Michael Meacher MP

The most remarkable, and disturbing, aspect about the simultaneous release today of 92,000 internal records of US military actions in Afghanistan to the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times is how blind, complacent, negligent or sycophantic the US (and other Western) media have been over a 6-year period (Jan 2004-Dec 2009) in getting anywhere near the truth about the war in that country.   Or, putting it another way, how come the US establishment military and political have been able so comprehensively and for so long to conceal the truth?   That in itself, apart from the facts which are horrifying enough, deserves detailed investigation and a full-scale inquiry into news management in war situations.

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Listening to William Hague yesterday in Kabul at the ninth international conference on the future of Afghanistan illustrated political doublespeak at its lowest ebb.   All local analysts recognise that the military balance is moving steadily away from Nato forces towards the Taliban.   Sangin, Musa Qala and Marjah cannot be secured and are constantly taken and retaken like some barren hill in Vietnam to deny it to the enemy.   The British casualty rate (322 soldiers killed to date) is now twice as high proportionately as the US rate and as high as the Soviet forces endured in the 1980s, and will certainly not be politically sustainable in the UK for long.   So where now? (more…)

So BP lobbied the British Government for the release of Abdel Basset  al-Megrahi, the alleged Lockerbie bomber, in order to get prior access to Libyan oil – or so say 4 US Senators.   Al-Megrahi was almost cetainly not the culprit;  the bombing was much more likely to have been carried out by the Iranian-backed Ahmed Gibril’s revolutionary Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – but that’s another story.     The deal that was hatched whereby Libya would give up its nuclear ambitions (which showed no sign of materialising anyway), Al-Megrahi would be released on compassionate grounds that he was in the final stages of a terminal illness (which we now know he wasn’t), and Britain would graciously respond to these magnanimous gestures of goodwill from Libya by opening up its markets to Libyan goods (i.e. grabbing the oil).

Jack Straw, earlier Foreign Secretary, openly admitted as much.   He said last year: “We wanted to bring Libya back into the fold.   And yes, that included trade…and subsequently there was the BP deal”.   No country oozes high-mindedness to cloak its base commercial interests like the UK.   Indeed this motif has been played out repeatedly. (more…)

The implications of the change in the US High Command in Afghanistan go a lot deeper than the sacking of a general for mutinous behaviour.   Obama had already excessively delayed his endorsement of the Afghan surge strategy because he never believed in it, but could find no politically and militarily viable alternative to replace it with.   He felt trapped by its inevitability, but McChrystal and his aides now overplaying their hand against the ‘wimps in the White House’ offers him his best opportunity to re-write the strategy.   First signs are that he intends to take it.

What the McChrystal incident has really exposed is the increasing dominance of US militarism in both American politics and society.   George Bush defined himself as a war President, propagated the Long War doctrine of the unending worldwide struggle against terror, and demanded unquestioning patriotism as the price for achieving US global hegemony. (more…)

There is an extraordinary silence about the really big issues now facing Britain.   We are arguably on the cusp of the biggest downturn for a generation as all the sources of growth dry up.   The expansionary momentum from ultra-low interest rates and £200bn quantitative easing is clearly wearing off, export markets are flat or falling, and now Cameron warns us we face the most drastic spending cuts which will change the way of life of the entire population and lead (according to the CIPD) to 750,000 public sector jobs destroyed and unemployment pushed up to 3 million for 5 years.   So where’s the anguished debate about this fast-approaching Armageddon and the search for alternative policies to avoid it (which there are)?  (more…)

When will the US ever learn that the Iranian problem is insoluble outside the framework of  a wider non-nuclear agreement for the Middle East as a whole?   The latest round of sanctions – the fourth since 2006 – won’t cut any ice with a determined and intransigent Iran at all.   But there is an alternative. (more…)

A day after the killing by Israeli commandos of 10 activists on a flotilla in international waters carrying aid and supplies to Gaza, universal condemnation (with the notable exception of the US) of the Israeli action as neither proportionate nor necessary must now be superseded by a fundamental change of policy towards the Gaza blockade.   So long as other countries’ response is confined to diplomatic rhetoric, Israel has repeatedly shown itself in a string of provocative and murderous incidents to be dismissive, even contemptuous, of international outrage.    This is now a defining moment for international resolve, for firm and robust policy change to deter Israel from its ruthless  intransigence in seeking to crush the Palestinian people.

The charge sheet against Israel is long.   It launched a 3-week war against the Gaza Strip in December 2008, killing more than 1,300 Palestinians, out of all proportion to the rocket attacks which had killed a dozen Israelis and most likely calculated to impress a hard-like Israeli electorate just before elections.   It has pursued a poloicy of political assassinations across the globe, most recently of the Hamas official in Dubai last January.   Indifferent even to its main ally, the US, it has persisted in blocking peace talks with the western-backed Palestinian Authority by provocatively refusing to freeze settlement building in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.    And it continues to impose a tight and oppressive blockade of Gaza, ostensibly to prevent the import of bomb or rocket-making materials, in reality to try to throttle Hamas.   The response therefore needed from the international community is now clear. (more…)

It says a lot about the narrowness and parochialism of the British political system that in the Leaders’ international debate the day before yesterday the most dangerous issue facing the world today wasn’t even mentioned.   The significantly heightened risk of an attack on Iran to take out its nuclear installations has lately become apparent from a flurry of memos in Washington despairing of Obama’s diplomacy and advocating a much more confrontational approach. (more…)

The Democrats’ shock defeat in Massachusetts plus the deepening impact of the recession on US jobs and incomes are having a devastating impact on US foreign policy. Having started with a welcome post-Bush drive to conciliate long-standing opponents in an effort to ease tensions where aggressive threatening had previously merely hardened enmities, Obama’s original welcome intentions, which required far beyond a single year to realise, are now being swamped by declining polls in US domestic politics. He is certainly right to make his first priority winning back domestic support by focusing on reversing the ravages of the deep recession, but that does not require a foreign policy beginning to veer wildly in contrary directions. He has sent almost 40,000 extra troops into Afghanistan, but then almost immediately signs up to a phased withdrawal. He extended an unclenched fist to Iran, which probably helped to stimulate the ‘green’ proto-revolution there after the stolen presidential election, but now is quite suddenly ratcheting up the arms race without apparent provocation in the highly combustible cauldron of the Middle East.

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Withdrawing from Afghanistan has for a long time been the obviously right policy, but given that the tide of battle has clearly now turned decisively in favour of the Taliban, this will now be widely perceived at best as making a virtue of necessity and at worst as an early exit to stave off a defeat. There are several uncertainties in the situation. It is assumed that the combination of a military surge by nearly 40,000 reinforcements with the parallel enticement of jobs and community development projects will wean away most of the Taliban forces. A recent US Senate foreign relations committe report estimated the Taliban fighting strength at 15,000 and that only some 5% were committed ideologues, while 70% fought for money the so-called $10 a day Taliban.
Doubling this to win them over would cost just $300,000 a day, compared with the actual $165 million a day that the US is currently spending fighting the war. Whether however such a convenient money solution would appeal to a Taliban leadership that now sees victory in its sights and regards these concessions as a clear sign of Western weakness is another matter. It is highly unlikely that the gradual, progressive handover of power to local Afghan control will take place in the smooth, orderly fashion envisaged. Much more likely is accelerated NATO withdrawal from the countryside into the main towns and cities as ever more confident Taliban commanders pick off their targets with redoubled ferocity. But at least the die has been cast.

There will be strong temptations among Iran’s enemies as the regime steadily breaks down to intervene to hasten the end and to secure an outcome favourable to the West. They should be resisted at all costs. Nothing would shore up the tottering regime more effectively than credible allegations that the upheavals were being orchestrated by forces outside the country. Already there are claims by the government that the Mujahideen Khalq are involved and that members have been arrested, who will no doubt be accused of acting as proxies for foreign powers. Today spokesmen for the regime have taunted that Britain will be ‘hit across the mouth’ if it doesn’t cease its provocations. We should firmly repudiate all such bluster which will certainly intensify overthe coming weeks and months, but not engage in tit-for-tats that simply exacerbate the tension. In many Iranian eyes Britain is second only to the Great Satan after its substantial part in deposing the democratically elected Mossadeq in 1953, supporting the Shah as a Western puppet for two decades of increasingly repressive rule, and now leading the call for sanctions to stop the regime’s uranium enrichment programme. Nothing could be more counter-productive than for Britain to rise to the Iranian bait.

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As 2010 beckons it’s clear that the Obama/Brown last best option for turning around Afghanistan (from the Western point of view) is already falling apart. The announcement of Karzai’s new Cabinet just published exposes just how unlikely the plan’s conditions for success are to be realised. The single most important one is stamping down hard on the deeply embedded corruption. Karzai’s attempt to reinvent his government in response to very strong anti-corruption demands from the US does make a concession in that direction – he has dropped two ministers linked to corruption allegations. But that’s as far as it goes. For the last 7 years he has packed his government with warlords and regional and ethnic power brokers. Even now some of the new faces being brought in have been denounced as ‘puppets’ of the warlords. He has still included the notorious warlord Ismail Khan, and excluded all members of the opposition. Moreover Karzai has also robustly defended the mayor of Kabul who has been sent to prison for corruption, saying he was unjustly convicted. Even with the intense pressure exerted on Karzai by the US for a total clean-up, it’s already clear that he’ll never deliver it.

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President Obama faced an almost impossible choice, which is why it took nearly 3 months to reach a decision. There are basically 3 options. The US-Nato could continue with the existing forces on the current path – war as usual, but with smarter technology against IEDs (roadside bombs), more pressure on Karzai to stamp out corruption, and improved training of Afghan security forces. But that is a stalemate which in practice the West is slowly losing, unable to deliver a knock-out blow on the ground and with political sentiment back home steadily moving against the war. Or the West, in effect the US, could decide to withdraw, not immediately of course, but in fairly short order within 6-12 months. But that would be widely seen as catastrophic – an American defeat, an unconditional restoration to power of the Taliban, a destabilisation of a fragile Pakistan and a possible intensification of Islamic extremism not only in the critical Afghan-Pak zone but widely elsewhere across the world. Or a US force surge could be implemented, partly on the Iraq precedent, but that has huge risks for the reasons that follow and it’s difficult to see how it could succeed.

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As the pressure for withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan gathers pace, it is countered by one rationale after another – all different – seeking to justify our continued presence. It’s to deny Al Qaeda the opportunity to return to their base of operations in Afghanistan – as though Al Qaeda with its cellular structure is unable to move its base to any number of other places, whether Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen amonst many other options. Or it’s to fight terrorism abroad so that we don’t have to fight terrorism in Britain – as though anybody believes such an absurd notion (when nearly all the terrorist attacks in Britain are home-grown, and anyway if they wanted to attack us from abroad, they don’t need Afghanistan to launch it from). Or to turn a mediaeval warlord-ridden backward country into a functioning modern democracy – come on, pull the other one, there’s 20-30 similar broken-backed States across the globe, so why Afghanistan? Or is it (and this is getting a lot nearer the truth) to avoid the humiliation of the defeat of a super-power by a local insurgency? But if that is the case, how did we get involved in such a disastrous scenario in the first place?

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On the Today programme this morning Gordon Brown gave an unflustered interview on Afghanistan in his usual calm low-key monotone, but advanced a strategy riddled with flaws and wishful thinking. He argued there were three approaches to the current Afghan impasse. One is to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and spend the money instead on reinforcing anti-terrorist security in Britain (the proposal of Kim Howells, MP, who happens to be the Intelligence Services Committee), which he rejected out of hand. The second is to make overtures and offer concessions to the Taliban in order to split them awaqy from Al Qaeda and deny the latter a base of operations in Afghanistan, which he equally disdained. The third is to train growing Afghan police and security forces to the point where they can take responsibility themselves for the country’s internal security. He enthused that he had formulated this policy, that Obama was signed up to it, and that he was now actively pressing the rest of the EU to provide extra troops to get behind it. Alas It is pitted with unrealities.

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