How brave soldiers like Tom are real losers in war we can’t win

[fatman17]

How brave soldiers like Tom are real losers in war we can’t win

By Sharon Owens

Wednesday, 25 February 2009

I caught a snippet of the Ellen Degeneres show on Diva TV at the weekend and one of Ellen’s guests was none other than Barack Obama’s running mate, Senator Joe Biden, (filmed before they won the election).


Biden was charming and gracious and a surprisingly fun guest, but he did manage to mention that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is costing the USA $10bn dollars a month. Yes, that’s $10bn dollars per month, every month.

The Sunday Times newspaper featured two sobering stories on the ‘War on Terror’ last week. One piece described how more than 100 British soldiers have had limbs amputated (and suffered other life-changing injuries) in the last 12 months alone, following roadside bombs in Afghanistan. The paper says the Taliban are improving their devices all the time. There’s a photograph of Lance-Corporal Tom Neathway (25), from Worcester: a handsome young man who lost both legs and one arm in northern Helmand last July.

Tom is pictured sitting in a suburban front room, with his new steel legs neatly laced into a pair of trendy sneakers, and his new, high-tech arm resting casually on the side of an armchair. He’s only 25 yet for the rest of his life he’ll be a disabled person. And I wonder, how many times he will ask himself, what was it all for?

The Taliban are nowhere near finished in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact they seem to be getting stronger and have now established themselves in Pakistan as well. Which brings me to the second sobering story of the week. Reporter Daud Khattak went to Swat Valley, Pakistan, and found the once-popular tourist resort transformed into a “hell-hole of bodies and ruin”. The Taliban have banned “un-Islamic activities” such as luxury hotels, women’s clothing markets, libraries, music and dancing, television, internet cafes, snooker clubs, gaming arcades, and schools for girls over the age of eight. Men are no longer allowed to shave off their beards. Khattak reported seeing a burnt-out hospital, a burnt-out seminary, 200 schools destroyed and decapitated bodies everywhere. Children have been left without parents and, once again, we have pictures of frightened citizens crouching terrified in the dust.

Now is it just me or has the world gone mad entirely? I’m really struggling to understand exactly what the Taliban hope to achieve by ruining their own infrastructure and economy in this way. (Though Joe Biden said that the Taliban earn a good living by selling opium to the west.) Anyone who can get out of Swat Valley has already fled, leaving behind a ‘wasteland of blood and fear’. I’m baffled as to the mindset of these extremists. Genuinely baffled. Surely if the Taliban wish to live with nothing but prayer and spirituality in their lives, they could set up small men-only monasteries in the desert, and let the rest of us get on with our decadent lives?

There’s no future in violent coercion, as the IRA discovered over the 40 long years of our own Troubles, where almost 1,000 soldiers and police officers lost their lives. Well, I’m trying to be balanced here: no, we’re not perfect in the west but at least we don’t behead people for the crime of dancing or reading books.

So what are we to do? Pull the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and leave the people there to fight the Taliban themselves? As Britain and the USA teeter on the verge of national bankruptcy, there could soon be no other option. Were the Taliban a strong and organised force before September 11 or is all of this extremism just a flash in the pan that will die out the minute the troops leave? Would it be better to withdraw troops immediately and simply stop trading with failed states? In fact, there’s a case here for stopping all government aid to Africa at once because of the corruption it breeds at the highest levels.

Before the election Obama and Biden promised to end the war but now Obama has asked Nato for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan. So far, the Germans have said no. It could take several more years before Afghanistan has an army capable of taking on the Taliban. And as for Iraq and even Pakistan, well, who can say? These countries have massive populations and I for one, have no idea how they can be controlled with a few thousand UK and US troops.

Oh dear, so much for Obama’s glorious election last year: the honeymoon was much shorter than I expected. (I stand corrected, Eamonn McCann.)

Yes, I fear the great global colonial experiment is coming to an end. Where many impoverished and war-torn countries around the world look to Britain and the US to sort them out.

There’s just not enough money in the pot, guys, to establish a western-style democracy and economy across all the continents. Apparently we face a ‘summer of rage’ here at home as workers protest against job cuts and home repossessions by the bailed-out banks.

I weep for the traumatised children of Swat Valley in Pakistan, and for hero Lance-Corporal Tom Neathway in Worcester and for the worried-sick public sector workers in Dublin who are living on the breadline. But I don’t know what the hell we can do to get ourselves out of this bloody mess. Any suggestions, anyone?

 

[JK!]

It was great moment when Tom stood tall to recieve his medal from prince Charles despite being a triple amputee.

Makes me wonder how many wounded Pakistani servicemen suffer like him.