Afghanistan

Wednesday

Alex Massie

War is War: Horrid But Not Shocking

Commenting on the publication of photographs of American soldiers in Afghanistan posing with the severed limbs of their dead Afghan opponents, Andrew Sullivan says this is “What Empire Does”: The sickening pictures speak for themselves. At what point will we recognize that inserting ourselves into places like Afghanistan and Iraq will change us, has changed us, and will change us. Mercifully, this latest inhuman excrescence is not government policy, as at Abu Ghraib. But it exposes even more deeply the inherent failure and moral corruption of occupying Afghanistan and the need to withdraw sooner rather than later. Oh please. This is what war does to men at arms. As Toby

Friday

Alex Massie

Hitchens vs Galloway

Since he has previously been elected in Glasgow and London, I don’t know if it is so astonishing that George Galloway won a by-election in Bradford. Anyway, if you have a couple of hours to spare ou might enjoy this debate between Galloway and Christopher Hitchens. As Christopher put it: “The man’s hunt for a tyrannical fatherland never ends. The Soviet Union let him down, Albania’s gone. Saddam’s been overthrown. But on to the next, in Damascus.” Quite.

Saturday

Alan Judd

Ways of making men talk

Eric Rosenbach is a former academic who is now deputy assistant secretary of defence in Washington. Aki Peritz used to work for the CIA and now advises the Third Way think tank. Their book, therefore, is not a breathless account of terrorist-hunting nor the sensational inside story of how, in Obama’s words, ‘We got him’ (bin Laden). Rather, it is an exposition of legal, bureaucratic, political and military developments within the US following 9/11, illustrated by summaries of how various terrorists were killed or captured. If you want thrills and spills, go elsewhere, but if you are a student of counter-terrorism or are interested in the legal limbo of rendition,

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

A quiet PMQs, ahead of today’s main event

It started like a bit of good old political knockabout. PMQs opened with a planted question from Mark Menzies (Con, Fylde) asking the PM about Britain’s sick-note culture. Cameron, looking suitably grave, declared that the fake-sniffle problem afflicts even senior management. Ed Miliband, he told us, had recently claimed he was too ill to attend a rally called by health workers. Three hours later he was seen heartily cheering at a football match having been driven to the ground in a Rolls Royce. ‘What was it,’ asked Cameron, ‘that first attracted the Labour leader to the multimillionaire owner of Hull football club?’ This prompted howls and jeers from every part

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Afghanistan overshadows Cameron’s America trip

Afghanistan, what now? After a week of death and retaliation in the country, it appears that a car bomb has been detonated on the runway at Camp Bastion — probably aimed at the visiting US Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta. A spokesman has since said that ‘at no point was anyone on board Mr Panetta’s plane at risk,’ but it certainly highlights the dangers attached to his visit. What chance, now, that he will be successful in his goal of ‘easing tensions’? The incident cropped up very briefly in David Cameron and Barack Obama’s press conference just now. Asked for further information by Sky’s Joey Jones, the PM stressed that

Peter Hoskin

Cameron and Obama, sans yellow mustard

Above is what they call the ‘raw video’ of David Cameron’s and Barack Obama’s trip to a basketball game last night. It’s the unrefined version of what Downing St hopes will be refined, packaged and sent to your television screen at hyperspeed: images of the PM and the President dressed casually and chatting away as the game goes on. Like I said yesterday, it’s political theatre — designed to benefit both men. They were then both interviewed at halftime, which you can watch here. This was more about sports than about the political intricacies of the special relationship (Cameron: ‘It’s hard to follow,  sometimes, who’s done exactly what wrong’) —

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Will Obama and Cameron discuss a faster pullout from Afghanistan?

The political theatre of David Cameron’s trip to America will have Downing Street drooling. The PM is, today, not only going to become the first world leader to fly aboard Air Force One with Barack Obama, but then they’re also going to take in a game of basketball together. It’s a carefully calibrated blend of statesmanship and down-to-earth-ship that will suit both men. Obama, because it might appeal, in some way, to conservative voters ahead of this year’s presidential election. Cameron, because, well… does Ed Miliband do this sort of thing? The theatre carries over into print too, with a joint article by Cameron and Obama in today’s Washington Post.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

No More Heaves in Helmand

Rory Stewart’s article on Afghanistan, published in yesterday’s Evening Standard, makes a succinct case for speeding up the west’s withdrawal from Helmand and the Hindu Kush. As he says, We are not obliged to stay till the last day. Did our mission go wrong because Nato had too few troops; or because it sent too many? Could a different strategy have fixed the situation; or was it always impossible? The reason no longer matters. Whatever the explanation, things will not improve: Nato will not “solve the relationship with Pakistan”; it will never create “an effective, credible, legitimate Afghan government”; and in most parts of the country it has already lost

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Cameron & Obama Play Winston Churchill Bingo

If you thought Winston Churchill wouldn’t be mentioned until the second sentence of today’s “Obama-Cameron” op-ed in the Washington Post then, by gum, you’re a mug. Of course the old boy makes it into the first line. What else would you expect from a puff piece published on DC’s leading propaganda page? But the White House staffer responsible for this piece might still have done better: Seven decades ago, as our forces began to turn the tide of World War II, Prime Minister Winston Churchill traveled to Washington to coordinate our joint efforts. Our victories on the battlefield proved “what can be achieved by British and Americans working together heart

Monday

Alex Massie

Afghanistan Isn’t Working

For years now, Afghanistan policy has been governed by a simple question: Do the unknown costs of leaving Afghanistan trump the known costs of staying in Afghanistan? Until now the answer, at least officially, has always been Yes. But this is not a static question. The known price of remaining in Afghanistan increases all the time; the unknown consequences of withdrawal remain, at best, constant. Indeed, in as much as al-Qaeda’s Afghan capability has been reduced, the costs of withdrawal may in fact be less than once they were. That scarcely means an Afghanistan without NATO troops is going to be a grand place. Nevertheless, it is clear that the

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Afghanistan tragedy overshadows PMQs

I have rarely heard the House of Commons as quiet as it was at the start of PMQs today. The sad news from Afghanistan was, rightly, weighing on MPs’ minds. The initial Cameron Miliband exchanges were on the conflict there with the two leaders agreeing with each other. In some ways, though, I wonder whether the country would not benefit more from some forensic debate about the strategic aims of the mission. However the volume level in the House increased when Joan Ruddock asked the PM if he was ‘truly proud’ of taking benefits away from disabled children. Cameron, with a real flash of anger, shot back that ‘as someone

Saturday

William Leith

The view from the top

Halfway through this book, the veil lifted, and I thought: ‘I see! I see what he’s trying to do!’ Pickering gets his characters, and moves them along, and then, after 150 pages, he manages to convey a really powerful sensation of something; you might call it amorality, or nihilism, or the sense of the pointlessness of it all. For the first 12 chapters, you are walking uphill, and then you get the view. For the hero, there is horror, and a Graham Greene-like sense of things not being what they seem. Before this moment, it’s a strange set up. I suppose it’s meant to be. Malone, our Greene-ish hero, is

Friday

Peter Hoskin

What the Taliban want

How go those talks with the Taliban in Doha? Quietly, that’s how — although there’s a report in yesterday’s The Hindu that could reveal some of what’s being said, and is worth the time reading because of it. According to the paper’s diplomatic sources, the Taliban want Mullah Mohammed Omar installed as ‘supreme religious and political leader’ of Afghanistan. And, yes, that is the Mullah Omar who sheltered Al Qaeda when he actually was in charge of Afghanistan, and whose policy agenda included the death penalty for those converting to another religion, as well as the general subjugation of women, gay people, individuality, etc. He’s currently wanted to the tune

Friday

Alex Massie

Sir Simon Jenkins Is Peddling Weapons-Grade Tripe. Again.

Via Norm, I see that Sir Simon Jenkins is up to his old tricks, publishing yet another meretricious column on the Afghan war which, all too conveniently, manages to ignore the reason why US and allied troops ever landed in that benighted country in the first place. That’s right: Sir Simon never mentions 9/11. Not even in passing. Reading his column you could be forgiven for thinking US generals (and their British accomplices) sat around discussing the need to give their troops some proper entertainment. A kind of Club Hindu Kush M16. What a jolly wheeze! Anyone who knows anything about the Americans would know better than to describe the

Wednesday

Matt Cavanagh

Today’s NATO leak highlights the need for more realism over Afghanistan

Today’s leaked NATO report on ‘the state of the Taliban’ has generated the predictable responses: excessive attempts by the media to hype it up, and excessive attempts by NATO and the Pakistani government to play it down. What is its true significance? It’s a good scoop, but there is little or nothing in it which really counts as ‘news’ to anyone who has been following the debate. The report is the latest in a series going back several years (I remember reading earlier versions during my time in government), which summarises thousands of interviews with captured insurgents and others, in an attempt to build up a picture of the state

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The Taliban’s peace offering

‘Taliban’ and ‘peace mission’ — the words sure don’t fit very well together. But they’re the words that you’ll see in tomorrow’s papers, given that the Taliban have today revealed their intention to open a peace mission in Qatar. The idea is that foreign diplomats can stop by, share a cup of tea and some Ferrero Rocher, and talk about ending the insurgency in Afghanistan. The news ought to treated with caution for now. After all, the Taliban haven’t given a date for when their Qatar office will be open, and they’re making noises about prisoners being released from Guantanamo Bay in return. But it’s a still a significant moment,

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Hammond: New front opening in Afghanistan

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was in the Commons this afternoon, discussing, among other things, the spate of attacks on Shia Muslims in Afghanistan. At least 59 people have been killed in sectarian atrocities over the last week or so, a chilling a new pattern of violence as Western powers begin to contemplate withdrawal. Hammond denied that there is a link between the forthcoming transition and these attacks. Instead a ‘new front’ is opening in Afghanistan. What is this new front? Hammond was vague, but Lahore-based journalist Ahmed Rashid explains, in tomorrow’s edition of the Spectator, that the sectarian attacks are the hallmark of a now desperate al-Qaeda. As happened in

Sunday

David Blackburn

Worrying developments in the Middle East

It’s been an eventful , if worrying afternoon in the Middle East. First, the initial Egyptian election results confirm the expectation that Islamist parties would dominate the first round of elections: they’ve taken more than 50 per cent of the vote. Douglas Murray wrote a Spectator cover story two weeks ago on how the Arab Spring is turning to winter; it is required reading. Events in Iran are much more disturbing, though. Iran claims to have shot down an US drone in the east of the country and added further threats about further retaliation for the incursion. The reports have not been confirmed by American agencies as yet; but, following the recent diplomatic

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Remember the living | 11 November 2011

Every time a politician suggests a introducing a flag-waving British national day, the idea falls flat. We already have one: 11 November, Remembrance Day, where we remember our war dead and resolve to help the living. In my Daily Telegraph column today, I talk about how the government can better serve the tens of thousands who have come back from active service in Afghanistan and Iraq.   Britain is, for the first time since the post-war years, a nation with a large veteran community. And we’re still not quite sure how to handle it. The Americans are: they had Vietnam, and learnt the hard way about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Beyond Gaddafi, America turns its attention to Pakistan

It’s hard to recall a more grisly complement of newspaper covers than those this morning. Only the FT refrains from showing either Gaddafi’s stumbling last moments or his corpse, whereas the Sun runs with the headline, big and plain: “That’s for Lockerbie”. The insides of the papers are more uncertain. There are doubts about the details, such as what has happened to Gaddafi’s infamous son Saif. And there are doubts about the general tide of events too. Several commentators, including Peter Oborne, make the point that the passing of Gaddafi is only the first phase in Libya’s struggle towards democracy — and it is a struggle that might easily be