SELDOM HAVE there been finer examples than this July of the propensity of humans and our institutions to reinforce failure. We carry on marching towards what we suspect is the abyss for little better reason than that it would be embarrassing to break ranks. Betrothed to our own doom, we shrink from breaking off the engagement because the wedding ring has been purchased, the deposit on the marquee is non-returnable and the bride’s mother would be devastated.
Here we go again with a revamping of Britain’s Trident missile system. It will cost about £20 billion — nearly a penny on income tax — and few can see much use for it, but it’s the soft path between two hard alternatives: the development of a new and truly independent nuclear weapons system; or the permanent abandonment of Britain’s nuclear capability. A new nuclear deterrent (perhaps battlefield or tactical) might have some place in 21st-century theatres of war but would cost more than Trident. A non-nuclear future could rechannel huge resources into our cash-strapped and overstretched conventional Armed Forces — but would cause a ghastly political stink at home. So we shall this year decide to take the most pointless course available. Spare us the “debate”, Tony. The outcome is certain.
And here goes the Labour Party towards Gordon Brown as its next leader. Already he looks crumpled and washed-up. Already Labour MPs in English marginal seats know he’s not the man to trump David Cameron. Already Westminster suspects he has run out of ideas before his first Queen’s Speech; hardly the leader to “renew” his party. But Mr Brown has (sort of) been promised the job, senior colleagues have (sort of) ruled themselves out of a challenge, junior colleagues have (sort of) committed themselves to him. And MPs can’t swing it unless the unions and grass roots swing too, and unions and grass roots won’t swing unless MPs swing first, and . . . oh heck, it’s all too late, brothers. So off they march, towards the sunset of a hung parliament.
And here we go into another couple of years of being shot at and bombed in Iraq. There’s a paralysing weariness about even debating this any more. Most of the British press haven’t even bothered to report the news that the US military has finally decided to give up trying to control one big, festering sore, Ramadi, and instead to establish a mini-“green-zone” there — climb into it, and stay there. Increasingly the allies’ military effort is devoted to the defence of our own garrisons. Such a posture is sustainable indefinitely. Too much danger attaches to any push to regain the initiative and too much face would be lost by admitting defeat, so we settle into the worst of both worlds — paying tribute each week at Prime Minister’s Questions to this week’s fallen servicemen.
But — hey — drifting up the proverbial creek is not unpleasant. A century and a half ago, Leopold von Ranke, arguably the father of modern historiography, put it like this:
“Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people and governments. They soon realise where the path they have taken is leading them. But there is an impulse within them, favoured by their natures and reinforced by their habits, which they do not resist; it continues to propel them forward . . . He who overcomes himself is divine. Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it.”
Which brings us to Afghanistan. I see that both of last week’s sad British casualties in Afghanistan got a generous personal tribute, by name, from the Prime Minister at Questions on Wednesday. Opposition leaders then felt obliged to echo him. It will be interesting to see whether the most recent death — the sixth soldier now killed there — gets the same treatment at the next PMQs. Are the names of each soldier who falls now to be read out by the Prime Minister? When did the practice start? Will it apply to police officers and firemen too? Would it be horribly cynical to wonder whether Mr Blair has noticed what others have: that whenever he opens his remarks with a solemn tribute to the deceased, he effectively wrong-foots anyone planning to be rude to him? Visitors to the Strangers’ Gallery on Wednesday may have supposed they were witnessing an ancient parliamentary tradition but I think the practice is new: it was certainly never the routine.
And at what, if any, level of British casualties might it be suspended? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? For be sure of this: if Parliament is to have any time at all left for discussion, Mr Speaker had better give some thought to a cut-off point. As Ben Macintyre pointed out on these pages yesterday, the Soviet Union lost 15,000 men in Afghanistan, killing a million Afghans before giving up. Talking to my Ukrainian guide in the Carpathian Mountains a couple of years ago, I discovered he had been in Afghanistan. “Fantastic!” I said.
“Not fantastic,” he replied. Involuntarily his face knotted with something harder than misery: a sort of ferocious loathing. This was as hard-assed, super-fit and daring a fellow as you are likely to meet. Up for anything, Stas was not up for Afghanistan.
In The Times six months ago I tried to explain why the proposed push into Helmand province would prove a mistake. To what Ben wrote about the awful history of British occupation in Afghanistan I can add nothing. Nor, after some modest journeying in Afghanistan 18 months ago, should I set myself up as some kind of old Afghan hand. But within a few days ministers will doubtless be announcing a substantial reinforcement of British forces so — even as (in von Ranke’s words) we go on into our ruin — I shall venture three thoughts.
First, the Russians. It is not appreciated among neoconservatives that what many ordinary Afghans really detested about Soviet rule was the attempt to liberate Afghans — and specifically Afghan women — from a conservative Islamic culture. Let Western liberal interventionists boast about all the girls now attending schools in Afghanistan if they like, but the first liberal-interventionist “rescue” of the oppressed in that country was attempted by the Soviet Union, and the oppressed declined to be rescued.
Secondly, the Taleban. I am not so naive as to miss the fact that a ruthless and organised grouping called the Taleban exists. But around that core is a wider and more pervasive force that is not so much an organisation as a habit of mind and belief. Any Afghan can become Taleban — can slip into or out of the state. Someone I got to know well there was on the edge of it. He was not (yet) hostile to the West, but he hated to see women unveiled, driving cars or laughing in the street; and he hated rule by foreigners. There is a calamitous error at the heart of American thinking: that if you kill a hundred Taleban, there are a hundred fewer. Wrong. There may be two hundred more.
Thirdly, the Conservative Party. With sinking heart I realise that when reinforcements are announced by Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, the only question from Liam Fox, his Tory Shadow, will be whether there shouldn’t be even more. Up the creek the Cameroons will go (just as Iain Duncan Smith did over Iraq) until to criticise the deployment in principle will look like a late and hypocritical U-turn. Yet a perfectly Tory way to step aside from this dismal path is available: declare that this is so imponderable a burden that we cannot — should not even begin to — shoulder it alone. We must first secure promises of a matching contribution from all our main European Nato allies. Until then we cannot increase our own troops’ exposure in Afghanistan.
I doubt Dr Fox will say any such thing. Nor will British ministers. Seeing their ruin before their eyes, they will go on into it.
