Posted on 04/21/2009 11:00:35 PM PDT by nickcarraway
IS the Ministry of Fear about to be reopened? I thought – when Lord Blair finally departed from us and George Bush left the White House – that the institution had been closed down, that we might have been allowed a few hours in the broad sunlit uplands.
Change? Hope? Renewal? Inspiration? But no, the semantics of our masters are reverting to type. There are no uplands, just another new dark age of fear and terror.
A few months ago, the following Bush-speak would be wearily familiar. "Let me be clear: al-Qaida and its allies – the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks – are in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al-Qaida is actively planning attacks on the US homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan ... if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban – or allows al-Qaida to go unchallenged – that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." Only, of course, this wasn't Bush-speak. It was a Bush-clone, called Obama-speak.
And now a reversion to Blair-speak: "Contemporary terrorist organisations aspire to use chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear weapons. Changing technology and the theft and smuggling of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive materials make this aspiration more realistic than it may have been in the recent past..."
Yup, that's the Home Office for you. Dirty bombs. Biological weapons, according to the Home Office intelligence girls and boys – the same crew, presumably, who helped to give us weapons of mass destruction and five-minute warnings six years ago but who now work for Lady Jacqui.
I thought it was Churchill who warned us in 1940 of a new dark age "made more sinister and perhaps more protracted by the lights of perverted science".
That these two crimson-lit warnings should have come within three days of each other last month was surely not by chance. Note how the Taliban has now become conflated with al-Qaida, how the land mass of the Middle East has been pushed further east.
Once it was Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Now it's Afghanistan and Pakistan. And note how Tube train bombings in London have suddenly turned into dirty bombs, poison and radioactivity.
The border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan is now "the most dangerous place in the world", according to Obama.
Well, tell that to the Raj. Didn't Sir Mortimer Durand define the frontier – henceforth the Durand line – to separate India from Afghanistan? And hasn't it always been "the most dangerous place in the world" (save, I suppose, for "Palestine" which – for all the usual reasons – got left out of the Obama speech of 27 March).
Wasn't it just a few miles up the road, in the Kabul Gorge, that an entire British army was wiped out in 1842? And was it not in 1893 that Lord Roberts spoke of "the policy of endeavouring to extend our influence over, and establish law and order on, that part of the border where anarchy, murder and robbery up to the present time have reigned supreme ... Some 40 years ago the policy of non-interference with the tribes, so long as they did not trouble us, may have been wise and prudent, though selfish and not altogether worthy of a great civilising power".
Yup, it was that same "porous" border – and count how many times you read the word "porous" in the weeks to come – that Obama is now talking about. The problem is that the dratted Pathans think this place is called Pushtunistan and no more recognise the Durand line today than they did in the 19th century.
And when millions of people just don't recognise a border, then all the king's horses and all the king's men (or President Obama's) aren't going to be able to do anything about it.
"We will insist that action be taken – one way or another – when we have intelligence about high-level terrorist targets," Obama promises. If the Pakistani government doesn't take action, the US will.
Ho hum. In the days of empire, we crossed the Durand line from the Raj into Afghanistan. Now Obama's going to change the plot by invading in the opposite direction, from Afghanistan into the former Raj. And with just 20,000 extra troops.
My colleague John Griffiths has been researching Soviet files on Moscow's attempts to stamp out "terrorism" in Afghanistan with surges and cross-border raids. Here's an analysis from the Soviet Frunze Military Academy on the "terrorists" the Russians fought in Afghanistan for eight bloody years:
"Several combat principles lay at the heart of mujahedin tactics. First, they avoided direct contact with the superior might of regular forces which could have wiped them out. Second, the mujahedin practically never conducted positional warfare and, when threatened with encirclement, would abandon their positions. Third, in all forms of combat the mujahedin always strove to achieve surprise. Fourth, the mujahedin employed terror and ideological conditioning on a peaceful populace as well as on local government representatives."
The Frunze lads concluded that their "terrorist" enemies enjoyed night action, could move rapidly through the border mountains (in Obama's "most dangerous place in the world"), had a broad intelligence network and could pick up details of secret Soviet unit movements.
Now who does that remind you of? In his soon-to-be-published book, Griffiths recommends that the Frunze report should lie on every US president's desk, permanently open at this page.
Do we never learn? Muslim Pakistan is detonating in front of our eyes while Israel, when it's not grabbing more land from Muslim Palestinians in the West Bank, is claiming that Iran – not Pakistan – is the greatest threat to world peace. Its foreign minister doesn't even want a Palestinian state any more.
And what should we be doing? Trying to resolve the wound of Kashmir, of "Palestine", of Kurdistan, of Lebanon. But no, we're off on another adventure. Poison, dirty bombs, the lot. The most dangerous place in the world. Carry on up the Khyber.
Post traumatic stress syndrome
Post dramatic loss of brain syndrome...
Hillary’s eternal, psychotic triangulations... black is white, up is down, left is right, while she sits in the center of her shredded web sending out buffoon after buffoon to make these deranged, ever-so-calculated declarations so that one day, one day, one day... SHE will be the ANSWER!!!!!!
LOLOLOLOLOLOL!
okay, this guy does hit a lot of nails on the proverbial head, but in accusing Israel of “grabbing land from muslim palestinians in the west bank”, he forgets his history, and hits himeself on the head with an oversized hammer.
Never mind that it is the POV of the Palestinians - one encouraged by the remainder of their Arab muslim brethren, it is still an erroneous point to inject into the analysis. The only land the Palestinians have - indeed the only land they have ever been given - came at the Oslo accords, not from Lebanon, not from Syria, not from Egypt, not from Morocco, Kuwait, Iraq, or any other Arab state...
But from Israel,
A.A.C.
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