Sunday 27 September 2009

The bitter logic of "staying the course"

More than 200 (British) soldiers dead in Afghanistan, and now Gordon Brown advises us that "the best way to honour their memory is to see the course through". I don't know which particular "course" Gordon has in mind – protecting democracy, training the Afghan army, defeating the Taliban, talking to the Taliban, or just fighting them so they don't turn up on British shores – but this is straight out of the George W Bush tear bucket.
Not so long ago, I seem to remember, Bush was telling us that we would be betraying the American dead in Iraq if we gave up the fight. We owed it to the dead to go on killing more Iraqis. And now we owe it to the dead to go on killing more Afghans. Who, of course, will go on killing us. Is there no end to this madness?
(Robert Fisk: "Why These Deaths hit home as hard as the Somme" The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-these-deaths-hit-home-as-hard-as-the-somme-1773468.html

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