AN influential group of MPs have finally admitted publicly what everyone already knows – that the invasion of Afghanistan by NATO troops, led by the US and British governments, has been an unmitigated disaster and a huge defeat for the imperialist powers.
The MPs in the International Development Committee have issued a report which contains the following admission: ‘It is questionable whether the DfID (Department for International Development) has the capacity to build a viable state.’
It went on to say that the UK should ‘reconsider its ambition’ of building Afghan government institutions in favour of more ‘traditional targets’.
Stripped of the usual parliamentary double-speak, this amounts to nothing less than an admission that all the grand schemes of ‘nation building’ have evaporated – it is nothing more than an admission of total defeat.
The big lie that the imperialist powers have spewed out constantly, ever since it became clear that their troops had been comprehensively defeated by the Afghanistan people, has been that they would build up their puppet , President Karzai, to become a stable leader subservient to his imperialist masters.
Now even these MPs recognise the reality which is that the minute US and British troops pull out, Karzai and his government have the life expectancy of a mayfly.
For all its military prowess, the imperialist nations of NATO have been comprehensively and decisively defeated and no amount of political waffle about ‘not abandoning the Afghan people’ can disguise this fact.
The cost of this unwinnable war against the Afghan people has run into billions – last year the MoD claimed that it simply did not know the amount – but it has been estimated that since the invasion in 2001 the cost to the British public has been about £4.5 billion a year meaning that £50 billion in military and ‘hidden’ costs have probably been expended.
These billions have been spent for precisely nothing – all that this colossal amount has gone on is the death and misery of thousands of Afghani men, women and children.
The same leaders, both Tory and Labour, who enthusiastically banged the drum for a military adventure in Afghanistan – as well as pouring billions into the illegal invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Gadaffi in Libya – are the same leaders who are demanding that the working class and middle class pay for the banking crisis.
Indeed, in a speech yesterday, the Work and Pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, quite squarely placed the blame for the economic collapse at the door of people on benefits having more than two children!
Smith’s solution was quite simple – the unemployed or low paid are to be restricted to only two children; should they have more, their benefit will be cut and presumably the extra child can then starve to death.
The next step, perhaps, will be the more direct method of forced sterilisation for the poor.
What at one time would have been considered ‘outlandish’ and extreme has now become normal for leading members of the government as they set about driving the working class and sections of the middle class into the workhouses that most believed had been consigned to the history books of the 19th century.
This abomination demands only one answer from workers, the demand that this government be kicked out immediately. Having been beaten in Afghanistan they must now be thrashed at home and put an end to.
The TUC must at once call a general strike to bring the coalition down and go forward to a workers government that will end all imperialist wars and defend the gains of the Welfare State by putting an end to capitalism and bringing in socialism.