You really have to admire the perspicacity of The Financial Times with its star columnist Gideon Rachman. The west has lost in Afghanistan, he tells us. This is the same Financial Times, I suppose, that told us how wondrous the euro was, and how the UK should be part of it – except this time the paper's columnist has it right. We lost.

He only thing is that, like the US and most of the media establishment, their focus is far too narrow and the timetable is skewed. We lost years ago, and the big problem is the Indian elephant in the room.

View full article here

A broken watch etc...

That's right twice a day. I wouldn't give the FT that much accuracy!!!!

Afghanistan will 'float off the map' and........ until some bleeding heart liberal rag opines, "it's time someone [we] did something".........................

I recall a conversation I was having with some Germans just post the twin towers atrocity - he said; "yes we must do something",
to which I replied; "no, what you mean is - that you hope that the Americans and British must do something".

Rachman! Now that name rings a bell. I don't suppose he's related to the Rachman who enriched us not only with his own presence but as a landord who drove Whitey out of London housing to make way for blacks newly imported from the west indies. If so, he does have rather illustrious forebears.

By the way, you ask who cares? Well, not me for one. Afghanistan and Pakistan could be wiped from the face of the Earth for all I care.

Hang on! I do care. I wish they would be wiped from the face of the Earth. Along with quite a few others.

Took a quick look to see how Iraqis were enjoying all that peace,democracy and security.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/ma ... ill-dozens

Seems things haven't changed that much then.

What will our final departure from Afghanistan be like, I wonder? NATO's soldiers (ours included) humiliatingly withdrawing under fire like happened when we left Aden? Our bases & equipment looted by terrorist scavengers as happened to our abandoned bases in Ambar province, Iraq, or to the US forces' base at Mogadishu airport, Somalia? Will some of our heavy equipment transported back via Pakistan be looted &/or burnt as has happened to NATO fuel supplies en route through there to Afghanistan? Or if it travels on trains back via Russia will it be charged inordinate passage fees, with everything of interest being analysed for future reference or copying by Russian spooks? Probably all of these, in fact!

Watchet

World Service this morning reports news of 2 British soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, they explain proudly that western forces continue to 'train' the Afghans to take over when we leave -- as they 'trained' Iraqis.

Now I know I'm not military-minded or one of the upper classes qualified to make these decisions-
But I've never understood why we would 'train' the enemy to be as supposedly good as we are.
And when that enemy's winning anyway, I haven't the faintest idea why we keep 'training' them to shoot some more of us.

Oh well, I'd better go back to my own training classes. I really need to learn how to tug that forelock properly.

Dr. North, something is wrong with the link to the FT article.

This is what I get: http://news.google.co.uk/nwshp?hl=en&ta ... 1332796683

Can't hep it ... that's Google/FT messing about ... they are always doing crazy things.

We will pack everything up and fly it home in our fleet of A400Ms. Honest.

Either that or become jolly generous to the Afghan National Army. Got to get rid of the Mastiffs somehow (but strip them first of electronic toys and fancy armour) to stop the Army Top Brass from looking stupid in still wanting their cold war fighting vehicles.

The term "defeat" doesn't seem very meaningful. What would a victory have been? What was the point of being there anyway. You can only lose if you had an objective to lose and there was never anything in Afghanistan that was worth the bones of a single British grenadier.

The real purpose of the war was never about winning. It was to keep the people of Britain scared of "al Quaeda". To quote Mencken "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." Al Quaeda were our empolyees in Yugoslavia & Chechnya; they were our "enemies" in the "war on terror" whose only purpose on both "sides" was to terrorise our people; now they are our employees in Libya and Syria. Whether 9/11 was set up by the CIA or not (evidence both ways) is immaterial - the purpose of the "war" was never anything to do with "winning". And now the circus will move on... ppssibly yo Syria &/or Iran. At some time when we have been eclipsed China will rewrite the game and th parasites running Britain will suck up to them too.