By Steve Hynd
A new ICM poll for the Guardian is being widely touted in the British media today as showing growing support for an ongoing commitment, even an escalation, of the Afghan occupation. Every lead write from the Guardian to the staunchly neocon Telegraph notes the same primary figures:
46% said they supported the British mission in Afghanistan, with 47% opposed. A similar ICM poll for the BBC in March 2008 showed 40% support, a poll in September 2006 only 31% support. The survey was conducted between 10th and 11th July, so after news of many of last week�s casualties had been reported.
But it took veteran reporter and op-ed writer Seumas Milne at The Guardian to point out that the underlying don't justify the narrative that public support for the Afghan war is "firm". ICM�s poll also found 42% saying that Britain should pull out of Afghanistan now, and 14% wanting Britain out by the end of this year. Only 36% were willing to "stay the course" come what may in a war which the UK's Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has admitted has no exit date - only an exit state. That is, we'll be able to leave when Afghanistan is a functioning state which can keep the Taliban at bay on it's own, if that ever happens. After all, Afghanistan cannot possibly afford the security forces that General McChrystal and others say is needed to do that job - the annual costs of those forces are five times greater than the entire Afghan government's income - so how are they supposed to exist on their own as a stable state?
Milne writes:
From the way official Britain pontificates about the war in Afghanistan, you'd never know that most British people want troops withdrawn by the end of the year and only a minority have supported the US-led campaign for years.
The BBC in particular seems to have almost entirely abandoned any attempt at neutral reporting of what is actually going on. Instead, its newsreaders and presenters sternly warn that "Britain's resolve is being put to the test" and speculate, surreally, about what might happen if public "support" for the war "were to weaken" (last Friday's 10 o'clock TV news and Newsnight programmes).
In the circumstances, it would hardly be surprising if public opinion had been turned after what has been a barrage of state war propaganda, as embedded Kiplingesque reporting from the Helmand frontline, military parades and a new Armed Services Day have been used to try and translate sympathy for British troops into support for foreign wars.
...But given the media's increasingly intense emotional focus on British soldiers' deaths during the current offensive � today's Daily Mirror leads on last Friday's fallen "band of brothers" and the Sun on Gordon Brown's "this war is our patriotic duty" � I would have expected the opposite. In fact, the only time there was majority support in Britain for the Iraq war was during the initial months of attack and occupation, when British troops were seen to be in action and in greatest danger.
But, even if support for withdrawal is slightly down from last November's 68%, 62% still believe British forces are either making no difference in Afghanistan worse or making it worse � and 47%, against 46%, say they oppose the "British military operation" outright. And interestingly, given what New Labour used to claim about social attitudes to the Iraq war, some of the strongest opposition to the war comes from working class people.
The major British political parties' leadership have been broadly united on support for the US-led occupation of Afghanistan all along, and the partisan UK press have each broadly followed their favored party's lead. However, the politics of opposition demands that the Conservatives and LibDems find fault with Labour's running of the war - which they've duly done by demanding more equipment, more troops, more money and claiming Brown has "shortchanged" British soldiers by not providing them.
Therein lies a danger for the political staus quo, though. More op-eds and even editorials are appearing in the conservative press calling for the government to put a proper exit strategy, with a timetable, in place...or even calling for immediate withdrawal. The Labour-supporting Daily Mirror in its editorial today called for "honest answers" and continued:
the tragic deaths of eight brave servicemen in 24 hours, 15 killed in 10 days, the British toll of 184 in Afghanistan now surpassing that in Iraq, demands more than tributes.
Gordon Brown must persuade us that the spilling of so much blood in a dirt-poor country thousands of miles from home is worth supporting. He must publicly detail the Government's strategy.
Unfortunately for everyone, the main parties are commited to following Obama's COIN-centric lead, which demands at least another decade and possibly up to 30 years of occupation with no end date in sight and no benchmarks for success in place.
Cynically, looking at how opposition to the Afghan opposition might play out politically, the centrist LibDems would be the best placed of the majors to pick up anti-war votes from both left and right. But their leader Nick Clegg has already reiterated his own backing for some form of occupation, describing himself as a "Liberal interventionist" who supports "the aim of our mission wholeheartedly" - just not the way it's being done now. With a plurality wanting to see an exit ramp in the next twelve months, though, there's a potential election-winning issue for the first party to tap into that reserve of voters who feel strongly that Britain has again sailed on the wrong course alongside America. The Tories capitalised on public hostility to the Iraq misadventure and turned that into part of a commanding lead in the polls. I'm waiting to see if one of the big three will follow suit on Afghanistan.
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