No Victory In Afghanistan
The PM of NZ, like many others is, reluctant to send fighting troops to Afghanistan because (a) there’s no sign of victory and (b) the government seems dodgy.
During “peacetime”, people are upset by the loss of even a few professional soldiers. But its not peacetime in Afghanistan. And if we simply left that torn country in the hands of the Taliban, they would not abandon their ambitions to rule by force and spread their reign by force.
It’s hard for people living in peace to believe that some faction wants to rule the world. We so quickly forget the aims of the Nazis and many before them. Even if we know they’ll never make it, history teaches us they can make an awful mess trying.
We didn’t want to face up to Hitler’s build-up and it cost 50 million lives instead of 50,000 – if we’d intervened a year earlier.
So it is a mistake to demand “victory” in Afghanistan. We need professional soldiers there to keep tangling with the would-be conquerors until the rush of blood has subsided – which may take many years. Messy, but better than facing a big war later.
Philip O'Carroll