-->Britain is throwing up a stooge's smokescreen to cover US withdrawal from Afghanistan. There is no need for such folly in Iraq
Blair should stop playing fall guy in Rumsfeld's war games
By: Simon Jenkins on: 17.11.2005 [06:29 ] (55 reads)
Auszug

In Afghanistan Rumsfeld's plan is now almost complete. From the start Washington insisted that once it had fixed the election of its puppet, Hamid Karzai, to office, it would get out fast. Democracy was in place. Afghanistan should be left to Karzai, the warlords, the Pashtun mullahs and the drug runners. If the Taliban returned, too bad. Find some stooge ally to throw up a smokescreen and get out.

Who is that smokescreen? The answer is John Reid. He is sending 4,800 British troops allegedly to wipe out the world's most lucrative opium trade and bring democracy, stability and protection to southern Afghanistan. How re-impoverishing Afghan peasants will encourage them to defy a resurgent Taliban is unclear. The identical strategy failed after the 2001 invasion. Already Nato's byzantine diplomats are fighting like rats in a sack over who will do what and where in the mountains of Khyber and the wastes of Helmand. Nato and Britain have been suckered to the miserable task of covering America's retreat. The Pentagon must be laughing fit to bust.

The default mode of American foreign policy is isolation and of British policy continued intervention. America is shrewdly retreating from Afghanistan, knowing that the place is heading for trouble. Britain is the fall guy. Will the same happen in Iraq?