Britain's Miliband said 'war on terror' was wrong

[pkpatriotic]

Britain's Miliband said 'war on terror' was wrong
Thursday, January 15, 2009

LONDON: British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Thursday the notion of a "war on terror" was "misleading and mistaken", in an outspoken critique of a key policy of outgoing US President George W. Bush.

Writing in a newspaper, Miliband said the phrase gave the idea of a unified enemy where none existed, and also encouraged a primarily military response to problems that top generals admitted the West could not "kill its way out of".

The article appears to be a comprehensive attempt to discard what was a defining mission of the Bush administration, which comes to an end on Tuesday.

"The idea of a 'war on terror' gave the impression of a unified, transnational enemy, embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda," wrote Miliband, who is currently in India.

"The reality is that the motivations and identities of terrorist groups are disparate."

He added: "The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists, or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common."

Miliband rejected the notion that fighting violent extremism could only be done by military means.

 

[Evil Flare]

They Taste the Sand of Aghnistan .

The Graveyard of Empires .

 

[S-2]

"The Graveyard of Empires ."

OMG.

About 1,000 Americans in seven and one-half years. We'll likely be there for awhile. This isn't killing us. Nobody in America is whining about our presence in Afghanistan. Iraq's draw-down makes our Afghan deployments easier.

Layin' it on sorta thick there.

 

[Evil Flare]

America cant do anything in Afghanistan

Presence in few cities does not mean any thing

Taliban still controls 70% of Afghanistan



Better thing is to TALK , not fighting

 

[S-2]

"America cant do anything in Afghanistan"

That's not true. We've done a great job of keeping the ISI out of Afghanistan.

"Presence in few cities does not mean any thing"

Well you guys have really taken to heart that 70% thingy without really grabbing hold of it but here are a few of those cities- Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Ghazni, Musa Qala, Lashkar Gal, Sangin, Mazur-I-Sharif, and Herat. I keep reading these stories of some anaconda-like squeeze that's occuring and how the taliban control the countryside.

They control nothing. They occupy vacant ground and lose stand-up battles to ISAF EVERY SINGLE TIME. Even the French held the field and left plenty of blood trails back into the hills, heh-heh.

Each day that there's an elected Afghan government and Afghanistan gets closer to their next election is a good thing. The taliban are running out of time and the world isn't forgetting about Afghanistan. America will be there for some long and undetermined time. So too will many others.

Get used to it.

 

[ajpirzada]

glad someone is finally listenin to wat we have been sayin in all these years. hope it gets implemented as well.
just imagine wat did it bring to the world. i would say nothing except for more chaos. the only thing i saw was muslims all around the world turning against westerns and therefore joinin hand with the extremist. 1 million iraqis were killed and three million of them had to leave their homes. worst will be the case in afghanistan. all these ppl saw their relatives gettin killed infront of them. y would such a person think rationaly and would not blow himself up where ever he will see someone who reminds him of all wat happened. y should we think that such a person must draw a line bw gud and bad.
US war in afghanistan will do nothing gud but will definately leave its scar on pakistan. they can send in as many more soldiers as they want. their fate will be nothing different than those who are already there. they will be sittin in their bases only making sure that there a** doesnt get hurt. and when they ll fail to change things on the ground, they ll start barking at pakistan for not doin enough. but like S-2 said, we need to get used to this habbit of theirs

 

[Omar1984]

"War on Terror"

No one can eliminate terror from the earth, there was always terror and terror happens everywhere in the world.

Isn't what Israelis doing TERROR killing innocent children, women, and men.
Aren't there terrors in US, Canada, and UK...read a newspaper murder, rape, CEO's committing fraud thats bringing an economic crisis that will result in innocent people losing their homes..isn't that terror.

No one will ever win against terror, it always existed and will always exist.

 

[ajpirzada]

"War on Terror"

No one can eliminate terror from the earth, there was always terror and terror happens everywhere in the world.

Isn't what Israelis doing TERROR killing innocent children, women, and men.
Aren't there terrors in US, Canada, and UK...read a newspaper murder, rape, CEO's committing fraud thats bringing an economic crisis that will result in innocent people losing their homes..isn't that terror.
No one will ever win against terror, it always existed and will always exist.

exactly. if samething happen in pakistan, media shows it as if massive human rights violation took place and there is no law and order. stabbing has become a daily routine here in UK and forget about how many rapes. girls have stopped reportin now.
problem with western world is that they do state terrorism which they manage to get justified using their media. everyone remembers iraq and her WMDs. at that time ppl felt as if there is nothing more dangerous than the weapons which iraq possess. later not even a single such weapon was found

 

[Jihad]

"America cant do anything in Afghanistan"

That's not true. We've done a great job of keeping the ISI out of Afghanistan.

"Presence in few cities does not mean any thing"

Well you guys have really taken to heart that 70% thingy without really grabbing hold of it but here are a few of those cities- Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Ghazni, Musa Qala, Lashkar Gal, Sangin, Mazur-I-Sharif, and Herat. I keep reading these stories of some anaconda-like squeeze that's occuring and how the taliban control the countryside.

They control nothing. They occupy vacant ground and lose stand-up battles to ISAF EVERY SINGLE TIME. Even the French held the field and left plenty of blood trails back into the hills, heh-heh.

Each day that there's an elected Afghan government and Afghanistan gets closer to their next election is a good thing. The taliban are running out of time and the world isn't forgetting about Afghanistan. America will be there for some long and undetermined time. So too will many others.

Get used to it.

Get used to the fact that your state of the art military is not capable of neutralizing heavily bearded men living in mountains and caves.
I seriously wonder how the taliban are running out of time while the U.S. begs for the NATO to send more troops?
As for you saying: "So too will many others" be staying in Afghanistan for quite a time.
Good luck with that I'd say, you guys get enough support from European countries, alot of them who are backing out or are yet to back out soon when their term ends.
90% of the troops in Afghanistan are U.S. and the rest is NATO, not everyone seems to be very interested in your war.

 

[Vinod2070]

Taliban still controls 70% of Afghanistan

And surely that 70% is the envy of all the world! The best governed piece of real estate in the world with the best record of human rights anywhere.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Milliband disagreed with the all encompassing idea of a 'GWoT', and of trying to apply one solution to every situation, and lumping any situation into that category.

I do not think he suggested that where there is 'terrorism' and groups bent upon perpetrating terrorism (see AQ in Iraq or Pakistan and Afghanistan), we should not act against them and prevent them, nor, perhaps, that we should limit ourselves to a military solution in all cases.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

More details on his comments:

David Miliband: Bush's War on Terror was misleading and mistaken​

Rhys Blakely, Mumbai

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, bid an acrimonious adieu to George W Bush today, branding the outgoing President's War on Terror a "misleading and mistaken" doctrine that had united extremists against the West.

Speaking in Mumbai, Mr Miliband said that the idea of a War on Terror gave a false notion "of a unified, transnational enemy, embodied in the figure of Osama Bin Laden and the organisation of al-Qaeda".

He suggested that the phrase had "inadvertently sustained al-Qaeda's propaganda" and risked magnifying the threats faced. "The more we lump terrorist groups together . . . the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common," he added.

The speech, which was given at the Taj Mahal Palace, one of two luxury hotels struck in November in a terrorist attack that left more than 170 people dead, ranked among the Britich Government's harshest critiques of Mr Bush's foreign policy, but came only five days before the 43rd President makes way for Barack Obama.

Mr Bush was due to make his final address to the nation this evening. In his final press conference on Monday he admitted that his stint in office had often been blighted by poor choices of words. "Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake," he said.

Mr Miliband shrugged off suggestions that his comments would have been "braver" had they been delivered earlier in Mr Bush's tenure. The key issue was one of semantic accuracy, he said. "Terrorism is a deadly tactic, not an institution or an ideology."

Democracies must respond to terrorism "by championing the rule of law, not subordinating it," he added, citing Guantánamo Bay and endorsing Mr Obama's pledge to close the controversial detention camp.

Mr Miliband said that the term War on Terror had some merit — for capturing the need to tackle terrorism urgently and with force. But it also invited "invidious comparisons" between organisations as diverse as the Tamil Tigers, who are fighting for an ethnic Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based faction that Indian and British officials believe was behind the Mumbai atrocities, which was founded to drive India out of Kashmir.

The phrase also suggested that terror had to be tackled primarily by military means, Mr Miliband said, but history showed that American and British forces "could not kill [their] way out of the problems of insurgency and civil strife" in Iraq.

The term War on Terror was first used by President Bush in an address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, in the aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington. Announcing the first strikes against al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan only days later, he said that the "war" would be won through "the patient accumulation of successes".

Two years ago, Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, rubbished the notion of a War on Terror being fought on the streets of Britain. Those responsible for atrocities such as the July 7 bombings in London were not "soldiers" in a war, but "deluded, narcissistic inadequates" who should be dealt with by the criminal justice system, he said. At about the same time the British Government informally dropped the term.

It is not yet known what slogans, mantras and soundbites Mr Obama will adopt while in office but his team is already formulating pithy phrases that it hopes will define his presidency. Hillary Clinton, who will be his chief diplomat, had a stab at coining one this week when she peppered her remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with the term "smart power". The New York Times explained: "It means using all the levers of influence — diplomatic, economic, military, legal, political and cultural — to get what you want."

Mr Miliband is due to travel to Islamabad tomorrow to meet the Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari. He hopes to smooth relations between India and Pakistan, which deteriorated sharply in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
David Miliband: Bush's War on Terror was misleading and mistaken - Times Online

 

[TOPGUN]

"America cant do anything in Afghanistan"

That's not true. We've done a great job of keeping the ISI out of Afghanistan.

"Presence in few cities does not mean any thing"

Well you guys have really taken to heart that 70% thingy without really grabbing hold of it but here are a few of those cities- Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Ghazni, Musa Qala, Lashkar Gal, Sangin, Mazur-I-Sharif, and Herat. I keep reading these stories of some anaconda-like squeeze that's occuring and how the taliban control the countryside.

They control nothing. They occupy vacant ground and lose stand-up battles to ISAF EVERY SINGLE TIME. Even the French held the field and left plenty of blood trails back into the hills, heh-heh.

Each day that there's an elected Afghan government and Afghanistan gets closer to their next election is a good thing. The taliban are running out of time and the world isn't forgetting about Afghanistan. America will be there for some long and undetermined time. So too will many others.

Get used to it.

Boss its a lost cause u know it as we all do and so does the world iam all for killing these terrosist bastards but the truth is that i think US should bring its boys home iam a American as much as a Pakistani but the truth is that US hasnt won anywhere it has just created more prob's and issues jsut getting its boys killed u will never be able to control these places they keep being reborn and that they shall keep doing regardless of wat anyone says thats just my view and thought !!

 

[rajk20002002]

One can never take any politician on face value. Mr Miliband is eyeing PMship of UK. UK has always been the little brother of USA. Now when American fortunes are sliding, UK is in search of other big brothers. In his Mumbai statement I see a patron of evolving British foreign policy.

RK

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

. In his Mumbai statement I see a patron of evolving British foreign policy.

RK

It is a good pattern then, especially if it implies that he is trying to be insync with expected American foreign policy, which would imply that US foreign policy may also move away from the rigidity and unilateralism characterized by the Bush years.