Jonathan Freedland: Our Amnesia on Afghanistan
[Jonathan Freedland is the Guardian's policy editor and has been a columnist for the paper since 1997.]
This is remembrance week, when we are supposed to wear a poppy or stand in silence and remember those who have fallen. And yet we seem to have a problem with memory – especially when it comes to peace and war. We tell ourselves we will never forget and yet, when we debate the war in which British troops are fighting and dying, we are saddled with a national amnesia.
Part of the problem is distraction. In the last day or so we have been diverted by a row over the prime minister's handwriting, the Sun reading into Gordon Brown's scratchy scrawl – a function of his visual impairment – a callous disregard for the war dead. It's a cruel and shabby exercise by the Sun, one that exploits the understandable rage of a bereaved mother. But it does nothing to rid us of our forgetfulness.
And with Afghanistan there is so much we have forgotten. "There is no sense that we sought to crush and dominate this country throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries," says Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the School of Oriental and African Studies. "We have no memory of that – but the Afghans do."
Or, if we were in the rolling White House debate – apparently due to bear fruit soon – over what to do next in Afghanistan, we might remember the last time the US and its allies feared they were about to get sucked into a foreign quagmire. The arguments pushed now were offered then, including the one made by Boris Johnson this week: "To pull out now ... would be the biggest betrayal of those who have given their lives so far." Advocates of escalation in Vietnam used to say that, too: we have to send more men to die, otherwise those already dead will have died in vain.
Or we might remember the last time a mighty superpower tried to master unruly Afghanistan. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979, and within a few years their young men were losing their limbs or their lives to landmines – the IEDs of their day – amid ever angrier complaints about a shortage of helicopters. Whatever other reactions we should have to the fate of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan – horror, grief, despair – surprise should not be among them.
But there is more we should be remembering. For that is the heart of the matter: we have forgotten why we went in there in the first place.
It was sold to us on a simple and compelling premise. It was an act of self-defence, in response to 9/11. Al-Qaida was the enemy, it had taken root in Afghanistan, and so it was legitimate to hit back. The objective was to capture and kill Osama bin Laden and prevent al-Qaida using Afghanistan as a base from which to launch further attacks.
Now, though, that logic seems a fairly distant memory. Few argue that al-Qaida has a presence in Afghanistan any more: Bin Laden's men have been chased across the border into Pakistan, or scattered around the globe. So now the objective is something else entirely – to defeat the Taliban, which once hosted Bin Laden, and to reshape Afghanistan into a functioning society that will be permanently inhospitable to al-Qaida.
What President Obama now has to decide is if he accepts this larger mission. The current signals are that he does, and that while he may not give General Stanley McChrystal the 40,000 extra troops he asked for, he is expected to send 30,000 – an "uplift" from the 68,000 US troops there now (itself a doubling of the number when George W Bush left office).
There are powerful reasons to be glum about that news...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
This is remembrance week, when we are supposed to wear a poppy or stand in silence and remember those who have fallen. And yet we seem to have a problem with memory – especially when it comes to peace and war. We tell ourselves we will never forget and yet, when we debate the war in which British troops are fighting and dying, we are saddled with a national amnesia.
Part of the problem is distraction. In the last day or so we have been diverted by a row over the prime minister's handwriting, the Sun reading into Gordon Brown's scratchy scrawl – a function of his visual impairment – a callous disregard for the war dead. It's a cruel and shabby exercise by the Sun, one that exploits the understandable rage of a bereaved mother. But it does nothing to rid us of our forgetfulness.
And with Afghanistan there is so much we have forgotten. "There is no sense that we sought to crush and dominate this country throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries," says Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the School of Oriental and African Studies. "We have no memory of that – but the Afghans do."
Or, if we were in the rolling White House debate – apparently due to bear fruit soon – over what to do next in Afghanistan, we might remember the last time the US and its allies feared they were about to get sucked into a foreign quagmire. The arguments pushed now were offered then, including the one made by Boris Johnson this week: "To pull out now ... would be the biggest betrayal of those who have given their lives so far." Advocates of escalation in Vietnam used to say that, too: we have to send more men to die, otherwise those already dead will have died in vain.
Or we might remember the last time a mighty superpower tried to master unruly Afghanistan. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979, and within a few years their young men were losing their limbs or their lives to landmines – the IEDs of their day – amid ever angrier complaints about a shortage of helicopters. Whatever other reactions we should have to the fate of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan – horror, grief, despair – surprise should not be among them.
But there is more we should be remembering. For that is the heart of the matter: we have forgotten why we went in there in the first place.
It was sold to us on a simple and compelling premise. It was an act of self-defence, in response to 9/11. Al-Qaida was the enemy, it had taken root in Afghanistan, and so it was legitimate to hit back. The objective was to capture and kill Osama bin Laden and prevent al-Qaida using Afghanistan as a base from which to launch further attacks.
Now, though, that logic seems a fairly distant memory. Few argue that al-Qaida has a presence in Afghanistan any more: Bin Laden's men have been chased across the border into Pakistan, or scattered around the globe. So now the objective is something else entirely – to defeat the Taliban, which once hosted Bin Laden, and to reshape Afghanistan into a functioning society that will be permanently inhospitable to al-Qaida.
What President Obama now has to decide is if he accepts this larger mission. The current signals are that he does, and that while he may not give General Stanley McChrystal the 40,000 extra troops he asked for, he is expected to send 30,000 – an "uplift" from the 68,000 US troops there now (itself a doubling of the number when George W Bush left office).
There are powerful reasons to be glum about that news...