AFTER years of robust pub arguments with friends about the rights and wrongs of British military action abroad, I've identified three categories of anti-war campaigner.
Sussing out which type I'm talking to makes the necessary job of unpicking their arguments that little bit easier. It's a handy guide and I commend it to you, especially with the debate about our presence in Afghanistan intensifying by the day.
Th
e first type is the pacifist, the toughest one to crack. If you don't believe Britain would ever be justified in going to war at any time, in any circumstances, then you're going to be a hard person to reason with. Lessons from history about Nazis and appeasement seem to cut no ice. Usually this type is convinced that compromise and diplomacy can always win the day. Yet they remain unclear on how you can compromise with a fundamentalist Islamist terror group committed to the destruction of America and Israel. Agree to partial destruction?
The second category is what I call the 'safety in numbers' protester. Instead of making their own moral decisions based on the available evidence, they will only support military action if it is rubber-stamped by the United Nations Security Council. Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, falls into this category. War in Iraq would have been absolutely fine if the self-interested haggling at the UN HQ in New York had taken a different tack. By this same token, the Nato action to protect Kosovan Muslims in 1999 was "unpardonable folly" because it did not have UN backing. No doubt it would also have been wrong to intervene to halt the slaughter of innocents in Rwanda in 1994. Unless the UN specifically says it's OK, any military action is out of the question. Such faith in an organisation so plainly capable of making calamitous decisions is touching, but a little bewildering.
The third type is the committed anti-American. By their reasoning, any military action endorsed by the USA is by definition evil. However benevolent an American action might seem, it will always have a sinister motive. Paranoia and conspiracy theories are common in this category. So is hysteria. I've actually heard a sane, sober, university-educated friend of mine argue that at some stage Britain is going to have to go to war with America to halt its military, economic and cultural takeover of the globe. Great idea! Let's save the world from Puff Daddy and Calvin Klein pants! This last group of protestors will doubtless regard with suspicion the visit to the UK this week by US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
She is here to talk a little about Iraq and Iran, but mostly about Afghanistan, which is now Britain's number one foreign policy challenge.
With British involvement in Iraq dwindling, the attention of anti-war protesters is increasingly turning towards our presence in Afghanistan. Recently some commentators have begun questioning whether we are wise to commit ourselves for decades to bringing peace and prosperity to notoriously hard-to-govern rival tribes.
The difficulty of this task can't be underestimated. Britain looks like being locked in conflict with the ousted Taliban for decades to come. It's a deadly confrontation that has already cost the lives of more than 80 British service personnel. But neither can we underestimate the appalling consequences of failure in a region that is still the nexus of al-Qaeda influence around the globe.
Many more pub arguments lie ahead. Our pacifists will always be against the war in Afghanistan. But the 'safety in numbers' crowd can be reassured that the British are operating under the umbrella of a number of UN Security Council resolutions, for what they're worth. Those who are instinctively anti-American can borrow some comfort from the fact that this is increasingly a British-led operation, and that the UK is soon to take full military control of the Nato command centre in the troubled south of the country.
Much of the legitimate criticism of the West's presence in Iraq was targeted at the Americans' inability to rebuild the country after the success of the initial invasion and the capture of Saddam. The Yanks lacked Britain's experience in nation-building – the result of our half-century spent divesting ourselves of an empire. In Afghanistan, Britain has an opportunity to show how this can be done properly, bringing together security, stability and economic development in partnership with the local people. Nation-building is what we're meant to be good at, and Afghanistan is our opportunity to prove it. It won't be easy. The political situation is currently bleak, with president Hamid Karzai increasingly irritated at the lack of co-ordination between his fragile government and the Western powers.
Rice will this week renew her challenge to Germany and other European nations to commit themselves to the fight. Their hesitation is craven and politically cowardly, and their help is desperately needed in Kandahar province, where Canada is threatening to withdraw its 1,000 troops unless reinforcements arrive soon.
I'm not at all blase about the potential human cost of committing more soldiers to Afghanistan. My 17-year-old nephew, a new recruit to the Royal Regiment of Scotland – he prefers to say Black Watch – is currently doing his infantry training at Catterick. He could conceivably find himself on a plane to Afghanistan next year. If he does, of course it will be a worry. But he will be fighting a good fight, and I will be a very proud uncle indeed.
The full article contains 930 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
