Is Afghanistan the wrong war, at the wrong time, for the wrong cause?

P U L S E

Seumas Milne is generally better informed on Afghanistan than most commentators, but he undermines his case with the typical leftist tendency to impute imagined strategic considerations to every foreign policy misadventure. As Gareth Porter has correctly noted, US Afghan policy is rooted in domestic political considerations. There are no American interests at stake in Afghanistan, as even the military and foreign policy establishment well know.

On 18 June, a debate organised by Yeovil and Sherborne Stop the War Coalition pitted former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Paddy Ashdown, who is now an advisor to David Cameron, against Guardian journalist Seumas Milne.
The motion debated was: Is Afghanistan the wrong war at the wrong time for the wrong cause? Seumas Milne proposed the motion, saying that after nine years none of the original aims of the war had been achieved and there was no end in sight. Paddy Ashdown, passionately opposing the motion, lamented that the war had been very badly run and said he feared that it might well be lost “in the pubs and front rooms of Britain”, rather than on the battlefield. The motion opposing the war was passed overwhelmingly by an audience vote.

Q & A

NB: Milne also repeats the standard Chomskyian nonsense about US policy toward Israel being driven by ‘other interests’ (which he doesn’t name). This silly structructuralist view, which always assumes what it has to prove, has made the left increasingly marginal in politics. Battling imaginary enemies is always easier because it entails no responsibilities.

Written by Idrees

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