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Helping the Northern Alliance and other Afghan factions to chase away the Taliban is one thing. Many have rightly noted that it will be much more difficult to sort out the subsequent chaos in Afghanistan. More strikingly, the war has done nothing to 'sort out' the problems of fear, insecurity, fragmentation and alienation within American and Western societies - which was the primary aim of Washington's response to 11 September. We begin the delusions with the a priori assumption that the war is a failure. So if it seems to be achieving its goal, then we restate the goal so that it hasn't actually been achieved. This is the first time I've heard that the goal of the war was to reduce fear, insecurity etc. I always thought the goal of the war was to prevent future attacks against this nation. (Silly me.) We at spiked opposed this war, but we never doubted that the power of the US-led coalition could blow away a ragtag, stateless force like the Taliban, which eventually left Kabul the same way it entered the city in 1996 - without a fight. We're such bullies; the peace-loving Taliban never harmed a fly, let alone another person, and if we'd just asked nicely they'd have left Kabul -- so why all that vicious bombing? Never mind that they bailed out of Kabul after fiercely resisting up north at Mazar-e Sharif, where there was quite serious fighting. How cruel of us to actually fight a war against our enemies. How dare we? Osama bin Laden, said to be the leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, was soon put in the frame, followed by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, after it refused Anglo-American demands to arrest and extradite bin Laden on the basis of evidence that it was not allowed to see. (This always seemed one of the Taliban's more reasonable attitudes.) Oh, that's rich. What's this "said to be" business? Are they seriously trying to contend that bin Laden is innocent? As to "evidence", the Taliban were presented with evidence of bin Laden's involvement in the attacks on the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania three years ago, and that alone was sufficient for extradition. Does the fact that a man commits a new crime suddenly grant him a pardon for all previous crimes? In recent weeks, we have noted on spiked how a mood of something approaching moral defeatism seemed to have settled over the Western elite. This week's displays of short-term triumphalism cannot stem the underlying corrosion of self-confidence and authority in the West. And many others have noted a marked disconnect between the attitudes and mood of the "elite" and of the rest of us. You bet your sweet ass the elite have been defeatist, and they've been taking a lot of criticism for it, too. I can't go on. It's just too putrid. (I guess Photodude also got too disgusted.) (discuss) |
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