Mehdi Hasan

Mehdi Hasan’s polemical take on politics, economics and foreign affairs

The not-so-fantastic Mr Fox

We always knew he was a hawk not a dove.

By Mehdi Hasan Published 02 July 2010 12:31

William Hague was forced to clarify the government's thinking on Afghanistan today when he declared that he would be "very surprised" if Kabul's military was unable to take the lead by 2014 . . .

He clarified the government's thinking after [Liam] Fox waded into a row in Washington over the withdrawal of Nato forces. In a speech to the right-wing Heritage Foundation he said an early withdrawal would risk a return to civil war and betray the sacrifices of soldiers who gave their lives.

An early draft of his speech made no mention of [David] Cameron's declaration last week. In the final version of his text Fox endorsed Cameron's view, though he later told the BBC that British troops would be among the last to leave Afghanistan.

There has been much discussion in right-wing circles about the prospect of a split between Fox and Cameron over the direction of defence and foreign policy, in general, and over the strategy in Afghanistan, in particular. But as the Spectator's James Forsyth rightly argues:

There is, though, a feeling in Westminster that Fox is vulnerable. Fox has already used up a rather large number of his nine lives -- think of the "13th century" comment on the eve of a visit to Afghanistan, saying that military pensions are ring-fenced when they are not and publicly announcing the departure of the Chief of Defence Staff outside of the Downing Street grid.

But Fox has a significant source of protection. He's one of the few representatives of the Tory right in the coalition cabinet. Only he, Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson are regarded as being on the right by the right of the Conservative Parliamentary Party. If Fox was to leave government, Cameron would find his right flank dangerously exposed.

Fox is not just a right-winger; he is, as commentators on the left and right have argued, close to the hawkish and neoconservative faction inside the party on foreign and defence matters. He set up the Atlantic Bridge think tank in 1997, with the aim of "strengthening the special relationship" with the United States (though it is now being investigated by the Charity Commission). The Defence Secretary was also an ardent supporter of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

So it was surprising to see his earlier non-neocon remarks on Afghanistan:

We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken, 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened.

He sounded a bit like a realist, more Ken Clarke than Paul Wolfowitz. But the not-so-fantastic Mr Fox is now back on form, telling the Heritage Foundation in his speech that he did not favour what he called "premature withdrawal" (and, in fact, he plans to keep British troops in Afghanistan longer than other allied nations, according to the BBC) because:

To leave before the job is finished would leave us less safe and less secure. Our resolve would be called into question, our cohesion weakened, and the Alliance undermined.

It would be a betrayal of all the sacrifices made by our armed forces in life and limb.

Who says Afghanistan ain't like Vietnam? Here are the same sort of absurd and illogical arguments from the same sort of cold, dead-eyed defence officials -- we have to stay longer because we have lost lots of men already, so we have to stay longer and lose more lives, and then we have to stay even longer to make sure those lives weren't lost in vain, and so on and so on, ad infinitum . . .

Perhaps the Defence Secretary should be reminded of John Kerry's remarks to the Senate foreign relations committee on 23 April 1971. Then a decorated, 27-year-old navy veteran of Vietnam and a high-profile member of the anti-war movement, Kerry asked:

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

Four decades on, does Liam Fox have an answer to this question?

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Tags: Liam Fox William Hague Afghanistan

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5 comments

Wed, 2010-11-24 12:32 — Dave (not verified)

What a wonderful speech by Ron Paul.

I like his description of the war, as a "war against ourselves" and the need for honest leaders with character.

And courage. Wellington said good leaders need to know when to retreat and have the courage to do so.

Fri, 2010-07-02 12:49 — jie4v7i14

Vietnam was oretty terible, much worse that Iraq and Afghanistan combined, by a long long way. The amount of Vietnamise that git killed was astouding, some put it as high as three million, but wher the start and finish in dates is, who knows, when France was involved from the fifties, and all that.

Many hundreds of thosands from the US died too, in a hollow no sense war for the averge person these, with people like the last President getting out of it when by rights he should have been in the middle of it, but by his dads influence, draft dodged to the national wotsit, the US Armys version of the Dads Army. Yes Dubya was Private Pike, more or less, the commissioned variety. Anyway, enough of this for now.

Fri, 2010-07-02 14:39 — Bertrand Ras-Ale (not verified)

The way I see it is that the British have no say in what's going on in Afghanistan - it's up to the Americans, it has always been up to the Americans since 1917. Now MrCameron, Hague and Mr Fox are just creating these contrived differences in the media to get headlines just to distract people from the two main issues
1) Really, Why are we in Afghanistan?
2) Britain Has No Influence on the
strategy in Afghanistan, let
let alone the exit timetable.

Sun, 2010-07-04 21:00 — Lou (not verified)

Ron Paul made a great statement to the House on July 1st. Not that I'm a gread advocator of Paul's policies or political stance but on Iraq and Afghanistan, I agree with him. The speech in full....

"Statement in the House by Rep. Ron Paul July 1st.....

For most Americans, we are at war, at war against a tactic called terrorism, not a country. This allows our military to go any place in the world without limits as to time or place. But how can we be at war? Congress has not declared war, as required by the Constitution, that is true. But our Presidents have, and Congress and the people have not objected. Congress obediently provides all the money requested for the war.

People are dying. Bombs are dropped. Our soldiers are shot at and killed. Our soldiers wear a uniform; our enemies do not. They are not part of any government. They have no planes, no tanks, no ships, no missiles, and no modern technology. What kind of a war is this anyway, if it really is one? If it was a real war, we would have won it by now. Our stated goal since 9/11 has been to destroy al Qaeda.

Was al Qaeda in Iraq? Not under Saddam Hussein. Our leaders lied us into invading Iraq and deceived us into occupying Afghanistan. There is still really no al Qaeda in Iraq and only 100 or so in Afghanistan, and yet there is no end in sight to the war. Could there have been other reasons for this war that is not a war? A military victory in Afghanistan is illusive. Does anyone really know who we are fighting and why?

Why has the war not ended? Nine years, and it continues to spread. Some claim it is to keep America safe, that our soldiers are fighting and dying for our freedom, defending our Constitution. Are we being lied to in order to keep us in this spreading war, just as we were lied to in the 1960s to keep us in Vietnam?

In Afghanistan, we are fighting the Taliban, those dangerous people with guns defending their homeland. Once they were called the Mujahideen, our old allies, along with bin Laden, in the fight to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s. In that effort, our CIA funded radical jihad against that nasty foreign occupier, the Russians. What gratitude. Those same people now resent our benevolent occupation, with a little violence thrown in.

The resistance to our presence grows as our perseverance wanes. Our people are waking up, but our officials refuse to recognize the longer we stay, the greater is the support for those dedicated to the principle that Afghanistan is for Afghans who resent all foreign occupation.

The harder we fight a war that is not a war, the weaker we get and the stronger becomes our enemy. When an enemy without weapons can respect an army of great strength, the most powerful of all history, one should ask, who has the moral high ground?

Military failure in Afghanistan is to be our destiny. Changing generals without changing our policies or our policymakers perpetuates our agony and delays the inevitable.

This is not a war that our generals have been trained for. Nation building, police work, social engineering is never a job for foreign occupiers and never an appropriate job for soldiers trained to win wars.

A military victory is no longer even a stated goal of our military leaders or our politicians, as they know that type of victory is impossible.

The sad story is, this war is against ourselves, our values, our Constitution, our financial well-being and common sense. And at the rate we’re going, it’s going to end badly.

What we need are honest leaders with character and a new foreign policy".