Culture and politics forum

What a depressingly hideous and awful story.

I can never understand is how come it's the woman that loses her life? What about the man that was party to this - the taliban commander? Presumably he was committing sins of adultery too. Or rape. And if it was rape, I'm sure it was her fault still.

It's a sick, sick world.

"The guys I know feel demoralised because the whole thing is a political f***up."

The guys you know are obviously not professional soldiers, like I and my colleagues were. We worry about the when, sometimes the where, always the how much. We don't give two shits about the why - although I understand the why here. Professional soldiers in the modern US Army don't spend a lot of time contemplating the why. Good book to read about this is "War" by Sebastian Junger. The why doesn't matter.

"Leave these savages to get on with it and remember the families left bereft when their boy gets brought home with a flag"

That would be nice if they would leave us alone. But they don't intend to do that. So until we can make sure they are going to do that, we have to keep killing them.

"The war cannot be won, they'll just move somewhere else.Yemen."

The way has almost already been won. You got to walk the dog man. You haven't done that.

"You can't kill a twisted ideology.Historically it's our 4rd campaign in that hellhole.I don't know any soldier who feels he's achieved anything after his 6 months."

6 Months? Who's Army is that? Certainly not mine. We do 12-13 months and we do repeated deployments. I did eight in my career. What have we achieved? What we wanted to achieve. We are communicating a message. And we are communicating it in the only language these guys understand.

"Madmac
Wrong,wrong,wrong."

On the subject of the controlled application of violence, Mad Mac is never wrong. This one he's got down.

I didn't even mention British soldiers - let alone insult them.

The war on terror is a poor phrase for the war on Al Qaeda. And we are winning it. And winning it cleanly. That organization has been well and truly neutered and is on it's back legs right now, reeling from blow after blow. Let's keep it that way.

As for the ideological war, the Islamic Ummah understands getting your head blown off. They get that one. It's a carrot and stick thing. The carrot is you can move to the 21st century if you behave. The stick is we'll keep putting hellfires through your roof at night if you don't. If we leave the field to the barbarians, they'll regroup and be knocking on our door again in no time. Pundits don't get it. Because the government doesn't tell them the truth. The war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with Afghnistan. That just happens to be part of the geograghy.

"Until there is lasting peace and a long-term solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, there can never be proper peace between the East and West."

Even then, China, you've got one other big problem that won't go away easily. Those who see Islam as a perfect governing system provided via divine intervention, view the west as an ideological threat because it provides a socio-economic compact that is so appealing. When Bush said "they hate our freedoms" there was truth in that, though it was much derided at the time and since. They hate the freedom we represent, because their socio-economic compact doesn't offer that nor does it compete well economically. Hence for many young Muslims, Islam as a governing system is not appealing. Western Democracy is. The militants can't have that and thus will attack us when they can with whatever flimsy excuse is on hand.

"I just see a bit of arrogance when civilized westerners speak of barbarians - sounds like well, we haven't slaughtered anyone recently"

True indeed.

The Iraq war springs to mind - that was barbarism on a new scale altogether. Even the most conservative estimates put civilian deaths at 100k here, that's the equivalent of thirty 9/11s. And all for what - oil.

Agree with everything you say Sayadian.