Tories will leave Afghan girls to their fate
In an pronouncement that will surely bring joy to the hearts of the Stop The War Coalition and other Taliban supporters, trad-right Tory Liam Fox has made it clear that the new Lib Dem-Tory government doesn’t give a toss about Afghan women and girls:
“In a significant shift from Labour’s foreign policy, Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, said that Britain was not a “global policeman” and emphasised that the mission in Afghanistan was about making British streets safer rather than sending Afghan girls to school” (Times 22/05/10)
If you ever needed proof that Tories (and their Lib-Dem bag-carriers) are SCUM, this is it.
Trouble is, large sections of the so-called “left” are equally scummy on this question.
Summer said,
May 22, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Afgan girls live under the ‘religion of peace’ – that is their culture. Why should we be interfering with that – and losing young lives in the process? If you hadn’t noticed we have a nearly 20% illiteracy rate here in the UK at school leaving age, and very little money. Best to start education our own don’t you think; rather than letting single girlst think that motherhood is a career option???
Tories are scum are they? That is your objective, tolerant, view of diverse opinion. Well, how about if I said ‘Africans are lazy’? It’s about as accurate as your assessment !!
Little Angussie said,
May 22, 2010 at 7:14 pm
I think it is outrageous to call the Government scum. Why should our soldiers be dying in Afghanistan to bring education to girls and back up a corrupt Afghan Government?
Who gives you the right to call anyone scum?
It is a change for the better from labour’s foreign policy. It is time our soldiers were hole from Afghanistan. Labour’s foreign policy was based on torture and the barrel of a gun so this is a change for the better.
As for not giving a toss about Afghan girls and women – I suggest that the majority of people in this country feel the same. For God’s sake the Afghan people are not happy to see us there!
We should not be trying to impose Western values on other cultures and beliefs. We have spilt enough blood on Afghan soil and have not learned the lessons of history which is that the Afghan people will never be subjugated by any foreign power.
This is a tolerant society and just because another opinion disagrees with yours, that does not make them scum. I suggest it says rather more about you and your mindset!
LabMike said,
May 22, 2010 at 7:22 pm
@Summer: Their culture has been so screwed with over the last few decades that it is fruitless to try and say that. After the revolution Afghanistan was an atheist “People’s Republic” until the USA decided to make Islamic fundamentalism a force in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is as it is because it got caught up in our cold war- we can either leave it broken or we can try to help fix it. Is an oppressed person qualitatively different for being born somewhere foreign?
Inward-looking nationalism is a stupid stance, if an easy one. It’s a cop out- how can a person decide that the people of foreign nations aren’t worth our concern when walking around in clothes made by the foreign oppressed, typing on a computer put together by the foreign oppressed, eating chocolate farmed by the foreign oppressed?
I’m not saying this is your reason for it, Summer, but a lot of similar opinions just seem like racism in another guise. “Those people from the Ivory Coast are from a culture that *can* work 100 hours a week at the age of five to bring us our cocoa! It would be wrong to meddle!”
The fact is that we are a global world, no culture is formed in a vacuum. It’s a bit rich for us to leave countries underdeveloped through our disasterous reorganization of economies and social structures during the era of imperialism.
dan said,
May 22, 2010 at 8:48 pm
calling someone scum completely destroys any rationality to your argument, it makes it impossible for people to take you seriously. the remark by liam fox himself is callous-sounding but quite frankly true, we dont have the ability to solve all the worlds problems, nor should we try to, we are not world policemen. Afghanistan is far from the only country with poor education standards, we cannot intervene in all of those to try and model them on our on so perfect democracy now can we? not only that but these countries do not want people interfering in their affairs, certainly not to try and rebuild their societies in our image. democracy promotion is a risky business, but having already entered afghanistan the most we can try and do is leave the frameworks for a vaguely stable democracy, but it will be up to the afghan people to ensure that the country remains stable. there’s a lot of injustice in this situation, but there isn’t really a solution, and is wasting more british soldiers, and afghan civilian lives really worth pursuing such an unattainable goal?
Arthur Seaton said,
May 22, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Where’s Will when you need him?!
charliethechulo said,
May 22, 2010 at 9:45 pm
Here we have the true voices of the isolationist right-wing, as echoed by the relativist “left”: when I call Tories and other isolationists (eg Simon Jenkins) “scum” I’m being restrained, believe me.
charliethechulo said,
May 22, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Where’s Johnny Gameboy now that the Tory isolationists need some backup? He’s got the same “line” as them, after all.
Will said,
May 23, 2010 at 12:22 am
I am here. I have been enjoying the sun today.
While i was enjoying the sun i also thought about how i could make my enemy’s lives shorter and those close to them more unalterably miserable. I also thought about how i could bring forward the time of their deaths to suit the needs of the proletariat.
I also gave blood to the NHS yesterday. Just to make up for my fantasies and that.
Will said,
May 23, 2010 at 12:25 am
that Dan cunt is boring as fuck.
he soounds like my dad.
Tosser.
Will said,
May 23, 2010 at 12:28 am
i hate Decca Aitkenhead– she is representative of everything guardianlike cuntishnessness
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/22/christopher-hitchens-decca-aitkenhead
Steve said,
May 23, 2010 at 8:04 am
One reason the left are/were against the invasion of Afghanistsan by the bourgeois is that they know the bourgeois were acting in THEIR interests and not in the interests of the Afghans. AND WE HAVE BEEN PROVED RIGHT AND YOU CHEERLEADERS FOR THE BOURGEOIS INVASIONS HAVE BEEN PROVED WRONG.
YOU SCUMMY SCUMMY FUCKERS.
charliethechulo said,
May 23, 2010 at 8:07 am
Steve: you scummy Tory enemy of women and democrats.
Steve said,
May 23, 2010 at 8:19 am
Charlie – You scummy supporter of Bourgeois rule everywhere. It never occurred to you did it that the Tories would eventually get to decide the fate of the Afghans!
Though the servile idiots that you are you actually believe our ruling class was interested in the fate of Afghans. As if New Labour were not negotiating with the Taliban!!
What idiots that you think you can support bopurgeois wars and then get to influence the their actions.
FUCKING SCUMMY SERVILE DELUDED IDIOTS!!
charliethechulo said,
May 23, 2010 at 8:21 am
Steve: you should try living under the Taliban – or is that only good enough for Afghan women and girls?
Steve said,
May 23, 2010 at 8:37 am
Charlie – I will not be an idiotic puppet of the bourgeois like you because I know they will do whatever is in their interests. I am in the enemy camp.
It is quite laughable that the servile supporters of the bourgeois like you are now crying over a slight change in policy tone. Where the fuck was your indignation when New Labour were negotiating with the Taliban!
You scummy scummy class traitors, you scummy servile puppets of the bourgeois.
maxdunbar said,
May 23, 2010 at 10:48 am
Loads of bluster on this thread from people who can’t handle the fact that they are essentially on the same side as Tory isolationists and pro-faith scum. The rage of Caliban seeing his face in the rockpool
bensix said,
May 23, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Steve said,
May 23, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Max,
Just a reminder that your commander in chief is Barak Obama and not Liam Fox!!! If you don’t like the way YOUR leader is conducting operations in Afghanistan send him a fucking letter you scummy scummy servile puppet of the bourgeois you.
P.S. I don’t normally argue in this manner but as they say when in Rome…..
resistor said,
May 23, 2010 at 5:05 pm
I see Will is angry that his right-wing, psychotic, alcoholic and sexist hero was exposed by Decca Aitkenhead as the fraud he is.
In 2006, Hitchens’ wife, the American writer Carol Blue, told the New Yorker her husband was one of “those men who were never really in battle and wished they had been. There’s a whole tough-guy, ‘I am violent, I will use violence, I will take some of these people out before I die’ talk, which is key to his psychology – I don’t care what he says. I think it is partly to do with his upbringing.”
“Guantánamo slightly threatened at one point to change my attitude towards capital punishment. I thought it would have been good if some of those people could have been taken out and shot. Yeah, put up against a wall. Lincoln would have done it. Of course, I would have been against it if they had. But that’s how I felt.”
charliethechulo said,
May 23, 2010 at 6:40 pm
I repeat the scum Steve enjoys bourgeois democratic rights, but would condemn Afghan women and girls to the tender mercies of the Taliban: how filthy, how contemptible!
I have a general rule: before you support a regime, or willingly consign others to live under it…ask yourself: would *I*want to live under those people?
Steve and liberal relativists like him wouldn’t last 5 minutes under their comrades the Taliban. But – according to him – Afghan women and girls have to be sacrificed in the name of… what? Tory isolationism? Or some misguideed concept of “anti-imperialism.” The two are now indistinguishable as they wallow in their cess-pit of mysogeny, reaction and rural fascism.
maxdunbar said,
May 23, 2010 at 7:05 pm
Steve
Obama’s commitment to Afghanistan is one of many things I like about him.
Resistor
That article is a load of cod psychological bullshit isn’t it?
Aitkenhead should stick to MDMA.
BenSix said,
May 23, 2010 at 8:59 pm
(Think I’ve got a comment in moderation.)
resistor said,
May 24, 2010 at 12:44 am
Max writes,
‘ Resistor, That article is a load of cod psychological bullshit isn’t it? Aitkenhead should stick to MDMA.’
So you deny that Hitchens is an right-wing, psychotic, alcoholic, sexist warmonger?
Secondly, do you know that in Afghanistan, the NATO forces are facilitating ‘bacha bazi’ which is enforced child prostitution carried out by their warlord allies?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dancingboys/
http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/04/12/a-deal-with-the-devil/
maxdunbar said,
May 24, 2010 at 5:18 am
That second link leads to a website selling Viagra.
Laban said,
May 24, 2010 at 7:56 am
It makes perfect sense to send young working-class Brits to be blown up in under-armoured vehicles, with not enough helicopters to get them to hospital, in Helmand – all so that little Nooria can go to school. It used to be called imperialism once upon a time, but somehow that’s all changed – as long as there’s nothing at all in it for us.
Come on, Charlie. I’m sure there’s a recruiting office somewhere near you – or, if you’re too old, TEFL in Afghanistan.
Steve said,
May 24, 2010 at 11:59 am
charliethechulo,
You supported the bourgeois in its invasion of Afghanistan. I opposed it. Therefore you are responsible for whatever policy they decide to adopt, not me. But I think you will find that the Tories intend to stay with the US in Afghanistan for longer than New Labour would have, so you should be delighted with the Tories. You should hail them to the rooftops. You and the Tories are on the same side. You were the day you supported the ruling class in their Afghan adventure. Don’t tell me you didn’t foresee the Tories taking over the mission at some point, don’t tell me you were that fucking idiotic. No-one can be that cretinous, it’s impossible. So you knew when YOU supported the bourgeois in their conquest that eventually the Tories would get their turn to decide the Afghans fate.
Me I opposed and still oppose the bourgeois, I have nothing to do with their policy in Afghanistan.
To all you pro bourgeois supporters don’t moan at me for their change in policy, I have NO say in the matter. You supported them!! Send a fucking letter pleading with them to change their minds, being the loyal servile scummy fuckers you are they are bound to listen. Aren’t they?
Sue R said,
May 24, 2010 at 2:03 pm
(Allthough I have been told not to post here, I really feel I must join in with the general kicking that you are getting.). So, are you suggesting, Charliethe chulo, that they are not ready for self-government?
charliethechulo said,
May 24, 2010 at 3:26 pm
“You supported the bourgeois in its invasion of Afghanistan. I opposed it”: wrong again, Steve!
maxdunbar said,
May 24, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Notice that Steve and Laban make identical points from different angles?
I’m just waiting for someone to quote Bismarck.
Steve said,
May 24, 2010 at 5:02 pm
The Shiraz Socialist position was to support the BOURGEOIS in their war against the Afghans because they have read a few lines in the Communist Manifesto and have decided that contains the truth of the world. They have decided to completely ignore the point of Marxism and instead have chosen to interpret his work as a blueprint for Bourgeois domination. So to the Shiraz Socialist posse the Bourgeois show their true nature in imperialist adventures, being nice and cuddly and ever so decent.
So the nice Bourgeois invaded Afghanistan and Shiraz were happy, happy that their beloved bourgeois were civilising a few backward natives. But then suddenly something went wrong the nice cuddly bourgeois were replaced by their nasty doppelgangers. Though in reality the nasty lot were actually promising to stay in Afghanistan longer than the nice section of the bourgeois to stabilise the puppet government the Shiraz posse are so in awe of. So its scratch your heads time why Shiraz are so angry, scratch your heads why William Hague is not their great hero like Bush was.
But anyway if you don’t like the way your nasty bourgeois heroes are conducting the war, send a Fucking letter to the nice lot asking them to have a word.
And leave the left who opposed the bourgeois from the beginning to oppose them in peace.
charliethechulo said,
May 24, 2010 at 8:42 pm
“The Shiraz Socialist position was to support the BOURGEOIS in their war against the Afghans because they have read a few lines in the Communist Manifesto”:
Care to justify that, Steve? Like when and where did *anyone* from Shiraz Socialist support the troops going into Afghanistan?
BTW: since when was reading the Communist Manifesto (even a “few lines”) a *bad thing* for socialists? Even though, from what you write it would seem you think *any* reading (let alone *thinking*) is a bad thing for socialists.
Laban said,
May 24, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Let’s assume that we have a perfect right to send the army into any country we consider to be over-burdened by evil happenings – after all, that’s basically how we picked up the West African empire, taking over after the collapse of the local economies (following the abolition of slavery) triggered vicious civil wars. So we have precedents of a sort.
Let’s assume, too, that there’s absolutely no moral issue involved in sending young working class Brits to be killed in the name of equal educational opportunity for little Afghan Nooria. I think we can take that as read, in this company at any rate.
But even given those hefty assumptions, the point is that we haven’t an infinite amount of power, troops, or money to play with – and Afghanistan, for historic, geographical, and cultural reasons, is up near the very top of “countries you’d least like to be given the job of transforming into a democracy”. In terms of bang for the liberal-interventionist buck we might do better to look to Sudan, Zimbabwe, or the oppressed homosexuals of Jamaica, Nigeria, Malawi and Iran. Or we could invade Sierra Leone and declare the re-establishment of Empire, to the joy of all except the rulers of Sierra Leone’s neighbours.
Rory Stewart is one of those public-school adventurers that Britain still seems capable of turning out – and though he’s now a Tory MP, he at least knows the country from the ground up, having walked across it in 2001-2.
“To try and do something which is inherently impossible”, the conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott wrote, “is always a corrupting enterprise”.
I keep hearing that we’ll be expected to be in Afghanistan for decades, in the mighty struggle to get little Nooria to school and make Afghan democracy like the UKs, but with more all-women shortlists.
IMHO it would be cheaper to wait a few years until UK democracy is more like Afghanistan’s.
bensix said,
May 24, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Max,
While you wait, comment 17 hangs on the brink of an answer (thanks to whoever accepted it, by the way). How can this state be transformed into a liberal one by this military?
Steve said,
May 25, 2010 at 4:26 pm
charliethechulo said,
“Care to justify that, Steve? Like when and where did *anyone* from Shiraz Socialist support the troops going into Afghanistan?”
erm…the article above is a pretty prime example! It slags off the Tories because they are not conducting the war in the right way!! Though in reality they are planning to do more than New Labour by dropping any timetable. So the mission, to strenthen the puppet regime, hasn’t changed at all. So why Shiraz are not praising William Hague to the heavens would be mystery, except even for you servile puppets of the bourgeois, supporting Tories directly is still beyond your ability. Though the fact that you are so shocked that the Tories have had the chance to direct activities in Afghanistan makes you utter cretins. Either you must have believed the transformation of Afghanistan would have taken a few years or the Tories would never have been elected for the next 50 or 60 years. Whichever your idiocy is startling.
And to hide your shame and idiocy you pathetically divert attention to those actively opposing the bourgeois in Afghanistan, i.e. people who stand in absolute opposition to the Tories!
Oh and by the way YOU LOT ACTUALLY SUPPORT THE TORY POSITION. YOU ARE JUST TOO EMBARASSED TO ADMIT IT!
And to compound your idiocy you don’t even realise it is the Yanks who are in control of operations anyway!!
maxdunbar said,
May 25, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Yet the article illustrates that the Tories have no coherent and unified policy on Afghanistan and no concern for Afghans
Steve said,
May 25, 2010 at 5:21 pm
And yet the Tories have exactly the same mission objective as New Labour, to strenghen the puppet regime the bourgeois set up and they have gone even further by not commiting to any timetable! How strange!
And even stranger the Yanks are in charge here and the Tories have promised to stand shoulder to shoulder with them.
Now stop pretending and start proclaiming your love for William Hague. The best liberator from evil do’ers since Bush!
Laban said,
May 25, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Be fair, Steve – what’s all this about the Afghan ‘bourgeois’ ? To own the means of production there has to be some production to own. Other than opium and those dodgy coats I’m pushed to think of any.
All good Marxists should be encouraging those few Afghan bourgeois who might be found. Capitalism’s a higher state than feudalism, which is what they’ve got now.
maxdunbar said,
May 25, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Clowns to the left of me/
Jokers to the right…
charliethechulo said,
May 26, 2010 at 12:28 am
I reapeat, Steve: when did *anyone * at Shiraz support the invasion?
You cannot produce any evidence, can you? Because there is none.
Steve, you seem to be confusing opposition to the invasion with the demand for immediate withdrawal: they are *not* the same thing.
Steve said,
May 26, 2010 at 12:15 pm
charliethechulo,
I have a better ides, show me where Shiraz protested against this invasion.
But if you didn’t support the invasion and argued against it then this whole article is even more ridiculous than I had imagined and believe me that takes some doing. Because it begs the question if you did argue against the invasion, on the logic of this article you were leaving Afghan women and girls to a future under the reactionary Taliban and de facto supporting them. So your whole logic must be questioned. I guess this stems from a complete lack of class based politics. And from this standpoint I can’t see how you could ever really oppose the bourgeois in their imperialist wars.
What is more worrying is that you swallow the whole lies and propaganda of the bourgeois and their servile lackeys in the press. Which makes you servile puppets of the bourgeois. You have no independent position, you just appeal to the bourgeois to free the Afghans and others, eg. Iraqi’s. Then you post an article decrying the Tories who actually want to tear up the timetable until the puppet regime you so love is strong enough to ‘go it alone’ and you ignore the fact that it is the US who are in charge and not the British.
If we refer to the original article again the Tories actually agree with the Shiraz position and stand totally opposed to the position of the left. You called the Tories scum and by association that surely makes you scum aswell.
charliethechulo said,
May 28, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Steve: your last comment makes no sense whatsoever: it’s not even “wrong”. I am unable to answer it because I cannot follow any (even “wrong”) logic. If you think that means you’ve “won” this debate, then you’re welcome to that “victory.” You still agree with the Tory scum on this issue.