Britons oppose Afghan war, politicians support it

This video from the USA is called Rethink Afghanistan (Part 4): Civilian Casualties.

By Chris Marsden in Britain:

Britain’s leaders’ debate: A fraud in three acts

24 April 2010

The second of three televised debates between the leaders of Britain’s main parties was meant to focus on foreign policy, but over half was given over to questions of “general interest”. Hosted by Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News, it succeeded in making the previous debate on domestic policy, broadcast on ITV 1, seem amateurish in its readiness to engage in naked political manipulation and deception.

The affair was summed up by the selection as the second question posed by a “Sky viewer”, who asked, “Given our involvement in Afghanistan, if there is another multinational operation to remove Al Qaeda or another terrorist group from a failed state, would the UK participate?”

The Afghan war is opposed by seven out of 10 people in Britain. In the days leading up to the second debate between Gordon Brown for Labour, David Cameron for the Conservatives and Nick Clegg for the Liberal Democrats, a ComRes poll for the Independent newspaper found that 77 percent of Britons want British troops home within “a year or so”. A second poll found that 70 percent of respondents also feel there is no real choice of policies on Afghanistan between the parties.

The ComRes respondents were right on this—and Murdoch’s NewsCorp media empire was determined that the issue was not even to be debated. Instead the Afghan war was reduced to a “given”, while Brown, Cameron and Clegg proclaimed their agreement to continue the ongoing occupation and carry out other military adventures wherever this was deemed necessary.

Brown not only answered in the affirmative, but specified where the next engagements would probably be. There were already problems emerging with Al Qaeda in Somalia and Yemen, he said, and Britain must continue to act internationally to combat this “chain of terror”.

Clegg, who is now widely touted as the candidate of “change”, expanded on the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto pledge to be a “critical supporter” of the Afghan conflict. “The principle of the reason why we went into Afghanistan, why I supported our mission in Afghanistan, unlike the illegal invasion of Iraq, is to keep us safe,” he asserted. “So from that principle if we need to do that again we should.”

His only caveat in issuing this blank cheque was to make a few populist noises about making sure troops had the right equipment. Cameron spoke in almost identical terms.

Prior to the debate the three leaders had issued written responses on Afghanistan requested by the Royal United Services Institute Journal.

With opposition to the Afghanistan war growing in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered a speech to the German parliament claiming that there was “no alternative” to the deployment of the country’s military there: here.

German soldiers are wearing their hearts on their sleeves – in the form of a badge that protests their country’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan: here.

Women in Afghanistan face oppression not liberation: here.

Tony Blair is complicit in crimes which are punishable under the United Nations Charter, the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Nuremberg Principles, Article 146 of the 1949 Geneva Convention and Article 3 of the 1907 Hague Convention. Why is he still at large to roam the world earning tens of millions on the back of these crimes? Here.

How badly does the Labour Party want new Labour to be old news? That’s the question in the leadership campaign: here.

USA: Robert Greenwald: Our Afghan Victims Have Faces: here.