Comments on: Disarray in Kabul

By: nick g.

nick g. — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:48:11 +0000

Sorry, Nostalgic. It made the internet news here, so I assumed that it was something widely known in Britain. I was really shocked to find that 42% of Britains don’t believe that Sherlock Holmes was real! What is education coming to?

By: dan

dan — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:42:18 +0000

This complaint has been current for at least two years now; I know because I’ve been watching briefings and appears by, for example, US General Jim Jones on C-SPAN. The fact is, as someone stated above, the Taliban is not even a cohesive fighting force; they are a media bracket involving warlords, charismatic mullahs, drug traffickers, opium farmers, smuggling routes, and Uzbek/Pashto/Dara tribes armed by Russia, among others. On the side of the Modern World, NATO is most hampered by the political realities of European countries where vast majorities reject anything remotely smacking of military imperialism, having been reared on Marxist-Leninism amid the cultural consequences of World War 2.

The fact is, “abandoning” Afghanistan following the Soviet War was exactly the circumstance that resulted in a Central Asian base for interntational terrorism, and no strategic commander of responsible militaries is going to allow that to happen again. Yes, the problem is Pakistan – specifically the tribal areas (30+ million people) – who can give a man a rifle and a cause where there would only otherwise be boredom, subordination to a tribal chief or mullah, and shepherding. This is why Pakistan is the major target, and these tribals must finally be brought to heel. If they could be ignored, all the better, but 9/11, USS Cole, and related developments demonstrate with crystal clarity that they cannot be ignored.

Yes, Bismarck was referring to the Balkans.

“The Retreat from Kabul” was only one of about a dozen successful British attempts to manage these psychotic tribes in British efforts to prevent Russian inroads through Persia and the Khyber Pass into their Indian possessions. The Retreat from Kabul was a clear failure of logistics, and it was not repeated. Every military engagement of the British Empire there involved an astonishingly small number of Imperial – mostly Indian – troops against huge numbers of tribals, usually in tactically disadvantageous terrain.

You people ever heard of Wikipedia? Try it for starters. Such threads show that, whatever Wiki’s failures, it provides an outline of truth of which most of you pansies are completely ignorant.

By: Paul Marks

Paul Marks — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:27:09 +0000

The “safe” Pakistan is a thing of the past – was I the only one to notice the Preditors now kill people in Pakistan?

In short the “you can not touch me I am not the Pakistani side of the border” time is over.

Nor, of coure, is there any real distinction between the A.Q. and the Taliban.

By the way many empires have had Afghanistan as a stable part of them.

Although this is not the objective of the West.

As, contrary to Simon Jenkins and co, there is no such thing as the “American Empire”.

By: Nick M

Nick M — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:01:40 +0000

Thanks Otto.

I’m surprised you no longer remember your own dictums

By: PaulT

PaulT — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 13:14:54 +0000

Jenkins is a good writer on domestic issues, but he absolutely zero grasp of foreign policy. He calls himself a libertarian, but actually he’s a Pat Buchanan style conservative.

On another point, western military efforts are hampered by the leftie, guilt-ridden, self-loathing thinking which has spread like a cancer through the political, academic and media classes. Leftards believe anything the West does is evil, whereas anything that say, the Taliban does is good, or if not good, then excusable.

This means that policies that would achieve our aims are thwarted, because military leaders must fight with at least one, usually both arms tied behind their backs.

By: Johnathan Pearce

Johnathan Pearce — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:01:14 +0000

I love the way that Simon Jenkins builds up the Taliban into an invincible force; no doubt had Simon been writing in say, 1940, we’d get lots of learned, oh-so “realist” commentary about that warmongering Churchill and his failure to grasp the deep nuances of the continental balance of power, the fact that the Germans had long grievances, probably all our fault, our forces not up to the job, blah, fucking blah.

By: Otto

Otto — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:10:06 +0000

My apologies, I was wrong. The quotation about not being worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier is from Bismark not Frederick the Great.

By: nostalgic

nostalgic — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:33:42 +0000

nick g.
Your comment had me scratching my head but I’ve just found a poll to which you must be referring. Frankly I’m very surprised that the interviewees had even heard of some of these characters – but we are getting way off topic here.

By: nick g.

nick g. — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 04:32:31 +0000

Nostalgic,
LEARNING from history? Is it true that the British public believes that Churchill was a myth, but that Sherlock Holmes was real? It seems like the British are going backwards!

By: Plamus

Plamus — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 04:30:04 +0000

Mitch has it right. Some re-alignment of rules of engagement (and general behavior) is needed. Brings to mind the famous anecdote about a British general in colonial India who, when faced with the traditional Hindu practice of “suttee” – the burning of widows on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands – told his Indian subjects:

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

Multi-culturalism can be a real bitch when applied right.

By: squawkbox

squawkbox — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 01:35:46 +0000

Regardless of Jenkins’ nonsense about the “toughest fighting men on earth”, I share his pessimism. The taliban don’t need to beat NATO forces, they just need to outlast them, which they will easily do while they retain the following advantages.
1. Safe havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
2. New recruits as required from Pakistan’s madrassas (Jenkins doesn’t seem aware that the Taliban are more Pakistani than Afghan)
3. (I suspect) effectively limitless quantities of laundered Saudi money to finance their efforts.
4. Western governments not prepared to do anything about (1), (2), and (3). I concede that the obvious solutions might well make matters worse.

Still, one bright spot. If Simon Jenkins says something will occur, you can usually make money betting on the opposite.

By: permanentexpat

permanentexpat — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:16:51 +0000

Alice:

Let’s see. 87 dead Brits, in something over 5 years. Hell, the Brits have seen more dead after a football match.

Yep….not to mention the many physically & psychologically maimed who are in further danger from mediaeval primitives in NHS hospitals & whose recompense from a grateful nation is less than that awarded a typist with a hurt wrist.
Yep….some football match.