Milliband's Lies and Spin for Continued Occupation

By Steve Hynd

David Milliband, the British Foreign Secretary, is a typical Blairite. If his lips are moving, he's spinning something - nothing gets said without it serving a domestic political purpose. Yesterday he had this to say about Afghanistan:

In an interview with the Guardian at the end of a visit to Kabul for the presidential inauguration of Hamid Karzai, the foreign secretary said: "If international forces leave, you can choose a time � five minutes, 24 hours or seven days � but the insurgent forces will overrun those forces that are prepared to put up resistance and we would be back to square one."

At the end of a day spent visiting British troops and officials at the headquarters of the international military effort, Miliband said that Afghans were "sad that they need anyone, but they are passionate that my goodness they do � because if we weren't here their country would be rolled over".

It's sheer crap, of course. The Karzai government is stuffed full of former Northern Alliance warlords who have been fighting the Taliban for about thirty years now. The present situation is that these mostly not-nice people are better armed and have bigger war chests than they've ever had while the equally not-nice Taliban is recovering from its lowest ebb. It no longer has tanks, for example. But it serves Milliband's purpose: which is to make Britain's continued involvement in the Afghan quagmire seem like a noble fight to hold back barbarism instead of a lapdog following of US foreign policy.

Then there's this:

"I don't think British opinion is about to flip to a position that says withdraw now," he said. "But there is a high degree of concern about the casualties, understandably, there is a high degree of concern about the complexity of effecting a strategy in a country with history as complex as this, and there is a high degree of concern about all the partners that we have got.

More spin. Few even of those who favor withdrawal are talking about "withdrawal now" - it should be done responsibly and on a timetable. And 71 percent of the British people already back that withdrawal.

Milliband's political calculation is that the Labour Party will get hammered at next years general election as the party that led Britain into two U.S. quagmires. He's thus trying to stake out a position the opposition parties cannot deny without opening themselves to charges of enabling barbarism and being defeatist. He's doing that because admitting the Labour Party were wrong before the election would be just as damaging to its electoral chances as what's happening on the domestic political front now. There is exactly zero care or consideration for Afghans involved. When it doesn't work by January, Milliband will turn a full 180 and, along with his party, head to the exit. All he needs is the political cover afforded by a NATO summit.