There was some beardy,sandal wearing guardian reader on TV the other night - so called expert on the long term effects of bombing etc and he dragged up the usual Arthur "bomber" Harris war criminal bilge about how the bombing of German cities by the Raf and USAF was OTT and served no purpose.Then Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the Atom bomb! He failed to mention that if the Yanks had instead gone into Japan on the beaches it was estimated that it would cost 1,000,000 men their lives! What a total cock!
Strange that isn't it? Either most of Afghanistan really wants to be Taliban - in an army shooting weapons instead of getting on with their lives - or you'd have to think that simply sending an army to Afghanistan sort of stimulates people to join the Taliban. It was much the same story in Vietnam. Did everyone really want to be communist, or just left alone? And what did the Vietnam war achieve? On the face of it, nothing. And what did it cost in terms of cash and blighted lives? I don't think the history books are going to be very kind about our intervention in Afghanistan.
If this Rory Stewart is the same as the MP who commented on the flooding in Cumbria yesterday, I reckon he is a bit of a twit... I quote: "The new flood barriers worked, but the water came over the top"
We won't. He might turn out to be incompetent, misguided and mired in mission-creep but he won't be a criminal. The Iraq war fiasco needs to be seen in context. It was a bizarre campaign. On September the 11th America, the global prefect, the big guy, had sand kicked in its face by a feral delinquent. Unable to lay its hands on the culprit it lashed out at a bystander who had nothing whatever to do with the attack but was no friend of America, would have felt little sympathy and with whom the US considered it had unfinished business. On every level it looked terrible. But the greater villain in the Blair/Bush double act, to my mind was Blair. I don't think Bush was a wicked or criminal President but a weak and foolish one unequal to the crisis confronting him. Immediately after the attacks he faced an impossibly difficult situation unprecedented in the US. He was under immense pressure, hopelessly out of his depth and appallingly badly advised by a cabal of Machiavellian Whitehouse hawks with their own agendas to pursue. It was clear to every onlooker in the rest of the world that America, (understandably) was in a vengeful rage and was in danger of making a fool of itself and acting like the school bully. As the head of the Government of America's chief military, political and cultural ally, Blair was in a unique position to act as a moderating influence. He could have played the Statesman but instead he squandered that opportunity and for reasons which remain unclear urged Bush on and cobbled together a concocted case for a symbolic war against an invented foe. The present situation isn't like that. We are already engaged, with a UN mandate, in an aerial bombardment to degrade a terrorist organisation which has illegally annexed territory in another country (Iraq) and we are doing so at the request of that country's Government. All that is proposed is to extend that bombardment across the border into Syria (which is a war zone) and a part of Syria which is not under the control of its (admittedly unpleasant) Government and again we will be doing so with UN sanction which allows Daesh to be pursued wherever it is operating. I agree its got all the potential to turn into an utter mess and Cameron's track record in this department is not good (if Libya is anything to go by). He will probably make the same hash of it that we have come to expect form our current generation of lightweight professional politician leaders who are ill-fitted to the rigours of international statesmanship, but he isn't going to become a war criminal.
yip. quite probable/ possible.Gimlet so if we can work it out so can they. i don't think your advocating another campaign there but that appears to be what we are walking into
Good post that. Well-reasoned and well written. I wonder if Blair and Bush weren't best mates because of their cloying Christianity - Bush the born-again evangelist, Blair the happy-clappy, acoustic-guitar-strumming do-gooder. I'll bet you that had Blair been an atheist, he wouldn't have been so keen on George's plans. Bush was quite clearly a puppet president from all you read. Cheney was the guy really in power. But he wasn't so good at gurning at people.
I really don't need to after his comment..........and the one that follwed it: "The new barriers worked so that instead of 3'-0" of water in houses it would have been 8'-0"
Based on his comments about the Cumbria floods, I get the idea it would like reading a book by David Cameron on how to solve the Middle East problems and the migrant crisis.
How wrong can you be ! Off the top of my head. Rory Stewart was doing a long distance walk from Europe to the Far East (?) and was forced to abandon the section through Afghanistan due to the war. As soon as the war ended, but before the dust had settled, he walked the section he had missed out, through Afghanistan, hence the title "The Places In-between". This was solo, totally unsupported, living hand to mouth and relying upon the goodwill and generosity of the locals. It was an incredible journey that could have ended badly on many occasions. It provides valuable insight into the nature of Afghanistan that anybody who has any interest in the area should be aware of. Read it and speak from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance.
I am fairly sure that I know enough about Afghanistan without reading a book by a 'pretend Lawrence of Arabia' who buggered up a reasonably good relationship with his partner to nick his wife...............Hardly ignorance on my part.
Thing is, this isn't a nicely defined war against a government- there is no negotiating table and no front line. This one will be tricky. I'm on the fence as to the validity of bombing, but I can easily see how in ten years time the bar room experts will be bleating on about it, and how they knew exactly what we should have done.
Are we basically involved in a Sunni/Shia civil war? I believe IS or Daesh or whatever are Sunni's. I was wondering why UK Muslims could not come up with an idea to maybe have a day where they could gather to condemn Daesh and maybe do themselves a favour as I am sure we would all like to see this? Surely good for everyone? I was then wondering what sort of percentages made up the Sunni and Shia muslims in the Uk so had a google. Sunni's appear to make up anything up to 90% of UK muslims which grabbed my attention. Whilst looking for these numbers I also noticed a reported rise in Sunni/Shia hate crimes too. Interesting.
Yes, I think it is a Sunni/Shia civil war with the Wahabi Saudi Arabia pulling the strings. It would seem that Muslims are reluctant to criticise Muslims.
I've tried to make some sense of this but more or less given up. Like all such situations it is not "black and white" - the Wahhabis are a subset of Sunni Islam, and the Alawites (President Assad and co, I think) a Shia sect, or something like that. But when it comes to out and out murderous intolerance those who aren't any sort of Muslim seem to come off worst in this situation (e.g. the Yazidis, or if there are any left in the war zones, Christians or Jews). I suppose it's easy to look back a few hundred years and say "European Christians used to behave like that once", and it would be wrong in my view to put the "troubles" of Ireland in the same league as the horror of what is happening in the Middle East.
