Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-12-15-Speech-3-555"
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"en.20101215.29.3-555"2
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"Madam President, I am aware that Mr Arlacchi knows Afghanistan well. Of the members of this Assembly, he is probably one of those who know this country and complex region best.
However, let us be clear, this text, in its current state, poses a serious problem. I do not agree with all our Members who are delighted and pat themselves on the back for this text. I shall tell you why.
I find that this text firstly has the major shortcoming of wanting at all cost to make us, Westerners, responsible for the ills Afghanistan is experiencing. I will give you three examples. Firstly, Mr Arlacchi writes that health conditions have deteriorated, almost by chance, since we have been there. That is astonishing. Mrs Ashton stated quite the opposite. Nobody noticed this.
My second point is that in Recital B, read it ladies and gentlemen, Western forces are forces of occupation. Those Member States in this Assembly who have lived through occupations will know what a word like this means.
My third point, on paragraph 71, concerns the question of the drones: ladies and gentlemen, I was an officer in Afghanistan two years ago, as a military doctor. I treated German, British, Polish, Italian, French, Allied Afghan soldiers. I even treated the Taliban. I can tell you that if tomorrow you were to say to our soldiers ‘You cannot use drones’, that would be tantamount to telling them ‘Make contact with the enemy, take risks’. I do not know whether it is our responsibility as politicians to say that to our men.
I am not under-estimating the complexity of the situation. I know that war is cruel, but we must, I believe, put a stop to this anti-militarism, this simplistic anti-Americanism, this self-flagellation of Western forces which turns them into the source of all the Afghan ills.
I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that everything is much simpler than that. The enemy is the Taliban, not the Americans and not the Western forces. All of this is very complex but we must be careful about how we present matters."@en1
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