AFGHAN DEATH TOLL A GRIM MONUMENT TO LABOUR LUNACY
HEROES: But British soldiers are deprived of vital equipment and support
Monday August 10,2009
By Leo McKinstry
THE military campaign in Afghanistan continues to inflict a savage toll on the British Army.
Following the killing of three paratroopers in a Taliban ambush last week a soldier from the 2nd Battalion, the Mercian regiment was blown up on Saturday in a roadside explosion while on patrol in Helmand province. His was the 196th British death in Afghanistan since our forces first arrived there in 2001.
Having praised the courage of this latest victim, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Wenham, spokes- man for the British Task Force in Helmand, said that the soldier had “died working to make Afghanistan a better place”.
Those words expose the lethal folly of the Afghan mission.
The catalogue of deaths is fast becoming a monument to socialist vanity. Why should brave young men have to sacrifice their lives to “make Afghanistan a better place”? Britain has no more responsibility for the Afghan people
 The Afghan war might have started with some justification when, in the wake of 9/11, there was a determination among Western governments to hunt down the leaders of Al Qaeda.  |
than we have for those living in Peru or Timbuctu.
Soldiers are recruited to defend our country, not to act as charity workers in the developing world. It is the height of arrogance for our Left-wing politicians to treat our troops as nothing more than fodder for their internationalist socialist agenda.
The Afghan war might have started with some justification when, in the wake of 9/11, there was a determination among Western governments to hunt down the leaders of Al Qaeda.
But now almost eight years later neither the politicians nor the generals can explain the purpose of our continuing involvement in this quagmire.
In place of a clear military objective there is vague rhetoric about supporting women’s rights, stabilising democracy, ending the drugs trade or upholding the Pakistani government’s fight against extremists. Sounding just like a
bombastic Labour politician, General Sir David Richards, the new head of the British Army, said at the weekend:
“Jobs and simple governance that works are key and there has to be a strong reconciliation element to the latter.”
That last phrase is code for talking to the Taliban. But if General Richards really believes that then why are British troops being asked to risk their lives in fighting the Taliban? By far the most disturbing remark from General Richards was his claim that the British Army could be in Afghanistan for “up to 40 years”.
Such a timescale only shows the depth of the political and military establishment’s self-delusion and contempt for the British public. When our own nation is in such drastic decline it would be an outrage to go on pouring money into the tribal wastelands of Afghanistan for the next four decades.
The violent territorial disputes between warlords in that distant mountainous country have absolutely nothing to do with us. The top brass and the Labour Cabinet know that Britain has no genuine national interest in Afghanistan. That is why they come out with their propaganda about the wider importance of the war in defeating Islamic terrorism
within our borders. But this is just drivel. Islamic extremism in Britain has little connection to Afghanistan.
The worst terrorist atrocities here, such as the London bombings or the attack on Glasgow airport, were committed by home-grown radicals.
A Government that really believed in tackling Muslim extremism would crack down on immigration from Asia and
Africa, remove the dogma of multi-culturalism from the public sector and deport hard- liners instead of giving them
legal aid and benefits.
Thanks to Labour we now have the grotesque paradox of British soldiers dying in Afghanistan in the fight against
militant Islam, yet the same militancy is flourishing within our country. Our troops are dying to liberate Afghan women
from vicious, superstitious misogyny yet policewomen in south Yorkshire wear burkas for a day to show their empathy with the Muslim community.
Rather than planning to spend the next 40 years battling the Taliban in Asia our supine, Left-wing political elite should concentrate on halting the spread of sharia law, honour killings, forced marriages and hate sermons at home.
The hypocrisy of Labour is compounded by its cowardice. Machine politicians such as Jack Straw and David Miliband demand that young British soldiers lay down their lives in Afghanistan yet they themselves cringe pathetically in the face of Islamic aggression at home.
Desperate to appease the zealots they pass special religious discrimination laws, dish out grants to Muslim groups, clamp down on open debate about Islam and institutionalise direct favouritism towards ethnic minorities. They show far more concern about rewarding the enemies of our
country than our defenders.
While British troops have been deprived of equipment, numbers and proper medical support Muslim terror suspects are lavished with legal aid and social security. It is sickening that our patriotic heroes in the armed forces should be led into war by a bunch of traitors, none of whom have the slightest concept of national pride.
They have ruined Britain with their economic mismanagement and their ideological fixation with multi-cultural diversity yet think they have the right to strut around the world, squandering lives and money in their arrogant socialist vision.
It seems that they want to build up every other nation except their own. Indeed, Douglas Alexander, the International
Development Secretary, said in a speech last week that the Government wants to get “the building blocks of security in place in all fragile countries”.
Why should the internal security of other countries be any business of ours? Labour politicians are fond of sneering
at the Victorian empire but they are politically correct imperialists of the worst sort.
And unlike the Victorians they care nothing for Britain.
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