We can argue about tactics and tweaks to the strategy all day and all night, but anyone who doesn’t understand what the goals are just hasn’t been paying attention. Of course, most people who come out with claptrap about “no clear goals” are just throwing out any old fud as they are implacably opposed to war.

As to the first point, I just think you’re wrong. The media environment precludes the possibility that the public can be sustained in their support for just about any cause beyond our borders when the bodies come back in significant numbers, especially when this happens across months and years rather than weeks. Every death is reported as avoidable or the result of negligence on the part of the political masters, every claimed success is doubted or denigrated. Experts and non-experts push this and that alternative theory and every mistake attracts the cameras like flies to shit. And I’m not even complaining, but this is the 21st century media reality that brings the guts and the gore to our breakfast and dinner tables and the general public are repulsed.

As to casualties, Spain lost nearly two hundred people in a few minutes of complete merciless carnage so recently. What had Spain done to deserve this exactly?

I was reading recently about a class of RN World War II convoy escorts. One was sunk having herself picked up the survivors of a previous sinking. 227 men died, with only 3 survivors. That was one incident and the ship’s name is obscure, the event simply subsumed by losses on a scale we can barely comprehend today.

I think the struggle in Afghanistan is just but I am old and you might easily creep up on me in a tank. If I had a grandson out there I can easily see it would colour my opinion. This is not an easy conflict to reconcile. All sorts of strange features make the politics a web of confusion and contradiction. But fight we must. So I believe.

As long as we are supporting the destruction of the Afghan’s enconomy, we will lose. Period.

Here’s how:

Every year, some 6 million people die of cancer in the Global South without the benefits of opiate painkillers. The Afghan opium crop, which at present supplies 90% of the heroin used on our streets, should be bought up by the World Health Organisation, purified to medical grade, and used to treat terminal pain. Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has been conducting a long correspondence with the Foreign Office, who respond with the absurd argument that some of the produce “might leak onto the black market” – absurd because at present ALL of it is leaking onto the black market.
They are deaf to the argument that it is impossible to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan farmers when their livelihoods are dependent on the opium crop, which is valued at up to 50% of the Afghan economy.
They are deaf to arguments that to legitimise and purchase the opium would pull the financial rug out from under the feet of the Taliban.
They refuse to understand that the policy would slash the criminal activity and health problems associated with illegal Afghan heroin.
They are blind to the corruption associated with the drugs trade, which penetrates high into the Afghan administration.
And they are blind to the immense suffering associated with untreated terminal pain in Africa.

“Increasingly since 1979 and perhaps absolutely now, it is about a recrudescent Islam, one intent on sweeping through all the ‘Moslem’ lands and for good measure suborning all it touches in a wide sweep.”

“A lot has been achieved against the organisation of the jihadists but for political reasons this has had to minimised, in consideration of the impact of information about the successes against the Taliban would have had on ‘fellow’ Moslems resident in the U.K. and Canada and may have already had expression in the U.S.A. in recent days.

If a withdrawal does come about then the present situation in the U.K. will become fraught. (I would not put it past some of the extremist sentiment in the U.K. to have a ‘victory’ rally.).”

All true. But our political leaders fight very shy of saying this in such clear terms. And the public are beginning to view this war as some sort of open ended containment exercise, in which the attrition will continue until the enemy decide it’s over. Keeping the lid on islamic extremism over there, so we can avoid confronting it over here, and retain our pieties about islamic moderation in the west.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/nov/13/information-beautiful-afghanistan

might be interesting for this debate. Interestingly, civilian casualties caused by coalition forces has fallen dramatically this year, while those caused by the Taliban have continued to rise. It also suggests that British troop fatalities have remained relatively stable with respect to the total number of British troops, but that the number of wounded is rising with the increasing use of IEDs by the Taliban.

Well great, but you see the dilemma here, don’t you? There is already a small majority opposed to our presence in Afghanistan but you/we want to send more troops (the point about tactics is taken and this is constnatly under review as you know).

The uncomfortable truth is that the populations in western, liberal demcoracies have unrealistic expectations about modern warfare. Gulf I and the Balkans spoiled them. The majority is not prepared to accept troop casualties in genuinely significant numbers with the result that your/my preferred strategy for fighting is even less palatable to the public than the current policy.

If we’re just making points on a blog, this hardly matters. If you’re in government, it’s a real problem.

So when the return of coffins accelerates and cries for withdrawal grow ever louder, which camp will you be in? Just how stiff is that upper-lip?