BLAIR’S BLIND SPOTS November 20, 2006
Posted by wmmbb in Terrorism Issues.trackback
It will not be soon enough but British Prime Minister Blair is leaving office, finally, we understood, in July next year. This does not stop him making pronouncements in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan.
After announcing that British troops would stay in Afghanistan until the job is done, he also observed, according to this BBC report:
“We believe that Afghanistan, rather than being abused as a haven for terrorists and for the Taleban to oppress people, that Afghanistan and its people deserve the chance to increase their prosperity and to live in a proper democratic state.
“The roots of the Taleban, al-Qaeda, this type of global terrorism around the world, are deep and where they gained a foothold in a country like Afghanistan, it is going to take time to banish that for good,” he said.
Blair has become as blind as King Lear.
POSTSCRIPT: 23 November 2006.
Gary Sauer-Thompson is pertinent at Public Opinion, deconstructing the War on Terror, and linking to recent events in Lebanon. H e observes:
The flaw with Bush’s [ and Blair's] global war on terror (with its implication that terrorism is a specifically Islamic phenomenon) is not just its duality of tyrannies versus freedom, good versus evil, or advocating widening the war in Iraq to encompass Syria and Iran so as to bring democracy to the Middle East through regime change.
It is the tendency to group together under the same terrorist label movements which are very different in nature, having in common only their resort to violence in pursuit of political goals. The different violent non-state actors in Afghanistan and Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Somalia are all lumped together.
However, global Jihad of Al-Qaida is quite different from a nationalist, legitimate, defensive jihad, which seeks primarily to liberate its home territory from foreign occupation— eg., Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine and the Mahdi army in Iraq.
Meanwhile Juan Cole expects Britain to withdraw from Iraq following the transfer of power to Gordon Brown.
CODA:
And to think some people, names withheld to protect the guilty, think bloggers are vain, if not narcisstic. Anita Quigley, is right to the extent that blogging is a personality thing, and some people are good at it, like some are good at selling or drawing. She does not get that blogging need not be mass media. It is networking, which can be powerful, and it is global. Blogging can be an expression of democratic civility, and that is worth having and worth defending. It adds to the democratic polity; it does not subtract form it.
And your objection is?
Afganistan is a war that Bush and Blair can talk about with an absolutely clear conscience. The Taliban was a brutal regime, and whether it’s in response to 9/11 or otherwise, we should all be eternally thankful that it’s gone.
I’m still waiting for the Left to properly articulate the case for a Just War. Or is reflexive anti-Americanism and appeasement pacificism all that can be offered?
Thanks for the comment Ari
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The Taliban Government was removed, but as a political and military movement the Taliban has come back.The reasons for its resurgence, which is an appropriate description given the large scale firefights with the British in Southern Afghanistan, is not something on which I am expert, but may be related to endemic adminsitrative corruption and traditional tribal loyalties.On this matter Blair is being somewhat glib.
The case for not invading Iraq was spelt out in the Nuremberg Trials. Just war theory, as I understand it in its generality, is applying legal and ethical principles to initiation and conduct of war. But why stop at war? Nevertheless, to address your first question, the Iraq Occupation has increased terrorism, not least in Iraq, and not lessened it.
“Reflective” – or unreflective – “anti-Americanism and appeasement pacificism” is merely sloganeering.