The occasion of war

Today being remembrance day, I've been acutely aware of how the parents of all those young men killed in Afghanistan must feel. As a Quaker pacifist, I don't think that war is ever the answer: but when confronted with men like the Taliban (and I mean men - can there be any women who truly believe they should be treated as the Taliban treat them?) I find this view seriously challenged. It's a dilemma: should we allow evil to flourish in order to maintain a principle, or should we consider every situation on its merits, and recognise that in practice we really can have a choice between two evils and end up with the lesser.

I've been reading, or rather dippping into, a fascinating book called 'The Pig that Wants to be Eaten' after the creature imagined by the late Douglas Adams in 'The Restaurant at the end of the Universe'. The book is a series of moral dilemmas, posed and then discussed, with a conclusion in each case. Several are relevant to Afghanistan. But I can see both sides of the argument: to have left the Taliban, with their American arms supplied in order to get the Russians out (ask an Afghan which was the better regime!) and let them create a school of terrorism on Al-Quaida principles, or to invade and try to restructure the country as a 'western' democracy because 'we think it's better for them', and how patronising is that!

What I've been told of the Taliban (which I have to recognise is necessarily one sided) makes them seem to be the most oppressive regime on earth, worse even than Hitler's Germany or Attaturk's Turkey (the first nation to commit modern genocide). I find it hard to understand how human beings can treat their fellow humans like that, and to pretend that this is in the name of religion - a religion whose very name means 'peace' - makes it even worse. It's a form of collective mysogeny and sadism combined. So what does a peaceful person do when confronted by this?

My one comfort is remembering the Soviet story. In 1985, I took part on one of the most memorable experiences of my life, singing in the Royal Festival Hall on Easter Monday. What we sang was a specially written cantata telling the story of the women of Greenham Common and their fight against the deadly cruise missiles, which had they ever been used would have slaughtered countless Russian women and children. The Greenham women felt part of a sisterhood of all the women of the world, and that the men-tality that produced the missiles was entirely wrong. Little did we think, as we told their tale that day, that within five years the Cold War would be over, the missiles gone and the Berlin Wall taken down, and that a little time later the base at Greenham would be demolished and the land returned to the people as a common once again. And all this without a shot being fired, a soldier being killed. But then, the Soviets were not driven by a supposed religion ('real' Muslims tell me the Taliban take on Islam is nothing to do with that religion but is a cultural distortion of the true faith): they were driven by an ideology and it just became clear that it didn't altogether work. Even the more fundamentalist-communist Chinese have realised that capitalist practices bring more wealth, which is how they have become a much richer industrialised nation in the last 20 years (though there is still immense poverty). I have a lot of sympathy for the Chinese government because the scale of what they have to do is so vast that the problems are pretty intractable, and I do believe that they will gradually drop the oppressive side of their system, stop shooting so many people, and even possibly free Tibet. We won't need to invade them.

But meanwhile British troops are in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, and British hearts will continue to break as the death toll goes on, and on, and on. I wouldn't live in Wooton Basset for the world: I'd find the pain too much. I have cried over the coffins and mentally stood with the parents and wives of the dead, and agonised over what can be done: but I can't find any answers. Was it Wilfred Owen who said 'All a poet can do today is warn'?