The Observer will be read by every member of the British government.
News stories this evening report the British government advising the press not to indulge in too much speculation about how the war may not be winnable. This is almost certainly in response to the article. They say that on Tuesday Tony Blair will deliver a speech calling on Britons to stick through it.
Meanwhile there are the reports of the massacre of Christians in Pakistan.
In its bellicose aspect, the coalition is looking very wobbly not only in Pakistan but now in Britain.
>The Coalition still has justice on its side, but where is its convincing
>and coherent military strategy?
>
>In the days immediately after 11 September, millions of Britons struggled
>with their first responses to the awfulness of what had happened in New
>York and Washington. The Observer argued then that the only fitting
>response was to identify and apprehend the suspects.
>
>We cautioned of the temptation, in the aftermath of the coldblooded
>killing of 6,000 people, for America to plunge into a war against an
>unidentified enemy, killing thousands of innocent Muslims in the meantime.
>And we expressed the fear that any 'war against terrorism' might be
>widened into an indiscriminate attack upon any country identified as a
>rogue state by the Western alliance.
>
>For some weeks, we derived relief from the fact that our caution appeared
>to have been shared. America, backed by Tony Blair, sought to build an
>international consensus for military action. Its supporters were assured
>that military action, when it started, would be aimed at those individuals
>who had been properly identified as perpetrators of the 11 September
>outrages. And they were then promised that such action would be targeted,
>precise and, above all, appropriate to the task of seizing Osama bin Laden
>and his accomplices.
>
>This weekend, our confidence in that strategy lies seriously shaken. The
>last week has seen a collapse of certainty about the objectives being
>pursued by the military alliance against terrorism and the efficiency of
>the operation designed to secure them. It is not enough for politicians to
>blame public listlessness, or the prevarications of the media, which have
>largely supported them, or a distaste for battle once the sound of gunfire
>starts. The politicians have brought a crisis of confidence upon themselves.
>
>
>......
>
>Not only do we now need frankness from our leaders about the dangers of
>this enterprise. We need them to convince us that they have a firm, agreed
>and coherent strategy for continuing to prosecute the odyssey upon which
>they have embarked. That must include a detailed appreciation of how they
>believe stable government can be re-established in Afghanistan after
>military action is over.
>
>We have supported the Government thus far in the harrowing weeks since 11
>September, but if it does not take one cautious step back now to reassess
>its military strategy, it risks a collapse of confidence in its position
>in the near future. We do not want to see that. However, the killing of
>innocent people is wrong, whether engineered by terrorist hijackers or
>inaccurate cluster bombs.
>
>The Observer takes exactly the same view now that we took six anxious
>weeks ago. It is justice, not war, that we seek as we still try to make
>sense of the awfulness of what happened at the World Trade Centre and in
>Washington. It is justice for the victims of those heartrending tragedies,
>not war on the people of Afghanistan, that our governments must deliver.
The whole article will be more effective because it does not attack the government outright. It does not attack war outright.
But it undermines a key argument for a war to be just: that it must be winnable.
This editorial alone will not take Britain out of the military war, but it is likely to inhibit through closer British questioning, the US policy of continued high level bombing without clear military objectives.
http://www.observer.co.uk/leaders/story/0,6903,582136,00.html
Chris Burford
London