A column by Christopher Hitchens in the Guardian today ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4298447,00.html) sums up how most people are feeling about the anti-war movement. All the apocalyptic warnings that the war will be a long, drawn-out Vietnam-style conflict that will drive the world's Muslims into the Taliban camp appear to have dissipated. The Taliban has virtually vanished into thin air, with the last remnants probably destined for a miserable life of banditry and low-level guerrilla warfare.

I think the anti-war movement set itself up for disaster by failing to give a more sophiscated critique, beyond talking of an imminent doom which never happened. Of course, nobody knew that the Taliban regime was going to collapse in quite so spectacular fashion and the West was quite prepared to plunge Afghanistan into famine during the winter. With the defeat of the Taliban, mass starvation is unlikely to happen and the bloodshed will be far less than we anticipated. In placing so much emphasis on impending disaster, the anti-war movement appears to have lost the argument precisely because there was little bloodshed. This should be a warning against downplaying the proposed interim government. If we carry on this line that the whole process is doomed because of irreconcilable ethnic divisions and geopolitics, then we could easily be proved wrong again. We must place less emphasis on crystal ball Nostradamus predictions and provide a more sophisticated response to militarism and geopolitics without casting our lot with the losers or being doom and gloom.

One thing I found particularly distasteful was the argument advanced by the SWP that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda should not be condemned because 'it would alienate people'. In doing this, the SWP has made the rest of us look like a laughing stock. As Hitchens says, the peace moevment has become "an auxiliary to dictators and aggressors in trouble. Looking at some of the mind-rotting tripe that comes my way from much of today's left, I get the impression that they go to bed saying: what have I done for Saddam Hussein or good old Slobodan or the Taliban today?" There is a lot of truth in this - the SWP and other groups have advanced the line that third world fascists should not be condemned, whether they are Laurent Kabila, Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein, simply because they are hated by the West. We should condemn dictators at all times, whether they appear to be friends of the West or not. There should be no moral juxtaposition between a pro-West dictator and an anti-West dictator.

My worry is that this perception of victory over the Taliban, who were a nasty bunch of murderous thugs, will lead to a greater degree of military engagement in the future. More proxy armies like the Northern Alliance will be raised to fight wars on behalf of Washington. The military option will now be used as a first option and we will see a lot more war because of perceived Western success in Afghanistan. There has never been a greater need for an anti-war movement, but we will need to get our heads screwed on right and argue in a far more intelligent and comprehensive fashion instead of sloganising and inventing apocalyptic fantasies to back up our cause.