Wikileaks

So Wikileaks have released an huge collection of US files about the Iraq war and the consequence already playing out include condemnation by the US authorities and vast media interest. What fascinates me about the process is not the dreadful content of the files, though that is terrible enough, but the idea that there are still folk about who don't seem to realise that such terrible things happen in war. Does anyone still really think that war can ever be nice and clean?

Whatever will be made of it I know not. But one thing I do know, and it is that such disclosures ought to drive us to the most compelling of reason why we should at once remove our troops from Afghanistan. I think there are several reasons why we should not be engaged in war in that unhappy land, but here is surely the most obvious and compelling: it is a war we send our troops to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. Constantly they know themselves be subjected to a kind of scrutiny which their opponents will never acknowledge. Wikileaks will never be able to release the confidential files of the Taliban and Al Quaida, and those groups will never be held accountable in the way our troops are. Worse, they know this, so they cheerfully use our own media against us. And meanwhile, the presence of Western troops in Muslim lands will continue to create resentment and violence in western Muslim communities.

If there is a 'War on Terror' to be fought, it would better be waged by keeping our armed forces at home, defending our borders, and letting the people of Iraq and Afghanistan sort themselves out. The lesson of history is that you cannot bring folk out of feudalism until they themselves have fought their own battles, as once our forefathers had to fight them here - battles for law and order, for education, for religious tolerance, for health care, for representation, for democracy.

We cannot fight those battle for others. They must do it for themselves. Imagining otherwise merely costs Western lives, and depletes the resources we have to defend our own lands, and our own way of life.