British diplomat feels Afghan war being lost: report
Story cites leaked cable from France's deputy ambassador in Kabul
A French newspaper has published what appears to be a diplomatic cable saying Britain's ambassador to Kabul thinks the West is losing the battle for Afghanistan. The coded cable reproduced Wednesday in Le Canard Enchaîné seems to be from France's deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, François Fitou, describing a conversation he had with the British ambassador to Kabul, Sherard Cowper-Coles.......
Now just imagine what would have happened if General Eisenhower had given a press conference in 1943-44 and told the world media that invading the European Continent was going to be impossible as the Germans were just too strong and the allies too weak?
Imagine if General Montgomery, after receiving and assuming his command commission to the 8th Army in 1942, had told the media that his desert 8th Army was incapable of halting Rommel and driving his Afrika Korps out of North Africa? Imagine if he had suggested in such a press conference that for a successful Allied strategy to succeed in North Africa the Italians would have to be consulted!? The mind boggles at the thought of what Churchill would have done. Indeed imagine General Montgomery talking to the Media at all !
Further to that, imagine US General Patton and General Montgomery announcing in a newspaper interview in early 1943 that the invasion of Sicily and Italy was too difficult an undertaking and that it would fail? Imagine them even announcing it at all !
Imagine also US Admiral Nimitz deciding to inform the Press Corps of 1944 that liberating the Philippines, occupying the Pacific island chains and invading Japan to end the war was not feasible and should be re-thought because it was going to be too difficult to undertake and the casualties would be too high? What would General Marshall and President Roosevelt have thought of that I have to wonder? What would the US and world public have thought?
Imagine General Douglas MacArthur holding a Press Conference stating that in his opinion the UN forces and their mission in Korea in 1950 were doomed to failure and that for anything to work the North Koreans would have to be involved in a Peace Plan for the Korean Peninsula?! Now imagine then President Truman reading about that all the next day in Washington? !
How about Generals Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon suggesting to the Israeli media that the June War of 1967 would achieve nothing and that any thought of victory was simply a dream. And again imagine them even giving such an interview about Israeli military strategy in the short or the long term? Especially at that time!
Perhaps more pertinent and striking an example would be the idea of Generals Zhukov, Konev, and Timoshenko deciding to hold a joint-or separate individual news conference in 1942 announcing that the Volga basin and the emerging Leningrad-Moscow-Stalingrad Defence Line of 1942 was indefensible and that a German breakthrough and subsequent local and then national victory was inevitable. Could anyone imagine what Stalin might have done in reading the papers or listening to the radio the next day of such a news conference by his senior generals in the midst of war? Just imagine. Then read the headlines again. Yes there they are: "Victory impossible in Afghanistan: senior British commander" "British diplomat feels Afghan war being lost: report"
Anyone care to suggest a strategic forecast for the West in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the immediate future? Compared to our forefathers we have become a cowering, angst-ridden, whining bunch of liberal-battered moral cowards with not even an ounce of the courage and fortitude of the generations which have gone before us. Our respective countries' living WW2 and Korean Veterans must be cringing or at the very least quivering with anger. For shame.
We have become nations of losers unable to even comprehend never mind trying to undertake the concept of national sacrifice for the national and international good. We can talk about nothing but everything going wrong and being impossible to achieve. We immerse ourselves in the vagaries of conspiracy theories and how all kinds of darkly subversive people are undermining us all. But the real enemy is us. We can only talk about retreat and defeat. Its pretty much all we have been subjected to for decades by a series of liberal-inspired governments and their deceitfully negative media machines. And now it's pretty much all we know. It's no small wonder how or why so many of us just stand aside and allow ourselves to be oppressed.
If there is anything we can can gain from this it's that we need to find ourselves again and look for something many would just call "guts" and others simply but effectively call "balls". My Dad would have said so. While I miss my late Father very much, I am glad he is not here to see this unfolding disaster. He would be just appalled and I would completely understand and empathize.
Jeremy Swanson,
Ottawa
