Radical Anti-Imperialists and the Afghanistan War.

The odd thing in our time is how those advocating wars in far off lands of whom we increasingly will know more, if the fanatics supporting messianic creeds get their way, seem oblivious to the consequences of their action. This is indicated by a report carried by the Guardian today.

First of all, there is the fact that there is almost no dissent within ruling political parties in many Western nations about continuing the Afghan War to a successful conclusion,

Thousands of protesters have marched through London against the war in Afghanistan as as Nato leaders agreed a strategy to withdraw their troops from the country.

The demonstration, which organisers said was 10,000-strong, came as the prime minister, David Cameron, said the withdrawal of British combat troops from Afghanistan by 2015 was a "firm deadline" that would be met.

Speaking at a Nato summit in Lisbon, Cameron said Afghan forces would begin taking charge of security from early next year and the security handover would be complete by the end of 2014.

"The commitment we have entered into today to transfer the lead responsibility for security to the Afghan government by the end of 2014 will pave the way for British combat troops to be out of Afghanistan by 2015. This is a firm deadline that we will meet."

First of all, there is the fact that there is almost barely any dissent within ruling political parties in many Western nations about continuing the Afghan War to a successful conclusion. There is almost no debate in Parliament about the aims of the war or whether they are inherently contradictory or whether Afghanistan is really a War worth fighting.

Cameron's oblique language over pledge to withdraw still does not say why mission will be complete by 2015. Indeed, the language implies that commitment to transfer the lead to the Afghan government by the end of 2014 is only said at that point to perhaps "pave the way" for "combat troops" to be out by some stage in 2015. Not all combat troops or just troops.

Not all the security services, of course, nor is there any sense of a real withdrawal as the pledge refers only to the "lead responsibility for security " being withdrawn not whole responsibility. Language matters as much as Orwell knew it did and as those who care for its use know it must.

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Not one Parliamentarian or established politicians has challenged those like Cameron by forensically examining the language, by asking questions in public that would get clarity upon that. Hence it might have been thought that those involved in extra-Parliamentary opposition to war would eschew the language of propaganda and practice of dull ideological orthodoxy.

However, the problem with "anti-war" propagandists is that the agenda is not to outline a free debate about what's at stake in this war but to upgrade the profile of the StWC which held a protest today in which the usual hack propagandists proceeded to churn out the same tedious line.

For a start, there is the propaganda of wanting things both ways. That the war is bad because it kills soldiers ( obviously, which war does not have casualties ) and the fact anti-war radicals have extolled the Taliban or the insurgents or sectarian militias in Iraq as 'the resistance' as if they were all part of something akin to the maquis in France during the Second World War.

This sort of thing has been repeatedly pumped out by those "militant leftists and "anti-imperialists" like Seumas Milne, Tariq Ali, and Andrew Murray, most of whose propaganda these days adds up to a mere projection on to very different places of the terms used during the fight against Hitler.

As bad as Bush II was and as bad as the decision to invade Iraq was, the USA is not somehow exactly equivalent to Nazi Germany.

Yet World War One memories can be just as useful to a propagandist such as Murray as well, not least just over a week past the Remembrance Sunday of 2010,

....the war touches almost everyone in British life – not least, of course, the families waiting for coffins at Wootton Bassett or preparing for life looking after a maimed relative returned from the battlefield.

The question really has to be why does Murray care that much and whether there is not just a cynical attempt to use the grief of the families and the anger of the veterans to ramp up hatred of "the ruling class" whilst at the same time evading the fact that those squaddies chose to join the British Army. And through the idea of serving an "imperial power".

Disillusionment and anger at this futile war is different to total hatred of everything Britain stands for, something borne out by the Orwellian propaganda that follows in trying to link the depression with a rise in militarism as some "escape forwards" into war to stave off crisis ( a tired Leninist trope ).

The slump and the cuts are bringing back economic conscription with a vengeance. While a few years ago, the Ministry of Defence was struggling to recruit, now senior officers boast of being able to pick and choose who to send off to mutilation or death in Afghanistan from an abundance of applicants.

The term "economic conscription" was first used by James Conolly, a republican Irish nationalist, Marxist-Leninist and anti-imperialist who wanted to explain away why proletarians joined the armies of empire against their "common class interests" that linked them globally.

Yet its apparent that logically the same term could be used to explain why Islamist movements such as Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Taliban can recruit. Poverty motivates young men to become violent and materialists tend think that placating those wants will mollify the pyschopathological urge.

Murray wants to portray all those suffering from the Afghanistan War in Britain ( which is a very small minority ) with both those Muslims suffering abroad and to weld it to the weird amalgam of Islamism and Marxist-Leninist militancy that animates the main leaders of the StWC.

The reasons for this is not so difficult to grasp.

With the decay of the Soviet Union, those true believers stranded by History in the CPGB had to cast around for any cause that would "objectively" hasten the end of "Western Capitialist-Imperialism". The terms of references sound dated but they reflect a pyschopathological hatred that can be updated.

For the rise of global Islamist movements and myth of the trans-national ummah have thus been seen as revivifying the 'anti-imperialist' cause. Something the nice people on Stop the War marches fail to appreciate. The propaganda and placards are designed to exploit Islamist hatred.

Like most so-called "anti-war" radicals of the StWC type, Andrew Murray proves that merely opposing a war does not necessarily mean that a person either understands what is actually at stake or cares about how many die if it makes for good propaganda. For a start, the Afghan War is not being fought merely to "save face" as he claims.

If anything the consistent line of those like Galloway, Murray and others has been in building up face by establishing their credentials as media commentators of the "I Told You So" variety, that Afghanistan is unwinnable and Iraq a catastrophe. This was hardly unpredictable and the mantra seems to have been the Leninist one of "the worse the better"

As Murray puts it, in a way that proves wars are actually only just so Good if the necessary propaganda makes them seem so,

Perhaps this would all seem a price worth paying were it a war that had a purpose commanding support. But few can now credit the argument that the Taliban need to be fought in Helmand lest they overrun Hampshire.

Not a single terrorist plot launched against this country – nor one thwarted or even alleged – has had any roots in Afghanistan.

Nor does the idea that the occupation is needed to prevent instability find any takers. The war has created a Pakistani Taliban threatening the integrity of that nuclear-armed state, fuelled by every disastrous cross-border killing of Pakistani civilians.

No – the blood and treasure now being wasted in Afghanistan is an investment in nothing more worthy than saving Nato's face. If the myth of Anglo-US military invincibility were to be punctured in Afghanistan, one of the world's least developed countries, where would the world order be?

The world order was hardly shaken by the US withdrawal from Vietnam, a far greater drain on blood and treasure than Afghanistan which was accompanied by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissenger's growing diplomatic friendship with China which was conceived of in order to check the Soviet Union.

But even so the key to Afghanistan's importance lies in geopolitical strategy of maintaining a stake in developments in Central Asia, in particular the control of the oil and gas. The TAPI pipeline has been finalised now and NATO's credibility, if anything, is dependent upon its ability to protect the route from the Taliban.

NATO's role has been ever more explicitly since the Bucharest Summit in 2008 about NATO acting to preserve energy security for the West. It's curious that Murray and Galloway do not mention the most obvious fact about what could be called the "New Imperialism".

Only that "the people" in Britain or the US or in NATO states would have cause to reflect on the fact that their high octane consumer economies are made possible by oil and that therefore Blair and Bush could claim to be acting in the public interest.

Likewise, Afghanistan is part of the competition to control the gas supply from Turkmenistan. The construction of the TAPI pipeline is considered a vital strategical asset that will divert control of gas supplies away from Russia, act to block of Iran's regional ambitions in buiding a IPI pipeline.

If the rival IPI pipeline were constructed, the strategic significance of Afghanistan would be diminished and the West cut out of having a foothold from which to determine the division of the oil and gas wealth from the Caspian.

On that basis, supporters of the Afghanistan War will ask which version of imperialism is to be preferred. But obviously far more than "pride" or "loss of face" as regards pure power is at stake. Controlling Afghanistan is a key to controlling Eurasia and hence the fossil fuels that make consumer lives in the West so cosy.

Unlike NATO China is not hypocritical about human rights. It acts straightforwardly as an imperial power without strings attached. If dictators and kleptocrats grant control over resources it needs, then human rights are not even a factor in the calculation. With the discovery of $3tn of hard mineral resources, China has taken an interest in Afghanistan.

Naturally, the Afghan War is being fought according to double standards, an energy agenda that is never discussed in the mainstream media though most think tanks that deal with Afghanistan make the TAPI pipeline a routine factor in outlining the strategy for Afghanistan.

TAPI is held to be the key to regenerating the economy of Afghanistan, binding the regional powers together under the auspices of the enlightened self interest that animates NATO. The alternative is thought to be ethnic separatism, a failed state and destabilising the neighbouring states.

These facts are ones that writers should at least establish in order to advance public debate. Those such as Timothy Garton Ash laud fact in such works as Facts are Subversive, though he has yet to pay serious attention to his own belief in the power of facts with regards oil in Iraq and gas going through Afghanistan.

As for Murray, the blunt line about "no to imperialist war" is one that would be curiously shared by the far right, that is the BNP led by another petty fuhrer to rival Galloway called Nick Griffin who has also called for withdrawal from Afghanistan but without making the pretence about being bothered about Afghan lives.

Perhaps the real argument against Afghanistan is that it has contradictory objectives and that it is not possible to install democracy by military means, something that along with female emancipation is a part of a Utopian pipedream that such things could be tied to a flourishing market economy along the energy corridor.

The USA never really paid more than lip service to those stated goals. European powers and humanitarian NGO travellers believe it ought to be possible without ever having looked at the geopolitical reality and that gas transit states ( even Georgia ) are notoriously dangerous and prone to greater potential conflict.

The real problem with the pathetic state of discussion about Afghanistan is the level of denial and delusion about the nature of geopolitics. Even Murray cannot mention the gas or energy security. For the harsh reality is that the masses in the West all depend on fossil fuels to enjoy their lifestyles.

That reality hardly impinges on self righteous anti-war protesters who go bananas when faced with these facts, often because they are too boneheaded to make the basic distinction between what "is" and what "ought". The world can't be made better unless one really knows what's at stake.

Focusing on energy alternatives has to be a major part of the way in which dangerous engagement in places such as Afghanistan can be avoided. Yet as those resources are there, it is in no Great Power's interest to allow the other to have it whilst those alternatives are being developed.

Assuming that alternatives to the addiction to fossil fuels are developed with the same sort of urgency that scientists seem capable of with regards developing the A Bomb. It's a pity finding alternatives is not prioritised as being as serious as avoiding future resource wars by the gamble for Western hegemony.

Afghanistan is designed to be a war that will contribute towards that. Clearly it will not succeed. The price of not succeeding is seen to be a decline in the credibility of NATO. Something that some of those who are against the war like Murray crave because they like the idea of the Decline of the West.