I dunno about anyone else, but I reached War of Terror overload well over a year ago (in fact, I think it probably came long before that – shortly before they finally got around to invading Iraq), and find it very hard to care any more. What’s going on inside Iraq and Afghanistan? I don’t really know and really have very little interest in finding out.

And that was my major point. Iraq may be worse now than it was before; Afghanistan may be little better. But there’s no one trying to articulate that in the mainstream who’s worth listening to, so I (and quite a few others, I’d guess) have simply stopped bothering to pay attention.

Hence the announcement that British troop numbers in Afghanistan are going to increase substantially (by about 4,000 or so, if I recall) meets with little protest, whereas a year or so ago when the news broke that a couple of hundred extra troops were going out to Iraq everyone went apeshit.

Even the “100 British dead” story has broken in a rather more subdued manner than might have been expected a few months back, because there’s really not that much of a market for it any more. Callous, maybe – but true.

In this climate, where even politically aware people who keep up to date with most current affairs have started to blank out all news about Iraq and the like, the need for a coherent antiwar unity figure to revitalise interest is desperate. The movement’s splintered, fractured, and has dwindled to irrelevancy just as it could really start to make an impact.

Your three “proofs” are fine examples –

1) Public beheadings have indeed ceased, for now, but stoning to death is still permitted. In the New Afghanistan you can be jailed for writing articles condemning this practice.

2)In rural Afghanistan, where the majority live, most girls and women are not educated. Not before the Taliban, not during, nor since.

3)Ditto – most rural women are still required to wear “tents”.

Why not increase your knowledge of Afghan politics by reading up on some of the people recently elected to its new government? You’ll find that many of them are just as appalling as the Taliban, and some of them ARE Taliban.

Rant over ….

Also, with respect to Iraq, your b) option above omits the important information that mortality is, as a matter of fact, worse than it was under Saddam. “An acceptable level” would require further improvement from the improvement that we would need to merely get back to the prewar state.

Simon Jenkins in the Sunday Times on Afghanistan, key quote

‘The implication is that British troops will act only in self-defence. How that turns back the Taliban tide is a mystery. It is just offering target practice for mujaheddin.’

Good point about ranting. I must try to be less vehement. But it is hard when faced with this level of delusional incompetence and cynicism from those in charge of these things.