Polly Toynbee was one of the first out of the traps in the Guardian, a newspaper which since WW1 has been more often than not on the wrong side of history.
She writes:
All I can say that bitter lesson was long in coming. It wasn’t as if the likes of Toynbee weren’t warned about sending US and UK military into Afghanistan and later Iraq. She only had to turn on her TV and see the millions of people marching across the world who warned of the dangers of intervening militarily in Afghanistan and later Iraq.
But, no, Polly preferred to listen to snake oil salesmen like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and over here, Blair, Straw, and the likes of David Miliband. And she wasn’t the only MSM hack who displayed such arrogance and ignorance.
If history teaches us anything it’s that putting military boots on other peoples' streets, rarely ends well for the occupied and their oppressors. In 2001 Toynbee only had to look across the Irish Sea to understand when people in their own streets are treated harshly and in some cases barbarically by foreign soldiers they often resist, and join organisations which oppose their oppressor. In the north of Ireland it was the IRA, South Africa the ANC, Palestine the PLO and in Afghanistan the Taliban.
It beggars believe those who supported the War on Terror didn’t see the link, but then their leaders considered themselves to be the masters of the world and all they behold, when they were in reality war criminals. And the likes of Polly Toynbee, who colluded with them, their enablers, who painted a picture which was far from the truth.
The very least she can do today is hang her head in shame.
She writes:
Here ends the west’s grotesque delusion that it could use its military might to turn Afghanistan into a stable democracy, a shining path of moderate Islam. In the shadow of New York’s burning twin towers, I was one swept along on that “something must be done” tide, that drumbeat for a war to stop terror and liberate oppressed people. We have learned a bitter lesson.
But, no, Polly preferred to listen to snake oil salesmen like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and over here, Blair, Straw, and the likes of David Miliband. And she wasn’t the only MSM hack who displayed such arrogance and ignorance.
If history teaches us anything it’s that putting military boots on other peoples' streets, rarely ends well for the occupied and their oppressors. In 2001 Toynbee only had to look across the Irish Sea to understand when people in their own streets are treated harshly and in some cases barbarically by foreign soldiers they often resist, and join organisations which oppose their oppressor. In the north of Ireland it was the IRA, South Africa the ANC, Palestine the PLO and in Afghanistan the Taliban.
It beggars believe those who supported the War on Terror didn’t see the link, but then their leaders considered themselves to be the masters of the world and all they behold, when they were in reality war criminals. And the likes of Polly Toynbee, who colluded with them, their enablers, who painted a picture which was far from the truth.
The very least she can do today is hang her head in shame.
⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.
Mick,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your overall sentiment but bulk at any equation of the IRA, ANC or PLO on a par with the barbaric and totalitarian Taliban.
"If you ever feel useless, remember it took twenty years, trillions of dollars and 4 US Presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban".
ReplyDeleteNorman Finkelstein
No it took two shameful actions by two US Presidents to restore the status quo ante in Afganistan.
DeleteMick
ReplyDeleteIn your eclectic mix of "antiimperialist" resistance fighters, you omit the Khmer Rouge who fought US and Vietnamese invaders and the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan who fought Soviet "invaders" in the 1980s.
I note you make no mention of the real tragedy in all of this: the reversion to the incarceration of women and girls ibn Afghanistan. But of course, in the twisted view of the regressive far left, anything that opposes now moribund US and UK "imperialism" gets a free pass just as US Cold Warriors gave free passes to all sorts of squalid regimes and terror groups like the Nicaraguan Contras who were on "our side"; our sons of bitches.
I baulk at any equation between the ANC and Taliban, IRA and PLO. For the ANC, the armed struggle was of last resort and never really a significant weapon in the anti-apartheid armoury (apologies for the unintended pun!. For the rest it was the wepaon first resort. And unlike the IRA and Taliban, the largest demographic of those killed by both, Northern Irish Catholics and Afghan Muslims, the relatively few victims of the ANC campaign were not from the demographic they claimeds to be fighting on behalf of.
The armed struggle was not the weapon of first resort for the Provisional IRA. In fact the person who more than anyone else founded the organisation made the point that had the British pulled down Stormont the day they put troops on the street PIRA would never have formed. It was not some physical force tradition that drove the Provos in their insurrectionary years but British state strategies manifested at four key points. By the time the British did get rid of Stormont they had already massacred a civilian population in Derry which pushed the insurrection beyond the point of no return. People who were not remotely attracted to the notion of physical force republicanism and its armed struggle as first resort principle, flocked to the Provos.
DeleteIf we except World War 2 we know from experience and history that US military intervention does not change a situation for the good. And even then it was the Soviets that broke Nazi Germany. US and English war crimes against German cities and their civilian population seemed not to have the impact on German morale that the terror bombing was was meant to induce.
The original Afghanistan operation was a NATO one activated by Article 5 of its Charter and had UN cover; it was not a unilateral UN action with dubious legality as in Iraq 2003 and with total illegality in Vietnam.
ReplyDeleteYes US involvement often does not change things for good but it was for the good in Northern Iraq to set up Kurdish safe haven in 1991, Bosnia 1995, Kosovo 1999. But nothing good will ever cone from Russian and Chinese interventions which will be two of the consequences of US isolationalism and the weakening of the United Nations and other pillars of rules based international order.
It was US isolationism that partially enabled the rise of fascism in the 1930s through US refusal to join the League of Nations and would have prevented US entry into World War II. And on World War II, the clinching argument for RTP/humanitarian intervention is that it was not waged to stop the incipient Shoah/Holocaust.
@ AM
ReplyDelete"By the time the British did get rid of Stormont they had already massacred a civilian population in Derry which pushed the insurrection beyond the point of no return. People who were not remotely attracted to the notion of physical force republicanism and its armed struggle as first resort principle, flocked to the Provos."
Martin McCleery made an interesting point in his excellent book Operation Demetrius and its aftermath. Had internment been brought in in the aftermath of Bloody Friday, it would have had a far less radicalising effect on the nationalist population of the North.
It's incredible to think how the course of history could have been so radically changed with various events being only a matter of week earlier or later.
I think Marty has a point - timing was always crucial. The one proviso is that the impact of torture played its part in the nationalist community. A formerly radicalised population can return to radical politics as a result of events - the hunger strike, for example. I wrote one that Roy Mason snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Delete