a lot can happen in forty years

"The Army's role might evolve, but the whole process might take as long as 30 to 40 years. There is absolutely no chance of NATO pulling out." General Sir David Richards, Head of the British Army, on the occupation of Afghanistan.

Interesting statement that, more for the attitude than the policy. One of the problems with saying that staying they´re for that period of time is that it sees ¨nation-building¨ as being like a treadmill. Put in enough resources and stick it for long enough and you can change the place into what you want it to be.

The trouble with these plans is that it doesn´t cede any say on things to the people that live there. It gives, for instance, 30-40 years of guerrilla warfare to the insurgents. You´d think that over time they might start getting better at it, particularly given that they´ve moved away from the suicide bomber model (which results in your terrorist dying along with your victims, rather than learning from mistakes and passing on experience to others). It doesn´t ask the Afghanis if they want that long an occupation, and whether some of them might be inclined to rebel against a long-term foreign presence.

In fact the whole idea ignores any problematic developments in the political and social life of Afghanistan. Peace is always political. For example, a lot of analysts say that in Iraq the decision to work with Sunni militia against international Islamist extremists was a far bigger part of turning around that quagmire than the surge was.

Beyond the complete disregard for what the population there might actually do or want. I´m always intrigued by the apparent need that international forces have to set up law enforcement agency and armed forces to defend their new little states. It´s weird because usually countries are able to do that sort of thing for themselves. For instance, the Taliban were able to establish an army and a police force that was completely totalitarian, all without a blue-hat in sight. And, obviously they could only possibly be overthrown by being bombed by the Americans, so it must have been pretty robust, right?

New democracies are supposed to have a broader base of support than brutal dictatorships, so why do nations set up by international diktat seem to have so much trouble?

Imperial hubris

I was just watching the mother of squaddie on Channel 4 News. Furious, she blamed the government for her son´s death, blown up in a lightly armoured vehicle venurable to roadside bombs. Moments later another squaddie expressed his disgust at the coming cuts to the military´s budget, and called the Prime Minister "a disgrace".

The reality is that this government or the next will cut government spending, and if you gave most people a choice, cut spending on the NHS or schools or cut spending on the military, they´d give you the same answer. That doesn´t make it easier for people who lose love ones because we´re waging a war that we can´t afford.

But that´s the point, whatever you think about the rights and wrongs of Afghanistan and its government, why is it that a archipelago just off the coast of mainland Europe should imagine that it needs to use its army and resources to support various governments in far-flung places all over the world. We don´t have the money, and at best these conflicts have a tangental relationship to our security (and most likely are actuallly detrimental to them). There´s no more reason that British troops should be occupying parts of Afghanistan than those of Sweden, Holland or Argentina.

From the soldiers and their families´point of view, they´re professionals asked to do a job, who feel they should be given the appropriate equipment to do it properly. If the British Army does it on the cheap, this is what´ll happen.

But, what if the money isn´t there? Surely the only argument, given that ´on the cheap´ is the only way that they can do it, is not to do it at all. That the British Army has no place supporting the government in Afghanistan, Iraq or any other far-off locale. Let other countries, those with money and pretensions to importance worry about all that shite.

And, if we weren´t busy invading places for a mixture of ideology, geo-politics and greed, what would we need an army for? Couldn´t we just say fuck it and spend the rest of the money on, say, windfarms and other forms of sustainable energy. We waste so much money make ourselves unpopular around the world, to "save people" who don´t want us to "save" them, wouldn´t it be better to spend it on helping people?

What could you add?

For the entirity of my 25 years on this planet (and many more), the conflict in Palestine has rumbled on. It is pretty futile to imagine that I might have anything worth adding on the topic, given that I and innumerable others have throw in their tuppence over the years.

Yet those years adding up calls to you, doesn´t it? That´s more than 60 years without a homeland, and more than 60 years in refugee camps. Twice as long as I´ve lived (and too me it feels like forever, and I don´t live in exile, waiting for my right to return).

Traditionally, with every resumed offensive, the media´s memory resets to as limited a timescale as if necessary to absolve the Israeli government of responsibility. When they invaded Lebanon, we´re were supposed to imagine that neither Israel nor Lebanon had any history whatsoever that pre-dated the kidnapping of 3 Israeli soldiers. These days, we´re supposed to think that everything was peachy until one too many rockets wobbled their way over the border, instead of misfirings into some poor Palestinian farmer´s house.

Of course, throughout the ceasefire, as they have done throughout the last 60 years in fact, the Palestinians have been allowed to exist under sufferance, according to the whims of the Israeli state, their current whim being an open-air prison camps for 1.5m Gazans, as collective punishment for their decisions at the ballot box.

The thing is the Israeli ruling class never changes it up. They´ve a persuasive capacity that is all stick, the more we beat them over the head the better they will behave. There´s no carrot for persuading anyone that peaceful co-existence might be nice. The ceasefire saw the number of rockets launched at Israel decline. Even if you still think a lower level of attacks is completely unacceptable, surely, with a genuine desire for peace, you might take this as a good starting point for something better?

No. Best tear it up and create another generation of hate. So your citizens can live a little longer in fear and loathing, so they never question that perhaps their problems don´t only eminent from the enmity of their neighbours.