The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Forces of Darkness vs. British Pluck

As Britain's brave boys face the challenge of reclaiming the night from the Taliban, the Guardian's Declan Walsh grabs his Boys' Own Handbook of War Reportage and sets the clichés marching:

Midnight in Helmand, and the only sound is the crump of boots on the desert soil. A line of Royal Marines prowls through the night, their rifles trained on the inky darkness. Suddenly a rattle of gunfire shatters the quiet. The commandos drop to the ground, train their guns in the direction of the noise, and wait.

Length of paragraph, fifty-seven words; of which embedded chunks from the Boys' Own Handbook constitute twenty words, or thirty-five per cent. This is reasonable enough; it is, after all, the Guardian, not the Telegraph or the Mail. Thirty-five per cent in the first paragraph is just about right - it will summon up the readers' blood without directing too much of it towards their brains.

Distinguishing friend from foe can be difficult in Helmand, the lawless Afghan province that will soon be home to one of Britain's most ambitious - and perilous - deployments to Afghanistan since colonial times.

Ah yes, colonial times - those times when we invaded defenceless countries under the pretence of helping the natives improve themselves, declared their resources private property, set up unpopular puppet governments, and looted them for all they were worth. Thank goodness the world isn't like that any more. To prove it, the British army has even revealed its exit strategy - "a well trained, well led Afghan army". Of course, as one would expect, the raw material is a little substandard: "it may take British trainers some time to turn the army into a western-style fighting force, with a sense of national pride as well as fighting skills". The advantages of a western-style fighting force in a south central Asian country have been well documented since the bad old days of colonialism, the lessons of which we have undoubtedly learned.

As for national pride, one recruit said with a smile: "I like to fight for everyone ... Whichever government comes along, I will serve with it." Surely no British soldier could have said it better. Indeed, thanks to Tony and his chums, the national pride of British troops has been flexibilitised so that they can fight for Halliburton as well as for Whitehall.

This is perhaps the reason why the British "are keen to stress a difference in style from the departing American contingent," whose efforts, aided by its little helper, have turned Afghanistan from the Taliban-ravaged, burka-littered wasteland of 2001 into an efficient heroin factory. "Once darkness falls the Taliban rules." The fiends can't stomach the daylight.

"You won't see us turning up at some poor farmer's house, arresting him and chopping down his crops," said the British commander in Helmand's provincial capital. Hence, "By next May more than 3,300 British paratroopers, backed by Apache helicopters, Harrier warplanes and a phalanx of hi-tech artillery, will start pouring in". The paratroops and helicopters will "conduct week-long missions at Baramcha, a border town filled with drug smugglers and Taliban insurgents". Of course this will bother no one who has not merited it. The mission is to "impose order and facilitate development", which, as we know from Iraq, is not at all the same thing as pacifying restless natives or profiteering at the point of a gun. The idea that an Apache helicopter could be used to destroy a poor man's livelihood, rather than to pinpoint and neutralise the guilty and backsliding in a provincial border town, is too absurd to contemplate.

British troops will avoid "busting down doors" or other search techniques used by US soldiers that have caused anger in the conservative south.

If only these people were less conservative, we could bust down their doors with impunity. Truly, civilisation is long overdue in this place.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home