Yet another socialist failure

 

It has cost the British taxpayer at least £30bn. It has cost the lives of hundreds of Britons, including a number from our region.  It has resulted in significant mental and physical injuries to thousands more, plus a couple of orders of magnitude-worth of additional, local civilian deaths. It has now resulted in our national humiliation and the return of the self-same regime we set out to replace.

I am referring, of course, specifically to the victory of the Taleban in Afghanistan. The scenes that we have all seen - from the desperate Afghans holding onto a military transporter as it taxied for take-off to the devastation caused by the car bombs at Kabul airport - are horrific enough.

But the longer-term consequences of this country's two decade-long presence in a sovereign nation are likely to result in further instability and chaos and so are a warning to present and future generations never to repeat such a folly again.

This is in no way a criticism of all those British service personnel who have served in the country since 2001 with such honour,  resilience, and bravery.

But I am quite clear where the blame for all of the mess lies: with specific British socialists and the whole bullying, holier-than-thou philosophy to which they adhere.

Socialists just cannot help themselves. Not for them a trust in basic human decency and the importance in personal interactions, whether through free trade or in the exchange of ideas and cultures, in securing peace and prosperity. 

The socialist mentality is all about imposing, frequently at great cost - not to themselves, of course, but to others - their specific view as to how we should all act and think.

In our own country, socialists have relentlessly pursued a 'do as I say, not as I do' approach, attempting to fit everyone into their rigid mould, whether that be in terms of education, health provision or their support for the anti-democratic European Union's baleful influence.

But at least in this country there is a distinct anti-socialist majority of citizens who will not be browbeaten - enough to ensure that Labour Governments and even councils are rarer now than at any time in the last 50 years.

The British debacle in Afghanistan is due almost entirely to Tony Blair and his coterie of fast and loose advisers such as Alistair Campbell.

Now, don't get me wrong: as a Libertarian, I do believe there are times when we should intervene abroad. This includes when our own national sovereignty or that of another country is at stake. In the first case, as with the Falklands War, it is absolutely right for the injured country to wrest back what has been taken from it by force. Our involvement in the first Gulf War was mandated by a resolution at the United Nations (remember that body?) in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and so our involvement was legal.

I also, as it happens, believe that every nation has the right to take limited pre-emptive or responsive action should it be threatened by violent external forces. Therefore, I was supportive of the initial rationale for the involvement of British troops in Afghanistan in response to the September 11 2001 attacks, which killed a number of our civilians as well as thousands of Americans and where the threat from Osama Bin Laden was believed to be focussed on Afghanistan.

But this task and finish rationale didn't hold for long, not least as the al Qaeda leader had for a time disappeared from the country. What happened next was mission creep and a policy blunder of strategic proportions. Driven by Blair's control freakery, and backed by the vast majority of interfering do-gooding Labour MPs, the focus of the escalating occupation morphed into the vacuity of terms such as 'nation building' whereby Western values were imposed on a society that was given little say as to whether these were the values it wished to accept.

Under Blair's guidance, Afghanistan was to be turned into the central Asian equivalent of a Hampstead dinner party, replete with cosmopolitan slogans and attitudes. 

It would be another  amusing example of socialist foolhardiness, were it not pursued at the cost of dead and maimed British service personnel who were placed in an impossible position for years upon years.

Of course, other western leaders, including the 'drone king' Obama, loved by so-called progressives, went along with this murderous madness. 

It took the clear-sightedness of Donald Trump and his administration to bring an exit strategy to bear through the peace accord with the Taleban. President Biden has hardly covered himself in glory in managing this agreement, but even 'Sleepy Joe' could see that further delays and the further presence of western troops was only going to make things worse.

And what has been Blair's response to his debacle? Contrition? Reflection? Not a bit. He has condemned the withdrawal of troops, acting as if he is some disinterested observer.

The 20-year war in Afghanistan, like his unthinking support for the second Gulf War, is another baleful socialist failure. 

First published on Thursday, September 9, 2021 - my latest piece for www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk & www.dissexpress.co.uk