War without Victory
The Head of all the U.K’s armed forces, himself a former British commander in Afghanistan, has now said it is not possible to defeat AlQaeda and other terrorist groups, only to contain them. This Blog, along with countless people across the world, has argues this continuously. It is now official. The War on Terror is a dead end.
But it worse than that, because military force involving occupying foreign countries and imposing corrupt and dysfunctional governments on them fans the flames. To contain the threat a quite different, more subtle approach is required. Above all it is necessary to address the core issues which inflame young passions and drive recruits to volunteer their lives to spread terror and destruction among the innocent, whom they see as collectively guilty.
Meanwhile Iraq now has a government with the ruling majority sympathetic to Iran, which brokered the deal to set it up. That does not sound like the kind of victory Bush and Blair had in mind. What a fiasco.