Monday, April 20, 2009
Where does Britain stand?
Things do seem to be linked with each other. Just as I started reading up on the latest news about Durban II there was a call from the BBC Russian Service. Could I come in and take part in a discussion about the British position? Well, I could certainly take part in a discussion (what else do I do with my life?) but finding out what the British position was might be a little more difficult.
We have written about the first Durban conference and its deranged participants who turned it into an anti-American, anti-Semitic and, generally, anti-Western festival here and here. (The best site on which the whole farce can be followed is UN Watch. At least it would be a farce if it were not so tragic. We are, after all, funding this appalling event.)
After a certain amount of humming and ha-ing, the United States has, it would appear, decided to boycott the Conference, not least because Secretary of State Clinton might not have wanted the sort of abuse that was hurled at her predecessor, Colin Powell, at the original Durban conference.
President Obama's decision may have annoyed the tranzis who, naturally enough, do not like to see their favourite president follow in the footsteps of their least favourite one, but has the support of various members of the House:
Last week a bipartisan group of House members sent a letter to Obama congratulating him for deciding to boycott the meeting, which is scheduled to begin Monday.Voice of America confirms the non-attendance:
"We applaud you for making it clear that the United States will not participate in a conference that undermines freedom of expression and is tainted by an anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic agenda," said the letter signed by seven members of Congress.
State Department Spokesman Robert Wood says the US will boycott the conference "with regret" because of objectionable language in the meeting's draft declaration. Wood said Saturday that despite some improvements, it seemed clear the declaration will not address U.S. concerns about restrictions on freedom of expression.Given that the committee organizing the conference was chaired by Libya, freedom of expression is unlikely to have ever been high on the agenda.
I shall write later on what is going on in Geneva at the Durban II conference and it seems to be rather entertaining. In the meantime, let us have a look at Little Green Footballs, which is listing the countries that are boycotting this noxious event.
Here we go: Australia, Sweden (with Canada and Italy having joined Israel and the United States before), Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand. Poland has announced its boycott as well. There may be others but that is plenty.
Wait a minute. There is a country missing. What is Britain's attitude? Clearly, we are not boycotting or Charles Johnson would have noted that fact. Maybe he has simply missed the announcement. After all, even Homer, they tell us, nodded.
No he missed nothing. Not that I would expect him to – I was just trying to let hope win over experience. Britain is
We are not sending a very high level delegation but not a particularly unimportant one either. It is led by Peter Gooderham, British ambassador to the UN in Geneva. A nicely judged effort of
The spokesman said Britain wanted the conference "to get a collective will to fight racism now" but was "under no illusions about the scale of this challenge."Ah yes, those red lines. How reassuring to hear that phrase again. Remind me, how did it work out last time?
"We wouldn't be able to support a process that was skewed against the West or other countries," the spokesman said, adding that Britain had certain "red lines" on the issues involved that it would stick to.
"We have argued for the concluding document to have sufficient (content) on the Holocaust and combatting anti-Semitism... we would find it unacceptable if the process seeks to deny or denigrate the Holocaust".
France, apparently, is also sending a delegation and this, according to The Telegraph, shows a rift in the EU. Bernard Kouchner, who is leading the delegation, has warned that they would leave if the Iranian President starts making racist or anti-Semitic comments. Given the man's track record that seems an absolute certainty.
The Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, has made it clear that it would have been better if the EU member states had stayed together and followed a common line, preferably that of a boycott. One must admit, that Common Foreign Policy is not looking very good at the moment. But when did it? I am afraid, in this case we cannot blame the EU for our own government's pusillanimity.
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While the children play
For a nation at war, with blood and treasure draining into the sands of Helmand, our ignorance of the current military situation in Afghanistan is matched only by the scale of public indifference - and the media's infantile treatment of the campaign.
Thus we see today the heart-warming story of the "lucky British Tommy", replicated ad nauseam in the popular media, who cheated death by 2mm when a bullet penetrated his helmet.
As a story, it has the fingerprints of the MoD "spin" machine all over it, a classic of the genre that represents both the extent and the style of coverage of the Afghan campaign, part of a deliberate media strategy promoted by the MoD.
It is attempting to shore up domestic support for the war, with a succession of "feel-good" stories, while strenuously avoiding any discussion of the strategic situation that might cause us to wonder what we are doing there and whether we are succeeding.
Given that the British media has all but abandoned any serious attempt at reporting the Afghan campaign, it is hardly surprising that it so readily falls in with this vacuous strategy. Thus it is to the Canadian press that we must turn for the latest slender clues as to what is going on. That, in itself, tells you all you need to know.
Even then the Canadian report has to be clothed in a "human interest" framing, although that in itself is revealing. It tells us that British troops in Helmand are largely unaware of the activities of their Canadian allies, fighting 40 miles away in the neighbouring Kandahar province, as indeed are most Canadians ignorant of the British efforts.
The vital pieces of intelligence, however, are buried in the report, from which we learn that the Canadians are about to hand over the largely unpopulated northeastern and southeastern half of Kandahar to a US Army Stryker Brigade, while the British are transferring the largely unpopulated southern half of Helmand to a US Marine Expeditionary Brigade.
That there has been considerable USMC activity in the southern part of Helmand is not news, their activities in Garmsir last year having been charted by us, but the fact that there is to be a formal hand-over of responsibility of part of Helmand to the US most certainly is news. Furthermore, it represents a major change in status – and presumably strategic direction – for British forces, about which we have been told absolutely nothing.
However, we learn from this Canadian report that the Brits and the Canadians have embraced the growing American presence and have adopted nearly identical strategies to try to win Afghans over. They are using provincial reconstruction teams comprised of civilians and soldiers that are "as joined at the hip as an organisation can be," says Col Greville Bibby, the British contingent's deputy commander.
This, we are then told, is part of a security bubble strategy, with Bibby enthusiastically endorsing it, telling the Canadian audience that it "works". It is absolutely fantastic to see, gushes the brave Colonel. "It is all about them doing it. I can tell you that if we pulled out, the locals would be very angry. They are really hungry for this."
One would be slightly more impressed but for Bibby trying to justify the British strategy of sending men out in poorly protected vehicles, as he tells us: "If you've got the enemy within, laying bombs and attacking with small pockets of men, there are not many scenarios in this small zone for armour." The populated terrain in this province (Helmand) was not practical for heavy vehicles, he says.
"Our experience in Northern Ireland is that you can't influence the people from behind 10 inches of armour. You can't do it whizzing past with armour, pushing them off the road," he then adds, apparently entirely unconscious of the fact that it was this dismal line of thought that cost the Army the campaign in Iraq.
If we get the impression that the British Army has learned very little from its experience in Iraq, at least we can be assured that the USMC is using armour in Helmand – and a great deal of air power. Whether that is or will be effective in the longer term is anyone's guess and, as far as this blog goes, it will be a guess – our masters are not rushing to do anything so rash as to keep us informed.
That, therefore, still leaves unexplained the strategic context of the USMC activity in Now Zad. So far, this has been completely unreported by the MoD and ignored by the British media.
One thus further wonders about Bibby. He retails, with other soldiers at Lashkar Gah, his "frustration" with their own (British) journalists for seldom wanting to report on the non-military war. "The British media focus on the kinetic stuff," says Sgt Paul Crawford, a Royal Engineer who has served previously in Iraq and Afghanistan. "They want to film firefights. But the majority of what we do is stability and construction."
As in Canada, we are told, there is a war to be won at home. While hugely supportive of their troops, many Britons remain sceptical about the mission. "My impression is that there is a lack of understanding as to why we are here," Bibby says. "Like so many things political, the media use this to discuss political implications, rather than what is actually happening on the ground."
But hey! The media doesn't do politics any more. And as for "a lack of understanding as to why we are here," that is mainly because the MoD and this current government is so heavily inspired by mushroom management that it dominates its public information strategy.
Thus, when it comes to what is happening on the ground, Bibby can hardly be unaware of the fact that not only is the media absent, so is the MoD. The brave Colonel only has to look at his own organisation's website to discover that. He will see that it is filled with inconsequential "feel good" PR puffs which do everything short of actually telling us what is going on. He should also know that the media is actively discouraged from coherent reporting – not that this presents much of a problem.
Nevertheless, a grown-up media would, by now, be champing at the bit, demanding to know more, and taking on the "spin merchants" in the MoD. But, as long as it can fill up its pages with tat and political soap opera, and our opposition politicians seem equally unconcerned about what is happening, absolutely nothing is going to change.
Thus are we left in a fog of ignorance and an impression that, whatever is happening, the MoD is extremely reluctant to enlighten us. That can only invoke grave suspicions and maximise distrust, purely on the basis that if the MoD is acting as if it had something to hide, then it is a reasonable assumption that it is indeed hiding something.
But, as long as the political children are content to play their own games, the MoD will get away with it, leaving the grown-ups struggling to work out whether the British activities in Afghanistan are as inept as we fear, or whether they are just being run at the normal level of incompetence.
Should the MoD deign to tell us otherwise – and put Bibby out to grass – we are all ears.
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A point of agreement
Labour minister Phil Woolas delivered an impassioned plea in the Mail on Sunday yesterday, asking for voters to get out there and vote at the euro-elections – for anyone but the BNP.
He would prefer you vote to Labour but, if you are not supporting his party, he wants you to vote for one of the other main parties. If you don't, he says, the UK will have an MEP from the "far-Right" BNP. That would be disastrous, he thinks. For a start, they would be entitled to £1million of taxpayers' money to form a political grouping in Brussels.
Interestingly, he gets very short shrift from the readers of his piece, with 119 comments recorded, the overwhelming number hostile. Not least of the sentiment is that the Labour minister simply demonstrates that which many believe to be true – that there is very little difference between the three main parties, especially on EU issues.
Be that as it may, there is one thing on which we can agree with Woolas. "Those who say we should not mention the BNP are naive and in denial," he says. "Mainstream politicians can't pretend it doesn't exist."
Certainly, BNP is here to stay and – as Woolas himself acknowledges – the chances of the BNP gaining one or more euro-seats are extremely high. It seems, therefore, that the ostrich policy is no longer valid – if it ever was.
On the face of it, none of the mainstream parties should have any problems. An overview of BNP's policies suggests a degree of political naïvity which borders on the absurd. Without addressing the party's core issues, even its defence policy (illustrated by a Spitfire) tells you the direction of travel. In part, it reads:
We will close all foreign military bases on British soil, and refuse to risk British lives in meddling "peace-keeping" missions in parts of the world where no British interests are at stake - a position of armed neutrality. We will also restore national service for our young with the option of civil or military service.If halfway mature politicians cannot shred that policy, and the many others, they should not be in business. There is no need to play the "fascist" bogyman card. This is a party which is a political lightweight, with policies which do not even begin to address modern realities. It should be easy to dismiss as a joke.
Unless they deal with the BNP before the euro-elections, though, they are going to have to deal with them afterwards, when they will be an altogether tougher nut to crack. Ganging up and sending a message of "anyone but BNP", therefore, is the wrong tactic.
On the other hand, the reluctance of the mainstream political parties to take on the BNP possibly says more about them than their rival. If they lack either the confidence or the ability to deal with such a lightweight opponent, then the success of the BNP will be of their own making.
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