A colleague has posted the following video to YouTube:
That video calls for the return of Britain’s troops from Afghanistan. I cannot condone this.
Whether we think the Iraq war was right or wrong, we’re there now and we must stay and finish the job. But almost no-one thought then, or thinks now, that the Afghanistan war was wrong. The explosion of two ancient Hindu Buddhist statues touched me in a way that I cannot quite get over to you. That was the most widely advertised example of the Taliban’s absolutely, completely inhumane regime. It is not only right that we are in Afghanistan — it is morally necessary that we stay and that we stop this country from being a failed state.
Somalia, sadly, is on its way to a similar fate (after anarchy-cum-libertarianism nearly brought an ideal state into being). If we do not save Afghanistan now, then we must recognise that Somalia will be just as condemned by that failure.
October 5th, 2006 at 4:21 am
Buddhist statues!!!
October 5th, 2006 at 6:42 am
I am completely uneasy with the totality, if you like, of groups like the Taliban and Hamas, to name two. It’s hard to accept that they are really a group or a concoction of far more sinister forces - they’re almost pantomime villains, aren’t they?
October 5th, 2006 at 9:47 am
Sorry Tony, you’re right.
October 5th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
A problem with Afghanistan is that we might never be able to win anything for long. The numbers of troops required to keep the peace might just be intollerable.
To this day, large parts of Pakistan are barely under state control.