The War on Terror

[Kwacky]

I see we managed to finish off the Taliban before we left Afghanistan

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27758029" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm pretty certain going overseas to kill people because they might be involved in terrorism is a pretty good way of ensuring we create more terrorists.

[Binno]

Countries like Afghanistan can never be fixed. It would be easier to build a wall around them and forget they exist.

[Perkles]

an old friend of mine who was awarded the obe last year for his services in afghanistan put me right on a few of my comments about us being there.No dount we have done some good work but you wont ever beat the nutty terrorists

[StMarks]

You will never overcome a culture like theirs with force. The trouble is that our politicians simply cannot relate to their mindset because it is so entirely alien to them.

The only way that we can hope to make any true impact , is through secular education.
IMHO if we had spent 1/10 th of the amount that it cost us to "wage this war" (that we have effectively just lost), on developing their education system & giving their younger generations a different to potentially aspire to, we would be heading on the way to a safer world.

I can't see Bush & Blair responding to 9/11 by announcing that they were going to spend five hundred billion on improving the education, living standards & prospects of the those countries, being well received at the time.
However im many ways it would have been a far better response.

[duke63]

The idea is sound St Marks but remember that the Taliban would not let women and girls be educated at all.

I don't know what the answer is and as Kwacky says, sending troops into other countries only makes more terrorists.

The older I get the more i realise the futility of division and boundaries between peoples of the world.

Its only politicians who stir up the hatred and division by using the Patriotic flag when it suits them.

[StMarks]

..... remember that the Taliban would not let women and girls be educated at all....

Precisely why an aspiration towards a "better way" is the only way forward mate. These people live in tribal societies, and their only aspirations & education are religiously inspired.
The Taliban prospered because of the lack of alternative.

The older I get the more i realise the futility of division and boundaries between peoples of the world..

They may lead very different lives, but I think you would find they are far more similar than you would expect.

Nature / nurture..

[Monty]

I'm with Sagan on this, can't see any borders in this picture.

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

[Stew]

When we pull out, things will gradually slide back to what they were before and we will have lost over 400 of our brightest and best for nothing, with an army now so small that if it wasn't for the injured still being kept on the books we wouldn't have an army we would an armed militia, be great if just once in a while we let some nation take the lead like the French have done recently and give guys and girls a bit of break from 30 yrs of the troubles, the first gulf war, gulf war 2 and Afghan plus Bosnia and all the other minor conflicts that we have 'advisers' on the ground doing their thing, everytime we going marching behind America to defend someones freedom we seem to create more problems than we anticipated, sad but true.

[Deegee]

I'm with StM on this one, my Grandfather fought in what is now called Afghanistan back in the 1890's and early 1900's, it couldn't be fixed then, it hasn't been fixed now, it wasn't fixed when the Russians tried either. Repeated armed conflict doesn't work there, Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing multiple times and expecting different results".

My Grandfather came out of there damaged psychologically, he could not sleep without horrific dreams and a knife under his pillow for the rest of his life, politicians have spent the lives and limbs of countless brave young men of many different nations to no avail, the result is a nation that will be the same as it was within a few years. Between vain self serving politicians and religious leaders with attitudes from the dark ages, this beautiful world will be turned into a sterile dust bowl, perhaps they'll be happy then.

[Kwacky]

You only have to see what's going on in Iraq today to realise we shouldn't be getting involved.

[C00kiemonster]

You only have to see what's going on in Iraq today to realise we shouldn't be getting involved.

Damn right. Sadly the only thing that held that country together was Saddam. I really don't know why we got involved in the first place as the oil will be under threat yet again once the north of the country has descended into civil war and it moves into the south.

[Kwacky]

Oh well, at least Blair is about as Middle East Envoy to sort things out. It's not like he cause the bloody mess in the first place, is it?

[duke63]

Can someone tell me which planet Blair lives on as it surely cannot be planet Earth.

I bet he has to have an armed guard sleep in his bed with him these days.