The bitter year

2009 was the year that the war in Afghanistan went from the 'good war' to the bad war. Public opinion in Britain and the US hardened against the war. Any pretence that it was being fought for democracy was destroyed as the election process unfolded and the scale of the corruption was revealed.

This afternoon I'm going to Downing Street with representatives of people who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan to hand in a petition calling for the troops to leave. They will be joined by relatives of soldiers who died in Iraq and former British soldiers who oppose the war.

It is the end of a bitter year for many of these families, not least the more than 100 who have lost a soldier killed in Afghanistan during 2009. The scale of deaths there this year is twice what it was last year and the past few months have been as bloody as any in terms of casualties of Nato troops.

That hasn't made the Nato powers consider their failings in this war. Exactly the opposite. Barack Obama ended the year by announcing 30,000 more US troops as part of a surge supposedly aimed at reversing the fortunes of the Taliban but which threatens to embroil Obama's presidency in the most serious war since Vietnam.

The crazy logic of the warmongers is that they need to 'deal with terrorism' in order to make countries like Britain safer, and this can only be done by waging the war on terror. Yet it is obvious that even within its own terms this argument is failing. The situation in Iraq, supposedly a success story, is in fact deteriorating with more suicide bombing and sectarian divisions. In Afghanistan, the war is present in Kabul as well as in Kandahar.

The war against the Palestinians continues. In Yemen, the Saudis have now intervened in order to 'stop terrorism'.

After eight years of this, since victory was first declared in Kabul, it seems only reasonable to ask how exactly are these serial wars making the world safer? The grievances they cause have given rise to more attacks, not fewer.

There will be a great deal of talk about the war and the troops over the holidays. None of it should hide the fact that decisions made this year will lead to more war next year. In 2010, Gordon Brown is hosting a January conference over Afghanistan. In May at the latest there will be a general election in which all the main parties will try to down play the war as an election issue, given their commitment to it and its unpopularity among the electorate.

And then there's the small matter of Tony Blair's appearance before the Chilcot inquiry. So the war on terror and its consequences will continue to make their mark.

Poppies and politics

Talk about a bumper harvest of opium poppies in Afghanistan. There's certainly been a bumper crop of poppies in Britain round this remembrance day. I can never remember a year when the poppies have been worn so early, so ubiquitously, and where there has been so much pressure on people to wear one.

I went on Sky on Saturday morning to debate with the sports editor of a Manchester paper who was campaigning for all the premier league football clubs to wear poppies embroidered on their kit. Manchester United and Liverpool had refused, despite being denounced by the Daily Mail. This was supposedly an unpatriotic outrage.

It seems to me that, whatever your attitude to the poppy, no one should be forced to wear one. Yet it is already clear that some people are. All newscasters and journalists are obviously told that they must sport one, and their guests are clearly strongly encouraged to do so. When you walk down the street some people wear poppies and some don't, and no one seems to worry too much about that. But they are pretty much uniform for a month or so among politicians and media.

This is all the more remarkable because for most of my life, poppy day was not promoted in this way, even though the memories of the First and Second World Wars were much more recent. Why is that? Well it is impossible not to draw the conclusion that this promotion of the poppy has something to do with Britain's involvement in the wars of the last decade. Government and military want to promote the poppy as giving in some way legitimacy to these wars.
That's the point made by the Manchester sports editor _ that it means supporting what the troops are doing.

Nothing new in that. The poppy appeal was actually launched after the First World War by Earl Haig ..the same Haig who was a general responsible for much of the bloodshed of that war. That's why to many, especially those of us who have opposed these and previous wars, the poppy has always been identified with militarism. Some pacifists wear a white poppy to make this point.

The paradox is that most people in this country (now 73%) want the troops out within a few months. So when many of them wear the poppy they do so not to support this current war but for some other reason. Maybe they are remembering the dead in past wars, maybe they want to express sorrow at the increasing rate of deaths of soldiers this year. Whatever it is, that sentiment should not be used to justify an indefensible war.

How typical that the people busiest promoting the poppy are the politicians , the media and the generals who argue for this bloodshed to continue.

Fraud turns to farce

I hear that Gordon Brown has congratulated Afghan president Hamid Karzai on his reelection. There hasn't of course been an election, or not since the original fraudulent one three months ago when it's generally acknowledged that around a third of votes were rigged.

But that hasn't stopped Gordon. The key thing for the 'international community' from the beginning was to give the appearance that successful elections had taken place. That plan was scuppered when the widescale fraud was reported back on the nightly news bulletins, and when a huge row broke out between UN representatives about whether to accept these tainted election results.

The already problematic second round fell apart yesterday when Karzai's opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew. The choice _ to go ahead with an uncontested election or to simply declare Karzai the winner _was a no brainer. But now the western powers are stuck with a president lacking any democratic credentials who in truth they would all rather disappeared from the scene.

Still, if the emperor has no clothes, Gordon Brown and Hillary Clinton are certainly not going to be pointing that out. Much simpler to pretend that there really has been a free and fair election and that they have a proper president. So all the congratulations, the plans for a 'unifying programme for the future of Afghanistan', the hope that this will smooth the way for more troops from the US and Europe to fight in Afghanistan.

Because Karzai is essential for one reason only: to provide spurious democratic window dressing that allows the Nato/ISAF operation to continue its war. The generals in Britain and the US are all too well aware that public opinion is turning strongly against the war. That's why they are pushing for more troops now, before it is too late.

So in the Afghan election, where fraud has turned to farce, everyone is pretending there's nothing wrong. The worsening of the war continues to show that the opposite is the case.

President who?

So the inquiry into the Iraq war starts taking evidence on November 24th. By then Tony Blair may be the new president of the EU, stopping the traffic in capitals around the world. Or not, if we can stop him first.

The very thought of this appointment is enough to turn the stomach of millions of protesters _ or domestic extremists as they are now called. He lied to take us into war, he ignored democratic opinion, his government came out with increasingly lame brained excuses for not finding weapons of mass destruction. And then he went off to be Quartet envoy for peace in the Middle East.

When history looks back on this period in this place, the first decade of the 21st century in the Middle East and south Asia, it is highly likely that Blair will be seen as one of the figures most preventing peace in the region.

But in a world of corrupt governments, racist politicians, crooked arms companies and servile diplomats that probably doesn't matter too much.

The military families have certainly made it clear to Sir John Chilcot, who's running the inquiry, that they believe Blair's culpability in the war has to be central to that inquiry. Meanwhile, a number of them have been campaigning: to stop Blair's presidency, over the Nimrod case, where Graham and Trish Knight have spoken so eloquently over their son's death. And of course over the rising toll in Afghanistan.

Feeling that we are making progress over our campaign to get the troops out. The demo on Saturday gave everyone a tremendous buzz, we got loads of publicity and it brought together a really good range of people. Obviously the highlights were the military families, including serving soldier Joe Glenton and his wife Clare, but also Joan Humphries, whose grandson Kevin Elliott was 210th soldier to die in Afghanistan, Paul McGurk, who recently left the army over the war, and Peter Brierley whose son died in Iraq.

There were lots of young people and students on the demo, many of whom couldn't have marched over Iraq. Now we need a winter of protests, demos, lobbies, debates and meetings to build a mass campaign. A defeat for Blair's candidacy would be a good start. After all, there is no separation between the two wars. We are winning the argument that Afghanistan is not a 'good war'. And of course the Iraq situation remains dire. Defeating the key war criminal (after George Bush of course, but at least Bush doesn't strut the world stage like a sanctimonious army chaplain) would be a blow against both occupations.

There goes that domestic extremism again.

Blood on all their hands

Gordon Brown's announcement that Britain is to send another 500 troops to Afghanistan shows the direction he and the leaders of the other main parties are going where the war is concerned. Despite a groundswell of opinion against the war both in Britain and internationally, the politicians are united in demanding more of the same.

It is breathtaking that he chooses the same date, time and place to announce this as he did to read the names of the dead soldiers, 37 of whom were killed during parliament's summer recess. While MPs returned obsessed with their expenses and moaning and groaning about having to pay any of them back, they hardly raised their voices in opposition to a war which all but the most dense and deluded of them know is failing.

There is an eerie unreality about all this. The last three months have been the worst in terms of Nato troop casualties in Afghanistan. The arguments of those defending the war have become more threadbare. Even the military strategy now admits that the occupation has failed to reconstruct the country and win hearts and minds.

That phrase was best known from the Vietnam war, when the same path was followed. Send in more troops, train local troops and back leaders who purport to represent the population. That's what's on offer now, plus calls for other countries to 'shoulder the burden'.

In Vietnam they defended this strategy until it collapsed, and that will happen here.

Peter Brierley, who famously and courageously last week refused to shake Blair's hand because it had blood on it, lost his son in Iraq. He is one of the many who has suffered directly because of the war on terror. While Brown solemnly read the names of the dead in parliament, he was preparing for more troops _ with more deaths, more bereaved families here and in Afghanistan.

There's blood on all their hands.

Much too high a price

Some devastating letters in the Guardian today pointing up the 'international community' doublespeak over Iran. John Heawood (from York Stop the War) gives us a few facts which should have been dug up by the Guardian's journalists: Israel's nuclear weapons have existed for 30 years, but their existence is officially denied. It refuses to open up its plants for inspection, and won't sign the nuclear non proliferation treaty.

Even more astonishing is the equanimity with which Israel's threats against Iran are now used by the other western powers and are 'now discussed in the media in the same breath as sanctions,' according to another letter by Lawrence Glover. Yet that's what's happening.

While Obama's concessions over the missile shield have placated Russia, the quid pro quo is a tougher line on Iran. Horror at 'secret bunkers' (known about for two years) and missile tests play on a justified fear of nuclear weapons, but fail to look at the bigger picture, which is that Iran is surrounded by countries in possession of nuclear weapons.

Israel, for example, is estimated to have 200 nuclear warheads. Pakistan, India and China have nuclear weapons. The Middle East is surrounded by US bases and ships armed with nuclear weapons.

An attack on Iran genuinely frightens many people. Not surprising. Iraq has been destroyed by war. Iraqis who have visited recently talk about streams filled with sewage, a terrible water shortage and growing sectarian tensions exacerbated by the occupation. On the other side of Iran lies Afghanistan, sunk into a deepening and worsening war. Over a million people have died in these wars, even more are refugees, yet the answer from New York last week seemed to be more of the same.

If they send more troops to Afghanistan, it will take on more of the character of Vietnam, and will lead to the deaths of more soldiers. If they allow Israel to bomb Iran then the whole Middle East will become a theatre of war.

Few anywhere in the world can want the escalation of the war on terror (now given the anodyne name of 'overseas contingency operations' by the Obama administration), after what we have seen over the last eight years. One reason for the 12 percent vote for Die Linke in the German elections was the left party's strong opposition to the Afghan war.

There is a growing movement again, most importantly here in Britain. Unlike previous wars, military families are among the most disaffected at a war which they see as unwinnable and in which they understand their loved ones will be the ones to pay the price for bankrupt politicians.

Obama: the right resurgent

I went to New York and all I got was a lousy photo. That might be the sentiment of Mahmoud Abbas as he heads back to Palestine. It might also be that of Barack Obama. The summit between Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu and Abbas has been greeted widely as a predictable failure. Obama has been openly rebuffed in his attempts to halt Israeli settlements. Netanyahu and his far right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, are putting two fingers up at the very moderate demands of the Obama administration.

Obama's troubles are now much greater than this immediate issue. His domestic politics have become stuck in the mire over health care reform and that impacts onto his foreign policy decisions. The right wing staged a large demonstration in Washington recently where they used the backlash over health care to mobilise around a range of issues. As former president Jimmy Carter said, a lot of this is about racism. The coalition which helped get Obama elected seems nowhere near as mobilised.

The Israelis are not the only ones riding this wave. General Stanley McChrystal, head of US armed forces in Afghanistan, has predicted failure for the Nato mission there unless...they send in more troops. Obama is so far resisting this but behind McChrystal stand the Republican right who brought us this war in the first place.

My bet is that they will force Obama into a 'surge' of troops (the figure of 30,000 is suggested on top of the 68,000 already there) before too long. That will mean further pressure on the British and other European governments to 'do their bit' and send more troops themselves. Gordon Brown seems prepared to send another 2000 British soldiers, despite the death toll of 217 _ all but 6 of those killed in the last three and a half years.

The British remain the most devoted followers of US imperialism. Even Silvio Berlusconi wants to get Italian troops out, following 6 dead in a Kabul suicide bombing last week. Afghanistan and troop withdrawal is a major issue in the German election this weekend. Canada has set a date to withdraw.

Obama is in danger of creating a new Vietnam, with more and more troops dragged in to an unwinnable war. As the right increase their pressure, anti war sentiment is also growing, with recent US polls showing a majority believing the war is wrong. Something has to give.

While on the subject of Afghanistan, my quote of the week is from home secretary Alan Johnson, who expressed his 'delight' at the 'swift and decisive' way French police cleared the makeshift refugee camp in Calais yesterday. So a Labour government minister delights in children crying and homeless, thousands of miles from their homes and families. But why not? After all, we've bombed and invaded their countries in the first place. These refugees are mostly Afghans, also Iraqis and Eritreans. Spot the connection?