Category Archives: defeatism

TOOTAL DEFEATISM

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So, a former Army commander Col Stuart Tootal, writes an article in which he suggests that unless we show more political will and better support for our troops in Afghanistan we could “lose” the conflict in that land. Col Tootal also suggests that the campaign is “winnable”. Which headline does the BBC run with?

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AFGHAN ATTACK!

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The BBC has been working itself up into quite a frenzy ahead of the Afghan elections. The narrative is all about minimising any sense of progress being made. We had this diatribe broadcast at 7.49am this morning suggesting that the Afghan government does everything possible to “promote fraud” (Bit like Labour, really) and then at 8.34am the BBC interviewed Afghan “warlord turned militant” Gulbuddin Hekmatyar – who is the US most wanted man in the area. Lucky there wasn’t a drone nearby when this interview was taking place.

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THE BEAT SURRENDER

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It must be awful to be a UK military family listening to the BBC for news of the campaign in Afghanistan. Radio Taliban would be less depressing than the State Broadcaster. The meme concerning Afghanistan has now morphed into the same one that prevailed when we were in Iraq. The cause is hopeless, we cannot win, UK lives are being sacrificed for no reason, we must get out. It’s defeatism, of course, and it is something the BBC excels at promoting. This morning Today was cultivating the idea that there is electoral corruption in parts of Afghanistan. Surely not! Listen, there is PLENTY of electoral corruption in the UK and we have a government that bribes, lies and cheats to try and buy votes here so the BBC need not travel half ways around the world if it wants to locate such behaviour! Heaven forbid that we have not created a functioning Jeffersonian democracy in Afghanistan. (Who cares? We should be there to kill Islamic terrorists and prevent AQ reorganising – end of story.)

But, of course, the BBC is doing this to ensure that the results of the Afghanistan election are seen to be compromised. In this way, those British soldiers who lose their lives trying to bring freedom and democracy to this distant land can be seen to have died in vain. However I was thinking that given how many millions gave their lives to defeat the Nazis in WW2, and when we now look at the corruption of the EU, the same argument that BBC seek to employ in Afghanistan could be equally applied here. Human beings will often behave corruptly, that does not mean it is wrong to try and do what is right.

Iraq was the bad war. We were berated by the likes of the BBC for years that we had to get out of Iraq. And now we are out, the spotlight of defeatism switches to Afghanistan. The BBC seems to take an editorial line derived from John Lennon’s “Imagine” – nice tune, nothing to do with reality. Was there ever a war of which the BBC approved? Maybe that waged by the IRA against the UK? Thoughts?

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THE NEW FRONT IN THE WAR.

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I guess it makes sense to the BBC. We can defeat the Taliban and Al Queda by using…. mobile phones. The cunning plan is for NGO’s to give away mobile phones to Afghans who will then make short films which could be shown at a film festival next summer. Mmm…hope they are pay as you go or there may be some mighty phone bills! Sounds a winner of an idea to me and as security sage Frank Gardner points out the US and UK are losing the battle for hearts and minds so best bring in the crack battalions of home snappers to rout the Islamist psychopaths. With a daisy-cutter in one hand an a Nokia in the other?

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NEVER SAY VICTORY.

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It’s great to read that American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror. After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda’s dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant “last stand” in the northern city of Mosul. A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10. Operation Lion’s Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans’ 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the Al-Qaeda leader, and the capture of more than 1,000 suspects.

But when I say it’s great to read it – the one place of course that I won’t be reading this is the BBC – which studiously avoids any mention of military victory in Iraq and concentrates instead on the news that four Iraqi men say they are suing US military contractors for torturing them while they were detained at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. The idea that we are WINNING the battle against militant Islam in Iraq is unacceptable to the BBC and its ” ‘Nam quagmire ” defeatist narrative and so even as we are poised for spectacular victory – the BBC stays mute. The BBC – the enemy within.

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