Colin Fox's letter to The hearld on The war in Afghanistan

Afghans do not want British and American forces to continue occupying their country!!

By party co-spokeperson

Colin Fox

David Pratt is correct when he writes: “We are losing the war in Afghanistan … the mission is lost” (“Now civil war looms for the lost cause that is Afghanistan”, The Herald, September 17).

The reasons for this defeat have been obvious for some time. Uppermost among them is the fact that the US and Britain are occupying a country which doesn’t want us to be there. The majority of Afghanistan’s 33 million citizens now see British and American soldiers as armies of occupation. The origins of this lie in Tony Blair’s decision to invade Afghanistan in 2001, claiming it was responsible for the 9/11 twin towers attacks. He knew then that Afghans were not involved. So Britain invaded a country guilty of no crime, has occupied it for the best part of a decade and some 50,000 innocent Afghan civilians have been killed.

The insurgency is winning in Afghanistan because Britain and the US alienated the population by installing a corrupt, illegitimate and despised puppet regime with Hamid Karzai at its head.

All the polls here highlight the lack of confidence the UK population has in the political leaders as 75% want to see the troops brought home. Our soldiers will continue to die until the discredited Afghan army and police can take over. Yet there is, in reality, no such thing as a national army or police force in Afghanistan – only militias and paramilitaries loyal to warlords who pay their wages.

David Pratt is right to suggest that Britain’s legacy to Afghanistan will be the same civil war which followed the Soviet withdrawal of the 1980s.

If Afghanistan is to prosper as a democratic and stable country, the future rests with people like the remarkable Afghan MP Malalai Joya, one of the few actually elected. She campaigns for a democratic, multi-ethnic Afghanistan and she asks of people who share her vision that we first of all withdraw foreign forces.

Colin Fox,

CAPITALISM IN CRISIS

Capitalism in Crisis

It is clear as we enter an indefinite period of ‘austerity’ (i.e. cuts in social services, redundancies, wage cuts, and rising taxes) that capitalism has failed as a system, even on its own terms. For a while the true nature of the system is exposed more clearly for all to see: the so-called wealth generators, the capitalist class, are actually exploitative opportunists, who in collusion with the state are making the working class pay the costs of the crisis which was not of their making. The working class, the overwhelming majority in society, is made up of not just those in paid employment, but all who do not own or control the means of production. That includes the unemployed, pensioners and students.

The current crisis of capitalism is not down to a handful of irresponsible ‘bankers’ making dodgy decisions; it is a crisis of the system as a whole. Capitalism operates according to a trade cycle that involves periods of full production alternating with recessions i.e. ‘boom and bust’ are inherent and unavoidable features of capitalism. In a recession under capitalism, economic logic dictates that much of productive capacity is left idle and workers are made redundant. Nevertheless, the perverse logic of capitalism not withstanding, it is technically within society’s power to provide constantly enough for all and that unemployment and poverty are unnecessary evils because the means are available to overcome them. Yet the lives of millions under the prevailing capitalist system are at the whim of abstract market forces, which take on a life of their own and cause hardship and misery all over the world.

There is, however, an alternative to capitalism. It involves appropriating the means of production into the hands of the majority of society in order to meet human needs rather than to satisfy a tiny wealth owning class’s desire for profit. The alternative is called socialism.