Wikileaks leak

NIDDEARU, GERMANY: This is with reference to your editorial “Secrets shared and leaked” (July 27). This saga of revelations is unfortunate and the information leaked out should justify crimes against humanity, like in the Nuremburg trials after World War II. It appears certain now that the war in Afghanistan is not winnable.

The mistake the West is making — and which it keeps on repeating — is that it thinks of winning wars in the way that it won World War II, where victory was gained only after the other side surrendered unconditionally. The work involved in winning that war didn’t really come to an end until the 1950s with the arrival of a democratically elected government in Germany and allowing Germany to expand to meet its industrial potential.

So, the only kinds of wars which can be won principally by military means are wars where the main party is essentially on the defensive, protecting itself while its allies from attack from elsewhere. And broadly speaking the West has enough military power to achieve that, which is partly why it has not had a military attack since Pearl Harbour.

The best kinds of wars are ones which don’t happen; where the enemy decides that an attack is doomed to fail and therefore doesn’t even start. The bottomline is that Nato should plan an early exit from Afghanistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 28^th, 2010.