WHEN ANY COUNTRY DECIDES TO GO TO WAR then it is certain that civilians will be caught up in it and killed, which is why politicians have to think carefully before going to war. So it has surprised me that so much fuss is being made over the leaking of 90,000 documents to Wikileaks, some of which detail Afghanistan civilian deaths.
In Afghanistan the Taliban fighter flits between the role of husband and terrorist. He knows that we in the modern West lack the stomach to fight a total war as our fathers and grandfather’s did from 1939-45. Today it is politically unacceptable to kill civilians, even if they are off duty Taliban.
Perhaps the Guardian , The New York Times, and Der Spiegel (among just three of the liberal newspapers Wikileaks gave priority too) hope that these documents will have the same impact as the Pentagon Papers did during the Vietnam War. And it is perhaps no coincidence that Wikileaks’ guiding light, Julian Assange, is the son of two anti-Vietnam War protesters.
Assange is a computer programmer who has defied the authorities ability to prevent his website from advertising the West’s dirty little secrets. Like all of those on the ‘progressive’ Left, there is attached to him the label of naivety. What he has done with his latest expose amounts to nothing more than what everybody knew or suspected.
I can understand the liberal press getting up-tight about these disclosures, but papers like the Telegraph and Mail have given the same prominence to the leaks. Even if these two papers believe we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan at the first opportunity - surely they cannot believe that the methods we are deploying are wrong or immoral in a war situation? If so then our armed forces should be disbanded immediately.
ANOTHER OF THE ITEMS HIGHLIGHTED BY THE PRESS was the existence of a secret organisation called the "black" unit of special forces whose job description was to hunt down Taliban leaders to "kill or capture" without trial.
As usual it is the without trial aspect that upsets our liberals. The Taliban care little for such niceties when they send suicide bombers among Afghanistan’s civilian population, yet we are supposed to hold back. This so-called ‘black unit’ should continue to operate and be encouraged to do so, under the very same conditions that applied before this ‘exposure’.
To speak the truth, the existence of such a unit gave me hope that there was light at the end of the Afghan tunnel.
All I have read until now is how many of our brave soldiers have been killed (without, by the way, comparable Taliban deaths). What this release of documents tells me is that a total war strategy is being enacted, but in secret by special forces.
A friend of mine has told me that the father of two serving soldiers who work alongside him, has told him that his serving sons are fed-up with having their hands tied behind their backs in Afghanistan and, after two tours of duty, are now ready to resign from the armed forces.
IF ANYTTHING CHANGES AFTER THESE disclosures to further frustrate our armed forces ability to take on the Taliban, then it is not the individual soldiers, but the politicians themselves who should be hauled before a war crimes tribunal.
The Taliban can be defeated, but I am afraid so many restrictions have been placed on NATO forces by politicians that this whole business can only end in failure, and the Taliban know it, which is why they are in no hurry to enter into talks with the West, as many of our pusillanimous politicians are trying to encourage them to do.
Why should the Taliban accommodate the West? They have been given their delivery date by Obama and Cameron. All they have to do is just wait; and kill as many NATO forces in the meantime as they can; resulting in many truly meaningless deaths of our young men.
The Taliban will have defeated the West, not because of their strength and determination, but because of the West’s lack of both.
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