Some of my liberal friends frankly live on the Moon
Anyone who thinks that the massive police operations - they barely deserve the name of war - carried out by the USA and its allies since September 11, 2001 could have been avoided are talking total nonsense. What do they propose the USA should have done? Sat there and taken it? The reaction was absolutely inevitable, and indeed the rest of the world saw it coming and ran for cover. All the USA's worst enemies bent over backward to offer sympathy and support, beginning with Fidel Castro - the man who had tried to encourage Nikita Khruschev to atom-bomb the Yanquis. Only two governments openly congratulated the bombers and showed no compunction about the mass murder of civilians: Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Taleban Afghanistan. Why? because they both knew that there would be no point pretending. Saddam may not have been directly involved in the bombing, but his policy ever since his disastrous defeat in the previous war had been so unrelentingly hostile and dedicated to breaking down Anglo-American positions by every possible means that it would not have been safe to let him exist while the Allies were at war elsewhere in the Muslim world; and the Taleban were neck-deep in the conspiracy that had led to the massacre. It was, in fact, driven by largely local Afghani considerations. People don't remember that that was not the only major terrorist act that took place at the same time; one day or two before, the Taleban had murdered Ahmed Shah Massud, the Lion of Panjshir, the legendary hero of the struggle against Russia and the most prestigious leader of internal resistence against them. In Afghani eyes, this murder was at least as significant as the assault on the Twin Towers. The two were part of the same terrorist strategy. Three thousand Americans were butchered at least in part in order to reinforce the image of the Al Qaida-Taleban alliance in Afghanistan and frighten its enemies.
Of course, it went wrong; but anyone who thinks that the Taliban had not intended a war against America, or foreseen American intervention, simply does not understand the fact. That is what they wanted. That they lost it only means that they had overrated themselves and underrated the enemy; well, have I got news for you - that happens. And where America is concerned it happens with particular frequency; everybody from the Confederate rebels of 1860 to the Kaiser to Hitler and Tojo always found the Union more determined, more fierce,and infinitely quicker in action and thought, than they had imagined. The Taleban imagined themselves as the guerrilla hordes of a new Vietnam; within a few months of the masaacre, they had found out the difference.
What happened in Iraq and Afghanistan after the initial campaigns was not a war. A war means Cannae, Waterloo, the Somme. A war means armies clashing on battlefields, men dying by the hundreds every day, units surrendered or destroyed. No such thing has happened practically anywhere in ten years. The drip drip drip of casualties murdered by explosive devices is more typical of what the British forces had to face in Northern Ireland, or, for that matter, Italy's police forces in Sicily. It is grand policing, not war. The frequently-made parallel with Britain in the nineteenth century is absurd: British troops were faced and defeated in vast pitched battles against hordes of tribal warriors welding jezail rifles and knives, which has never happened in the Afghan operations. It is little more than Italy suffers for policing Sicily or Naples.
Finally there is the charge that the war has weakened America and reduced it to a debtor country with its bonds firmly in Chinese hands. Certainly operations have not been well managed: I have long since said that no wartime leader could do anything more stupid than cut taxes in the middle of a campaign, not only because expenditure inevitably rises, but because it undermines the message that the war is a common concern and the country ought to help to pay for it. But to blame the decline and deindustrialization of the USA on the war is beyond ridiculous. These things began almost thirty years ago, in the Ronald Thatcher era, which Bob Dylan welcomed with "Union Sundown" - an ambiguous title that meant both the ruin of unionized labour and the decline of the Union, that is the USA - and Springsteen sang that, in "Your hometown", "Foreman says these jobs are going, boys, and they ain't coming back - to your hometown". The war made barely any difference to this process, which has been to a large extent encouraged and welcomed by successive administrations.
The occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq was inevitable; indeed, it was the least that could be done in the circumstances. People who pretend otherwise as good as say that three thousand dead should have been forgotten.
Of course, it went wrong; but anyone who thinks that the Taliban had not intended a war against America, or foreseen American intervention, simply does not understand the fact. That is what they wanted. That they lost it only means that they had overrated themselves and underrated the enemy; well, have I got news for you - that happens. And where America is concerned it happens with particular frequency; everybody from the Confederate rebels of 1860 to the Kaiser to Hitler and Tojo always found the Union more determined, more fierce,and infinitely quicker in action and thought, than they had imagined. The Taleban imagined themselves as the guerrilla hordes of a new Vietnam; within a few months of the masaacre, they had found out the difference.
What happened in Iraq and Afghanistan after the initial campaigns was not a war. A war means Cannae, Waterloo, the Somme. A war means armies clashing on battlefields, men dying by the hundreds every day, units surrendered or destroyed. No such thing has happened practically anywhere in ten years. The drip drip drip of casualties murdered by explosive devices is more typical of what the British forces had to face in Northern Ireland, or, for that matter, Italy's police forces in Sicily. It is grand policing, not war. The frequently-made parallel with Britain in the nineteenth century is absurd: British troops were faced and defeated in vast pitched battles against hordes of tribal warriors welding jezail rifles and knives, which has never happened in the Afghan operations. It is little more than Italy suffers for policing Sicily or Naples.
Finally there is the charge that the war has weakened America and reduced it to a debtor country with its bonds firmly in Chinese hands. Certainly operations have not been well managed: I have long since said that no wartime leader could do anything more stupid than cut taxes in the middle of a campaign, not only because expenditure inevitably rises, but because it undermines the message that the war is a common concern and the country ought to help to pay for it. But to blame the decline and deindustrialization of the USA on the war is beyond ridiculous. These things began almost thirty years ago, in the Ronald Thatcher era, which Bob Dylan welcomed with "Union Sundown" - an ambiguous title that meant both the ruin of unionized labour and the decline of the Union, that is the USA - and Springsteen sang that, in "Your hometown", "Foreman says these jobs are going, boys, and they ain't coming back - to your hometown". The war made barely any difference to this process, which has been to a large extent encouraged and welcomed by successive administrations.
The occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq was inevitable; indeed, it was the least that could be done in the circumstances. People who pretend otherwise as good as say that three thousand dead should have been forgotten.