[Peace-discuss] Showdown in Brighton on British troops in Afghanistan?

[C. G. Estabrook]

"The Afghan war is a fraud. It began as an American vendetta for domestic 
consumption in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, in which not a single 
Afghan was involved. The Taliban, who are Afghans, had no quarrel with the 
United States and were dealing secretly with the Clinton administration over a 
strategic pipeline. They offered to apprehend Osama Bin Laden and hand him over 
to a clerical court, but this was rejected.  The establishment of a permanent 
US/Nato presence in a resource-rich, strategic region is the principal reason 
for the war..."

[It takes an Australo-Brit journalist, an outsider wherever he operates, to say 
the simple truth that the pathetic toadies in the US ideological institutions -- 
media and academia -- refuse even to mention.  --CGE]


	For Britons, The Party Game Is Over
	Sep 17, 2009 By John Pilger

On the day Prime Minister Gordon Brown made his "major policy speech" on 
Afghanistan, repeating his surreal claim that if the British army did not fight 
Pashtun tribesmen over there, they would be over here, the stench of burnt flesh 
hung over the banks of the Kunduz River. Nato fighter planes had blown the 
poorest of the poor to bits. They were Afghan villagers who had rushed to siphon 
off fuel from two stalled tankers. Many were children with water buckets and 
cooking pots. "At least" 90 were killed, although Nato prefers not to count its 
civilian enemy. "It was a scene from hell," said Mohammed Daud, a witness. 
"Hands, legs and body parts were scattered everywhere." No parade for them along 
a Wiltshire high street.

I saw something similar in south-east Asia. An incendiary bomb had razed most of 
a thatched village, and bits of charred people were hanging on upended fishing 
nets. Those intact lay splayed and black, like large spiders. I have never 
believed you need witness such a hell to comprehend the crime. A standard-issue 
conscience is enough for all but the morally corrupt and powerful.

Fresh from another dysfunctional photo opportunity with troops in Afghanistan "a 
contrivance far from the impoverished suffering of that country"  Brown 
"authorized" the Rambo-style rescue of Stephen Farrell, a journalist of British 
and Irish nationality, at the site of the Nato attack. It was a stunt that went 
wrong. A British soldier was killed and Farrell's guide, Sultan Munadi, an 
Afghan journalist, was abandoned and killed. Munadi's family now fully 
appreciates the different worth of British and Afghan lives.

During the 1914-18 slaughter, Prime Minister Lloyd George confided: "If people 
really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they 
don't know and can't know." Have we not yet advanced over a century's corpses to 
a point where the likes of Brown are denied their mendacious subterfuge? The 
Afghan war is a fraud. It began as an American vendetta for domestic consumption 
in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, in which not a single Afghan was 
involved. The Taliban, who are Afghans, had no quarrel with the United States 
and were dealing secretly with the Clinton administration over a strategic 
pipeline. They offered to apprehend Osama Bin Laden and hand him over to a 
clerical court, but this was rejected.

The establishment of a permanent US/Nato presence in a resource-rich, strategic 
region is the principal reason for the war. The British are there because that 
is what Washington wants. Preventing the Taliban from storming our streets is 
reminiscent of President Lyndon B Johnson's plaint: "We have to stop the 
communists over there [Vietnam] or we'll soon be fighting them in California."

There is one difference. By refusing to bring the troops home, Brown is likely 
to provoke an atrocity by young British Muslims who view the war as a western 
crusade; the recent Old Bailey trail made that clear. He has been told as much 
by British intelligence and security services. Brown's own security adviser has 
said as much publicly. As with Tony Blair and the bombs of 7 July 2005, he will 
bear ultimate responsibility for bringing violence and grief to his own people.

More than MPs' fake expenses, it is this corrupting and trivializing of life and 
death that mark a fitting end to the "modernized" Labour Party, the party of 
criminal war. Do the delegates preparing for the party's annual rituals in 
Brighton comprehend this? It says enough that most Labour MPs never demanded a 
vote on Blair's bloodshed in Iraq and gave him a standing ovation when he 
departed. One timid motion proposed by the "grass roots" at Brighton might be 
allowed. This concludes that "a majority of the public believe that the war [in 
Afghanistan] is unwinnable." There is no suggestion that it is wrong, immoral 
and based on lies similar to those that led to the extinction of a million 
Iraqis, "an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide," according to one 
scholarly estimate.

This is largely why the game of parliamentary politics is over for so many 
Britons, especially the young. In 2005, a bent system allowed Blair to win with 
fewer popular votes than the Tories in their electoral catastrophe of 1997. New 
Labour's greatest achievement is the lowest turnouts since universal voting 
began. Today, voters watch Brown give billions of public money to casino banks 
while demanding nothing in return, having once hailed their practices as an 
inspiration "for the whole economy." At the recent meeting of G20 leaders in 
London, Brown distinguished himself by opposing, and killing, a modest 
Franco-German proposal for a limit on bonuses and penalties for companies that 
broke it. The gap between rich and poor in Britain is now the widest since 1968.

New Labour's causes and effect extend from the one in five young people denied 
employment, education and hope to the £12m that Blair coins in a year, 
"advising" the rich and lecturing to them at £157,000 a time. For the more 
extreme among Blair's and Brown's mentors and courtiers, such as the twice 
disgraced Peter Mandelson, this represents the most sought after achievement of 
all: the positioning of Labour to the right of the Tories, though it is probably 
correct to say the two main parties have converged, now competing feverishly 
with each other to threaten cuts in public services in order to pay for the 
bailing out of the banks and for the druglords of Kabul. There is no mention of 
cutting the billions to be spent on replacing Trident nuclear submarines 
designed for the defunct cold war.

The game is over. Corporatism and a reinvigorated militarism have finally 
appropriated parliamentary democracy, a historic shift. For those Afghan 
villagers blown to pieces in our name, one craven motion at Labour's conference 
is too late. At the very least, the party's "grass roots" might ask themselves why.

www.johnpilger.com