How are things going in Libya and Afghanistan? Staring humiliation in the face, government ministers and Conservative MPs can't even agree among themselves, but too late to stop the killing now.
Stop the War Coalition
2 August 2011
What a shambles. As the war in Libya enters its fifth month, the political leaders who took us into it are now falling out among themselves, although they haven't yet reached the stage where they are assassinating each other, unlike the anti-Gadaffi groups in Benghazi, who were declared by Britain last week to be the "legitimate" government for the whole of Libya.
We can't win in Libya, says UK defence minister Liam Fox, the Libyan rebels are not capable of toppling Muammar Gadaffi; our best hope of toppling him is a palace coup within his "close circle"
Oh yes we can says foreign secretary William Hague: "It's not a computer game where you are bored with it and you put it to one side. This is something you follow through in the real world. No one should mistake our determination and unity in carrying this through to success.".
Senior Conservative MP Richard Ottaway, chairman of the House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs Select Committee, takes Liam Fox's view and says the Government is right to start downplaying expectations of a decisive breakthrough; "We are in a stalemate situation and there’s no obvious way of getting ourselves out of it. We have got to try to tighten the political, economic and military campaign, but I think in the end it will require some kind of dialogue with the Gaddafi regime."
Oh no it won't, says Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, there can be no ceasefire while Gadaffi remains in power, "we will stay committed as long as it takes".
Privately a number of other MPs think Britain is heading for humiliation, if Gadaffi is still in power by the Autumn. Not so, says Nato spokeswoman Carmen Romero, we can bomb for ever if necessary, Gadaffi cannot "wait us out".
After ten years of Nato attacks on small nations -- which just happen to be Muslim, although access to oil and gas supplies might have played a part -- the penny should have dropped: the world's mightiest military alliance can't win wars.
Libya is no different from the war in Afghanistan, where, David Cameron and William Hague insist we're on target for British troops to get out by the end of 2014 and "success" is just around the corner.
Except it isn't, as Conservative MP Rory Stewart -- one of the very few members of parliament who can claim to have direct experience of the country and its people -- says Afghanistan is a war we cannot win.
But, however obvious the shambles in Libya or the futility of the war in Afghanistan, Cameron, Fox and Hague will carry on mass murder abroad and the destruction of other peoples' countries rather than face reality and admit the failure of their war policies.
It's all very well David Cameron justifying military action against Afghanistan and Libya as a crusade to deliver democracy, but he'd be better advised to look at the democratic deficit at home, where these wars are opposed by the majority of the British population. The aim of the Antiwar Mass Assembly in Trafalgar Square on October 8 will be to give the highest possible profile to the voice of that majority in Britain which wants the troops our of Afghanistan, the bombing of Libya to stop, and an end to the decade of perpetual war.
Join Us. Sign the pledge to be there alongside John Pilger, Ahdaf Soueif, Billy Bragg, John McDonnell MP, Jemima Khan, Brian Eno, George Galloway, Tony Benn and many more.
We will be there.
Will you?
Anti-War Mass Assembly Afghanistan 10 Years On Trafalgar Square London Saturday 8 October Sign the pledge...
