As the polls suggest a public opinion surge towards withdrawal from Afghanistan (73 per cent in the YouGov poll for Channel 4 News, up from 62 per cent only two weeks ago), you may be wondering which political parties support that view.
PRO-WITHDRAWAL: Plaid Cymru, Green Party, the BNP, Respect and UKIP (UKIP specify there must be US agreement first).
PRO-TROOPS STAYING BUT CALLING FOR A RE-THINK: SNP; Liberal Democrats, Conservatives.
There are “real tensions” in the Liberal Democrat parliamentary ranks about their position, an MP told me.
One Lib Dem MP told me he believed that Paddy Ashdown’s outspoken support for the action in Afghanistan was acting like a drag anchor on the party’s position when the logic should be taking the party towards a withdrawalist position.
The Conservatives believe that if they win the election Afghanistan will be one of the decisive issues on which they will be judged. A policy review could follow soon after an election.
As for the government, the real tensions on the Labour benches were glimpsed when former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells went public with a withdrawal call this week but the Prime Minister will tomorrow re-state his position that the troops must stay, the work is vital and protects British people on the streets here.
It’s that last argument that most agnostic/worried MPs you speak to have a problem accepting.
Related: Poll shows the public are losing confidence on Afghanistan
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Kim Howells is absolutely right to ask the question: What if we spent the same resources actually protecting our borders ? Afghanistan is an ungovernable state, next door to a basket-case state – we have no business in either. But all terror threats do not come only from those two states – it is impossible to invade and ‘correct’ all the potential source states.
Security starts at our own borders, or should do. But, until we have the foggiest idea who is crossing them, we will never be safe.
But why does no-one ask the obvious question: “Why do all these Islamic states hate Britain and the USA so much, rather than all the other Western nations ?” The reason they don’t ask it is that the answer is inconvenient – it all comes down to our sycophantic support for Israel and its indefensible aggression. But no-one’s allowed to say that, in case they don’t sound ‘guilty’ enough about the events of 60 years ago. Oops – I just said it !
It is my opnion that we cannot simply withdraw. The place is very much the edge of the sword. We have a nation there in which children are still held as sex slaves, opium is produced on a vast scale and the political system is corrupted to the Nth degree. So
Afghanistan supposedly supplied terrorists with training and supplies, as we are told does Somalia, probablyIran and even North Korea.I dont see us invading the latter so why are we in the former.Modern surveillance is good enough to spot these camps , a few cruise missiles would have been a cheaper option.
It is quite right of Mudplugger to state Islamic states hate us,Probably from days of Empire.The Islamic regimes remind one of The Catholic ones of old.Power mad Mullahs,empire builders who rule by fear.They hate the freedom Western civilisation brings for it destroys there power base.I am afraid ,as much as i would say destroy the Taliban, i believe that countries such as Afghanistan have to sort their own problems and we should not be there
Pakistan is the really danger: it has nuclear weapons, much of the extremism seems to originate there and it’s increasingly unstable. Conveniently, Afghanistan is right next door and for that reason I don’t expect withdrawal anytime soon. Though I think the situation there is a nightmare for our troops.
A long time ago, we were correctly urged to meet the full force of a very mighty enemy, or face the prospect of darkness descending all over Europe. Darkness that would, inevitably, come to affect us too. I lost two uncles in that dreadful conflict and bear their names as a reminder.
It was the Labour Party’s refusal to support Halifax’s appeasement strategy that put a radical Prime Minister into power who offered us nothing but blood, sweat, toil and tears.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are not the same as Europe then. But they’re both closer by jet airliner than Poland was then. We have to defeat terrorism in Asia now, or allow its evil to spread further, deeper and everywhere.
We don’t need to go into total war to meet this threat. Not yet at any rate. It’s certainly more effective to use development funding and reconciliation as means of achieving lasting peace – which is why the Taliban wants to stop that. But we have to meet this challenge in distant lands, or have that new darkness arrive here too.
There seems to be a racist/zenophobic
thread running through this country. Why is it OK for British and US forces to invade and occupy other countries but it is the crime of the century if another country even threatens to invade us. Would the Home Guard have been insurgents if Nazi Germany had succeeded in invading Britain or would they have been brave defenders of our country?
Come off it – surely it is abundantly clear to even the strongest supporter of the War on Terror that wars are fought by foolhardy young men and women for the sole purpose of making rich men even richer. If soldiers are happy to risk their lives for a pittance so that people like Blair can become multi-millionaires, then history will just repeat itself over and over again.
Pull out and let the Aghans run their country, however badly, so that politicians can concentrate on running this country badly.
PS. I guess I will be voting Green or Respect.
it is imoral to leave afganistan now, what unfortunatelly Tony Blair started.
tWe should never had started, after 911 instead of going to war, a good leader,not tony blair, would call the world to a dialogue to call all the nations in tumor for a dialogue, we know israel is teh main problem, the israelis should pay compasation in form of investiment in jobs in palestine,schools, hospitais, houses,roads, given jobs to palestinians
the same should be done in those countries investiments, creation of jobs, if we give them jobs they would not have time to think how much they hate the west.if we dont do this soon the world will be destroyed we have to wake up, using keynes method to solve the economic problems, people need jobs, schools health we should give them is a investiment, we have to invest now
[...] Opinion polls in the UK show support for the occupation is at an all time low with a number of the fringe political parties calling for withdrawlal Given that pulling out and leaving the country to its fate doesn’t [...]
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