Menzies Campbell, the leader of the British Liberal Democratic Party (Lib Dems)? This came in the context of his call for the complete withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. Some of the forces could then be re-deployed in Afghanistan, where they were needed and could be utilised more effectively, according to Mr Campbell.

I suppose I already knew that the Lib Dems (the only major UK party to oppose sending British troops into Iraq) supported our participation in the fighting in Afghanistan. But for me, Campbell’s endorsement provided confirmation of what I’ve been saying in different posts throughout this blog: that there’s been a concerted campaign recently to build support from liberals for the war in Afghanistan.

How is it that Afghanistan is a liberal cause while Iraq is not? The obvious answer is that the Taliban-Al Qaeda (often conflated as the one Enemy in Afghanistan) represents an anti-liberal, anti-democratic, tyrannical ideology. But so did Saddam Hussein. OK: the Taliban-Al Qaeda had proved through 9/11 that they were a serious threat to the West and that therefore they had to be eliminated. The war against them qualified as a Just War, whereas the WMD threat in Iraq was non-existent and we were hoodwinked into believing in it by Tony Blair.

Well, to qualify as a Just War, there needs to be 1) a strong chance that the just aims of the war can actually be achieved through the conflict; and 2) a rational basis for believing that the benefit that is sought outweighs the evil of the destruction and loss of life that the war brings about. If the first of these conditions is not met, it follows that the second condition also does not obtain. As I’ve argued in my previous two posts on Afghanistan, there is very little likelihood that the US and Britain (and whatever other NATO allies get involved) will be able to defeat the Taliban by military means. Nor is there much convincing evidence that the struggle against Al Qaeda or Islamically inspired terrorism in general has been advanced by the war in Afghanistan.

But even if one sincerely believed that the Taliban-Al Qaeda could be defeated militarily in Afghanistan, there would still be the question of whether the goal of removing them from power justifies all the loss and damage of innocent lives that has been the inevitable consequence of the war. Maybe if Al Qaeda was eliminated for good, you could think that this might constitute a moral benefit that was so great that lives had unfortunately to be sacrificed in pursuit of it. But who really believes that a putative military victory in Afghanistan would result in the demise of Al Qaeda? In some ways, it might strengthen support for them. And as for the Taliban, one is reminded of the old Cold War saying, ‘better red than dead’! In this case, ask the Afghans who’ve lost dear relatives and friends whether they’d prefer them alive if it meant the Taliban were back in power. Admittedly, some might say the sacrifice was worthwhile; but I bet more would say it wasn’t.

And yet, we’ve decided on their behalf that all those deaths are worthwhile – in the name of democracy. But what chance have we got of (re)-establishing democracy in Afghanistan: a country riven by regional and tribal differences, and in the hands of the warlords and drug barons? The US drive to democratise the Middle East is widely viewed in Muslim countries as a synonym for attempting to impose Western control and secularise Islamic states. So do we think we’ll win much support – inside and outside the country – for our efforts to defend democracy through military conflict with (nominally) Islamic forces in Afghanistan?

But maybe that’s what our presence in Afghanistan is really about – that ‘liberation of the Afghan people’ business being just so much PR fluff: we want the country to be under Western control and we want to replace an Islamic system of government with a secular democracy. Those are the objectives, aren’t they? So the (extremist) Muslim critics of our actions have got it right in this case. But we think we’re in the right.

We characterise the first of these objectives as ‘self-defence’: we have to be in control in Afghanistan, because if we’re not, the Taliban-Al Qaeda will be, and then we’ll be even more vulnerable to terrorism. Whether this consequence would actually flow from the Taliban getting back into power in Afghanistan is debatable: there are other and better ways of fighting terrorism than slugging it out with the Taliban-Al Qaeda in a South Asian backwater. But then, as I’ve argued in my previous posts on Afghanistan, it’s about more than just winning an isolated battle against the terrorists: at stake are the goals of maintaining Western control of the Middle East as a whole, isolating Iran, and preventing Al Qaeda from getting their hands on the potential nuclear arsenal of that country or the actual nuclear arsenal of Pakistan. It’s a region-wide strategic conflict, according to whose logic Afghanistan just can’t be allowed to fall to the Taliban.

Especially as the Taliban represent everything that we find odious, primitive and barbaric about Islam. The Taliban gives us a form of Islam that is a worthy object of our dislike and fear of that faith (our Islamophobia). Because the Taliban are so authoritarian, oppressive, sexist, and narrowly literalistic and dogmatic in their interpretation of Islam, this allows us to feel justified in ejecting them from power and attempting to set up a secular democracy in their place. It’s not ‘regime change’ as in Iraq, we say to ourselves, but a fight that has been elevated to truly symbolic proportions: one between our real Enemy – ‘Islamism’, ‘extreme Islam’ – and what we think we represent: freedom, equality, progress. On top of the whole strategic game, that’s the other reason why we think we can’t and mustn’t lose in Afghanistan: it could be used by the Islamists to show to the Muslim world that history is not necessarily on the side of the West; that the ‘end of history’ may not have to be the triumph of secular-liberal democracy everywhere – first against Communism, and then against Islam. And maybe defeat would shake our own conviction a little that the future belongs to us and our values.

But this is a long way from a simple war objective – ridding Afghanistan of a tyranny – that might provide a Just War-based vindication of all the carnage there, if we thought we could actually achieve it. It’s not ultimately about defending the Afghan people; seriously, how many people in the West really care about the Afghan people the way, for instance, they claim to care about the poor in Africa or other parts of Asia? On one level, we probably think they’re actually to blame for the misery of indigence and violent conflict that has been their lot for at least the past 30 years. They’re primitive, ill-educated people – we say to ourselves – that have allowed themselves to be easy prey to warlords and extremists; and not only that, but they produce opium crops on an industrial scale for export to the West. It’s not surprising that a people like that was so ignorant and docile as to accept the Taliban yoke.

In short, they’re the sort of Muslim for whom one can feel little sympathy. No wonder we think their lives are so expendable in defence of our Western interests and values. The liberal cause must be upheld after all – at any price.

Afghanistan: Important Not To Fail; But Possible and Desirable To Succeed?

David Cameron, the beleaguered British Conservative Party leader, joined the debate on Afghanistan yesterday by reaffirming the government’s line that “we cannot afford to fail” in Afghanistan.

How is ‘failure’ defined? This is not so much losing the war, as no one is prepared to refer openly to the possibility of a rout such as that which the Afghan Mujahideen inflicted on the Russians or the Vietcong inflicted on the US in Vietnam. No, ‘failure’ is thought of as not seeing the mission through to the end: giving up on it and leaving Afghanistan to its own devices.

As Mr Cameron put it, “We need to look at how we’re working together with our NATO allies and with the Americans, to make sure there’s more unity in our command and in our purpose, and we also do need other NATO countries to do more”. In other words, we need to stick to our purpose and, in order to ensure that we don’t lose our morale and will to go on, there needs to be more commitment from America’s and Britain’s NATO allies. And underlying this, there is indeed the tacit fear that the whole thing could unravel and we could be staring military defeat in the face: “Britain is definitely bearing its share of the burden, but we need more helicopters, we need more support, and also we need other NATO countries to play their part”.

But while failure is giving up or (unspoken nightmare scenario) actual defeat, the politicians are not prepared to openly articulate what the nature and cost of ‘success’ might be. Mr Cameron merely alluded to this when he called for “gritty, hard-headed decisions” on how the international community operates in Afghanistan. This is code for being prepared to support an escalation of the US / NATO military campaign to defeat the Taliban. In other words, a new counter-offensive against the Taliban may be being planned, and we’re going to have to accept the brutality and destructiveness of this campaign, which may be the only means to avoid the afore-mentioned ‘failure’.

If truth is the first casualty of war, then real, human casualties are the first consequence of the warmongers’ deceits. One of the reasons why Western political and military will over Afghanistan may be wavering at the moment is that politicians realise the immense human cost that would have to be paid to secure anything reminiscent of a military ‘victory’ over the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies. A huge deployment of military personnel and firepower would be necessary: clearly, therefore, requiring the support of all the members of NATO. We’d be looking at a large-scale, probably long-term, intensive counter-insurgency / anti-guerrilla war waged on multiple fronts, including – most dangerously of all – across the border in Pakistan. And we’d have to be willing to undertake the mass killing of Taliban and Al-Qaeda combatants and supporters, including probably civilian sympathisers, suppliers and informers – difficult in a violent and fast-moving combat situation to make a clear-cut distinction between active terrorists (directly involved in acts of violence) and passive terrorists (those who provide the infrastructure, and moral and practical support vital for any insurgency to be prosecuted).

Are we really willing for a military campaign such as this to be waged on our behalf in Afghanistan? Would such a brutal war be morally justifiable, even apart from its uncertain prospects of success (see my opinion in the previous blog entry that we cannot achieve a military victory in Afghanistan)? Furthermore, if we enter into an all-out war such as this without our eyes being wide open to the scale of the conflict and the carnage that would be necessary, on our side as well as the enemy’s – and without being 100% behind the effort and prepared to accept all the human and economic costs – then we could well be heading for the even greater failure of military defeat, as opposed to the limited failure of abandoning the mission. We have to be aware and honest about what ‘success’ would entail in Afghanistan and make an open, conscious decision to embrace the measures necessary to achieve it. Then, at least, if (and I would say when) defeat came, we could at least say in all conscience that we took our choice and paid the price. But going into something like this without being honest about what’s involved entails accepting the casualties of war while lacking the will to take moral and practical responsibility for them – and making failure more certain than ever as our will and purpose is not set and definite.

And even if the unlikely event of military victory occurred, would this really constitute success? In two senses: firstly, by the brutality of our actions and the inevitable destruction of innocent lives, we would have demonstrated to those in the Muslim world who are inclined to be sympathetic towards extremist beliefs and movements that their hostility towards the West is justified, and that they should perhaps consider escalating their moral support for Al-Qaeda and other ‘Islamist’ organisations into practical and active commitment to the struggle. In this way, we would have strengthened the hand of the terrorists and ensured that the fight against them would last even longer. We would have won the battle but not the war. And if the Islamist cause was boosted in this way, how long would it be before we faced a new version of the Taliban and a new insurgency in Afghanistan?

Secondly, and related to this, we would have greatly damaged the moral credibility of our cause, with the possible consequence that our will to continue the fight against terrorism would be weakened at the very moment that our resolve needed to be stronger than ever, given the increased support for terrorism that our very actions had brought about. The ‘failure’ of the Americans in Vietnam and that of the Soviets in Afghanistan had similar consequences: undermining belief and confidence in the values and social structures of the defeated countries. Whether we were ‘victorious’ or – as is more likely – defeated in an all-out war against the Taliban, the demoralising effect could be the same – as could the ultimate outcome, in that the future and peace of Afghanistan would still be far from secure even in victory.

And this is precisely what the terrorists are striving to achieve: their long-term strategy all along has been to suck the US and its Western allies into a devastating long-term conflict that can’t be won; because as soon as the terrorists are thwarted in one theatre of war or tactic, they spring up in another war zone and come up with new terrifying forms of violence. Their ultimate objective is to sap the morale, the economy and the military power of the West – and to finally render us incapable or unwilling to resist their power grab in regions we can no longer control, and in societies where we have lost our credibility and influence.

Far better, then, to step back from the abyss that awaits us in Afghanistan. This would not be failure but a strategic retreat. The greater failure would be the long-term moral and tactical error that prosecuting war against the Taliban to the bitter end – victorious or not – would represent. And given that defeat in such a war would be the more likely scenario than victory, far better to carry out an orderly retreat while we can than to run into another Dunkirk.

If the Taliban subsequently seized back power in Afghanistan, this would regrettably be Afghanistan’s tragedy but not ours, which is what would result from going on in pursuit of a pyrrhic or elusive victory.

And this would not necessarily be the enormous setback in the war against terrorism that the politicians try to make out that it would be. Terrorism cannot be defeated by conventional military means. Terrorism springs from a combination of hatred and moral outrage supported by an absolute belief system. The only way to defeat it is to address the real grievances and problems upon which that hatred and outrage feed. We need to focus on being reconciled with the Muslim world and demonstrating that we are not its enemies. But to do this we have to be truly honest about the extent to which we are or are not really hostile or prejudiced towards Islam.

Only by openly confronting our fears can we begin to overcome them. One of the consequences of a failure to do this will surely be the moral and tactical failure of further futile violence in Afghanistan.