Afghanistan

[steveo]

Having just seen the pitiful scenes of women chasing Hearses in Wootton Bassett on the news, is it time to bring our soldiers home? How much can we achieve by being there and how many more of our troops are going to die.

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

There are of course arguments for both of your first two options, my opinion is that our boys should be pulled out, it is an un-winnable war, reason being is because our boys are fighting an ideology and unfortunately you can not win a fight against an idea.

Pull them out ASAP

 

[leeblue]

I voted to stay and I'll tell you for why, the taliban have hijacked that place before and turned it into a nightmare place, anyone who has read the kite runner will get a good account, now I know its not exactly peachey there at the moment but at least we are trying to fight a good fight against an evil group of people, unlike Iraq where we were only freeing up some oil streams, the taliban must not be allowed to rule this country and I actually support the efforts being made to stop them doing so

 

[steveo]

I voted to stay and I'll tell you for why, the taliban have hijacked that place before and turned it into a nightmare place, anyone who has read the kite runner will get a good account, now I know its not exactly peachey there at the moment but at least we are trying to fight a good fight against an evil group of people, unlike Iraq where we were only freeing up some oil streams, the taliban must not be allowed to rule this country and I actually support the efforts being made to stop them doing so

But when will it become the responsibility of the Afghan government to stop the Taliban? And if it turns out that more Afghans want the Taliban, then why should we decided who runs the place?

 

[MK Shrimper]

It's difficult - the Taliban are absolute evil and should be eradicated, but are the allies going about it the right way? Every stray bomb, every Afghan civillian killed adds to the anger against the West and swells the ranks of the Taliban.

The ironic thing is that before 9/11 (which they probably had nothing to do with - the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia) they were a fairly small collection of vicious hardline religious zealots, now they're a large, well armed army who have spread across into Pakistan - and pray to whoever you believe in that they're halted, because Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

 

[steveo]

now they're a large, well armed army who have spread across into Pakistan - and pray to whoever you believe in that they're halted, because Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

Good shout MK, Im guessing you went for the Nuke option

 

[GBJ]

I went for the nuke option.

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

I voted to stay and I'll tell you for why, the taliban have hijacked that place before and turned it into a nightmare place, anyone who has read the kite runner will get a good account, now I know its not exactly peachey there at the moment but at least we are trying to fight a good fight against an evil group of people, unlike Iraq where we were only freeing up some oil streams, the taliban must not be allowed to rule this country and I actually support the efforts being made to stop them doing so

But what is the end game?

When and on what basis will the troops eventualy pull out??

 

[Pubey]

But what is the end game?

When and on what basis will the troops eventualy pull out??

when we get bored and decide to kick off in some other country

 

[Davros]

we should stay, or else what have the soldiers who have already lost there lives died for?

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

when we get bored and decide to kick off in some other country

Never a truer word Jon

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

we should stay, or else what have the soldiers who have already lost there lives died for?

Stay and loose more of our young men only to pull out in 9 months time!!!

Hmmmm

:nope:

 

[MK Shrimper]

we should stay, or else what have the soldiers who have already lost there lives died for?

What have they died for? Certainly not the protection of this country. Would have 7/7 happened if the UK hadn't waded into Iraq on the blatant lie of WMD's or Afghanistan picking an easy target for 9/11 when the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.

Afghanistan has brought an end to many an empire - if a heavily armed Soviet force couldn't tame the country what chance do the US/UK have?

 

[Sussex Shrimper]

Superb article on this here - not exactly from a limp wristed lefty source either.

If the goal is to bring stability to Afghanistan then it's just not going to happen. I'm firmly of the belief that our defence forces should be used for defence. At this juncture I feel that leaving our forces in harms way, with inadequate equipment, in an occupation that serves as invaluable propaganda for the enemy is a disgraceful betrayal of those who have signed up in good faith to protect us.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

Superb article on this here - not exactly from a limp wristed lefty source either.

If the goal is to bring stability to Afghanistan then it's just not going to happen. I'm firmly of the belief that our defence forces should be used for defence. At this juncture I feel that leaving our forces in harms way, with inadequate equipment, in an occupation that serves as invaluable propaganda for the enemy is a disgraceful betrayal of those who have signed up in good faith to protect us.

I agree that our troops should be defending our homeland, although I do think the war they are fighting in Afghanistan is a just one. Therefore, when the boys have eradicated Islamist terror cells in the UK, they can get on with doing the same in the 'Stan.

 

[jassyfa1]

The whole war is a no win situation and the government know it.
Option 1) Keep the troops there and more will die and the Taliban will never go away.
This is the Northern Ireland scenario, we stay there for years losing troops for an outdated political reason. Throw in a couple of aggresive sounding names 'panther claw' for some action (does anybody know how big this action was?) and praise it to the hilt.

Option 2) Pull them out and the Taliban win and we look poor. Those that have died have died for nothing. We will look poor inthe eyes of America and with Obama as their head, how is he going to react leaving the American's there with their nearest allies leavin gthem to it? How would that effect our relationship with America?

 

[canveyshrimper]

I fully support our armed forces in whatever theatre of war they are involved in. However what I cannot support is them being used as cannon fodder by a Government. We are aware that the war in Iraq was based on a tissue of lies, and Afghanistan not much better than revenge after 11/9.

As ever with politicians they take no notice of history, Afghanistan is unconquerable IMO, I think even Ghenghis Khan gave up. Look at history we got our arses kicked out of there in 1840, and again during the replayed fixture in the 1870's. I think we had another brief go just after WWI. The might of the Soviet army was next to receive a bloody nose in the 1980's. One strategy has been to bomb Afghanistan into the stone age, the problem here of course is that it is already in the stone age.

 

[Manchester Shrimper]

As tempting as you make the 'Stay and suffer more deaths' option sound, surely we have a responsibility to see through what we started. Whatever the rights and wrongs of going in in the first place, you can't remove a country's government then leave them to clear up the mess which you made.

 

[Beefy]

If the goal is to bring stability to Afghanistan then it's just not going to happen.

It might happen. It's a winnable fight, but it's one that is going to take decades. You can't just take a country as big, as divided and as troubled as it is, and fix hundreds of years worth of problems in a few months. It will take 40 or 50 years IMO at least to establish any sort of Governance over there. Two new Generations down the line and ordinary Afghans may see the best way to change things in their country as being through the electoral box and not through taking up arms. Until that point, if we walk away then Afghanistan goes straight back to square one.

Now I'm not suggesting that we should be staying there for decades, but just trying to illustrate what a horrid situation this is, and how appalling it is that this was never really thought about in the first place. The fact is that we are there now and if we walk away then all the thousands and thousands of lives, both British and Afghan, both innocent and not, who have died there in the past eight years will have died for nothing. But if Afghanistan is to be fixed then it needs to be a long-term plan, involving as many countries as possible. We have a moral obligation that would be difficult to walk away from.

 

[Bob Cratchitt]

By the way people do realise this war is a United Nations led effort, under the ISAF setup which is being led by NATO, and not just an UK/US problem?