Tagged with Afghanistan

Liberal interventionism: an excuse for yet another war

For 10 years the peace movement has been on continuous high alert. We have had ‘liberal intervention’ in Afghanistan, Iraq and most recently in Libya. Even before September 11th 2001, we had NATO intervention in Yugoslavia and regular US/UK bombing raids over the misnamed ‘no fly zone’ of Iraq.

During this time, public opinion in the UK has shifted against military action. It remains mostly loyal to servicemen and women in the armed forces but this period has seen significant decline in support for politicians’ decisions. Each war appears to have been less popular than the previous one. Continue reading →

Afghanistan: What they said 10 years ago

These are just some of the claims made by British politicians in 2001 justifying the invasion of Afghanistan, pretending it was a humanitarian intervention. Given that the British government would surely have known that the US invasion only succeeded due to the alliances forged with warlords just as bad as the Taliban, and that the US government had no intention of undergoing a “nation building” project in Afghanistan, then these statements can only be regarded as deliberate deception. Continue reading →

Four more years of war in Afghanistan is unacceptable

Tony Benn, narrating this excellent short video with music by Brian Eno, concludes “four more years of war in Afghanistan is unacceptable“. Do watch it — the message is stark. The Afghan war is currently costing £12m per day, enough to pay for 100,000 nurses and 150,000 care workers. But with 9,300 Afghan civilians killed by ISAF forces as well as 380 UK soldiers dead, it is without doubt a price that neither Britain nor Afghanistan can afford. The film was produced for Stop the War.

The meaning of 9/11

9/11 remains one of the most misunderstood events in modern history.

The first myth is that it came out of the blue on an unsuspecting America. In fact it is known that 11 countries provided advance warnings to the US about the 9/11 attacks, including Russia and Israel which sent 2 senior Mossad experts to Washington in August 2001 with a list of terrorist suspects that included 4 of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested. Moussaoui, now thought to be the 20th hijacker, was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners, and Newsweek later revealed (20 May 2002) that an agent had written that month that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers. Continue reading →