Flying Rodent, I share your anger and disbelief that we were ever in Afghanistan in the first place, because it made no sense to be there, and it still makes no sense.

Let’s go through it again…

America is attacked by Saudi extremists.

Ringleader of Saudi extremists hides in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan offers to hand over ringleader in exchange for evidence.

America and UK bomb Afghanistan.

America and UK kill many Afghan civilians.

Ringleader disappears off the map.

America and UK bomb Iraq.

America and UK kill many Iraqi civilians.

American Defense Secretary admits location of ringleader unknown for years.

America and UK still killing Afghan civilians.

You almost couldn’t make it up.

I share your concern FR, but – aside from saying the war is unwinnable – you make it sound like entering Afghanistan is a bad idea in the first place.

A journalist once said, Lefties opposed to the conflict in Afghanistan:

“must confront two things: that conditions in the subcontinent were much more unstable before the US invasion of 2001 and will get worse if the US leaves with Afghanistan in limbo. That may mean even more lives lost. Second, sometimes we need a short-term conflict (between the Pakistani army and the Taliban) in order for longer-term peace.”

This is true.

…and will get worse if the US leaves with Afghanistan in limbo…

If there’s no hope of bringing stability we’ve got two choices: a) take that risk, or b) stay in the nation for so long our troops could apply for citizenship.

I’m not sure you’ll make much sense of the conflicts at the depth of this post. It’s a complicated situation that’s not been helped by wikileaks, and I expect more lives are in danger now. That’s irrespective of the justification and success/failures of the conflict as a whole.

“that conditions in the subcontinent were much more unstable before the US invasion of 2001″

Carl, I know you’ve said that any war is justified if evil, misogynistic Muslims are the target, but will you not accept that the war in Afghanistan has made Pakistan much more unstable? Regardless of what some “journalist” said to the contrary, that is undeniably the case.

“sometimes we need a short-term conflict (between the Pakistani army and the Taliban) in order for longer-term peace.”

It’s so much easier to call for more fighting and more dying when it’s not you or your own who are fighting and dying.

@4 Phil

Agreed. If as reported the wikileaks disclosures will cost the lives of Afghans who are working with NATO it is pretty deplorable. Trying to dismiss criticism of that with reference to what you see as the greater evil of civilian casualties caused by Coalition forces, or your view that the war itself is unwinnable and misguided is frankly pretty nauseating.

I opposed the invasion of Iraq, but the invasion of Afghanistan was a different matter. It is possible that “the West” will manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but before opponents of the war crow too loudly about pulling out, they might like to give some thought to the population they are leaving behind to the tender mercies of the returning Taliban or some post occupation power vacuum.

Afghanistan was never going to be an easy win. Transforming a society like that into a functional democracy will take decades, and pre-supposes dealing with shambolic failed states like Pakistan as well. Trying to negotiate with the Taliban or other Islamist extermists is about as useful (and on the same moral level) as it would have been sitting down and negotiating with the NSDAP in 1945 to achieve a compromise peace.

I agree with most of that but while it’s reasonable to point out the hypocrisy of those who criticise Wikileaks but have shown little concern up to now over the deaths of civilians at the hands of our troops we can’t have it both ways ourselves.

I don’t think it’s been proven that innocent lives have been put at risk and those who make this claim clearly have a motive for exaggerating the threat, but ISTM that Assange could have made more of an effort to redact potentially sensitive details of individuals and if it turns out that harm does come to them as a result he will have some questions to answer.

@7
“Assange could have made more of an effort to redact potentially sensitive details of individuals”

Wikileaks withheld some 15,000 documents for that reason.

Question is – what’s in the ‘insurance’ file?

I find it hard to censure Assange for releasing the details without redacting the information about informants (which is the bit everyone seems angry at). The military didn’t consider the material to be particularly sensitive (classified only as ‘secret’) – a huge mistake by itself, given the corruption-at-all-levels we see in Afghanistan.

@5 blanco

The invasion of Afghanistan by the west was hardly the whole reason that Pakistan is such a basket case… tho most would accept that it hasn’t helped. Pakistan was and is as much part of the problem due to it’s inherent instability and inability to deal with it’s own Islamist problems.

Oh.. and in case you hadn’t noticed..it is some of our own who are fighting and dying.

@blanco 5

it’s quite easy to oppose the war if it’s not youe family who has to give up a son to fight with the Taliban whether you like it or not.

I see what you mean though, since I write a comment on a blog, the only opinion Is should hold is pacifism, right?

@Galen: Trying to dismiss criticism of that with reference to what you see as the greater evil of civilian casualties caused by Coalition forces, or your view that the war itself is unwinnable and misguided is frankly pretty nauseating.

Indeed, that would be. Of course, there’s surely nothing wrong with pointing out the sizeable elephant in the room here, which is that the people currently feigning concern for the fate of Afghan civilians are the very same goons who have spent an entire decade either conducting or calling for the continuation of a war which is itself responsible for massive piles of smouldering corpses.

If Wikileaks are to be censured for endangering Afghan lives, then I’ll wait until there’s some evidence to suggest that they’re responsible for at least some harm. Until then, I’m going to concern myself more with the ongoing bloodbath that has actually, for ten years, been killing god knows how many and is being conducted by governments which, bluntly, lie and bullshit about the aims, costs and casualties.

@Carl: you make it sound like entering Afghanistan is a bad idea in the first place.

It’s a land war in Asia – there’s a famous saying about those, I forget how it goes.

But okay, for argument’s sake, let’s grant that the specific aim of driving out the Taliban and capturing Al Qaeda forces in 2001 might have been achievable and or useful.

What are we still doing in Afghanistan, Carl? What exactly has been achieved by expanding that war into its nuclear-armed neighbour? What is the end game here? How many people are going to get killed in achieving it?

I mean, really. Even if we assume that the initial operation was sound, I suspect that any and all of the following options would’ve been substantially more successful responses to 9/11. They’d be less deadly, less extortionately expensive and more humane than hanging around blowing up villages and wedding parties until the south of the country came out in open war…

a) Leaving straight away in 2001, having armed the least psychotic of our allies;

b) Flying two planeloads of US marines into Kabul’s tallest buildings at 700 mph;

c) Randomly executing around 300 British squaddies, or

d) Not invading at all.

@Carl: sometimes we need a short-term conflict (between the Pakistani army and the Taliban) in order for longer-term peace.”

This, said about a war that will soon enter its second decade, in which senior US sources say they expect a successful counterinsurgency plan to take 13 years. It’s comical, at least.

We’re in year two, by the way.

Carl: “conditions in the subcontinent were much more unstable before the US invasion of 2001 and will get worse if the US leaves with Afghanistan in limbo.”

That’s just a false assertion. Afghanistan and Pakistan are far more unstable now than in 2001. Afghanistan was ruled by a brutal regime, yes, but it wasn’t particularly unstable. Now it’s unclear who even controls most of the country. Most people will experience a hotch-potch of rule by religious militias, local warlords and western troops, punctuated by all sides bombing local people for real or imagined membership of / sympathy for any of the other groups. How is that not the definition of instability? How can western troops possibly worsen that situation by leaving?

All those claiming we would be ‘abandoning’ Afghan women by leaving the country seem to be ignoring the fact that we basically can’t hold territory, and so Afghan women must comply with Taliban rules anyway because they could return next week, and besides many of our allied warlords enforce Taliban-like rules on women themselves.

“Second, sometimes we need a short-term conflict (between the Pakistani army and the Taliban) in order for longer-term peace.”

Why? Sometimes a short-term conflict sparks a hundred year war.

Though I qualify most of what I quoted, I did use it to illustrate a point another person had made. It does back up a point I made recently: if Pakistan and Afghanistan are not resilient enough to curb the strength of the Taliban, then we have a global problem on our hands, The war effort was not simply “democracy building” but building resilience against internal tyranny – a problem that is global, that includes us.

I mourn that “not enough” has been done, but I always get the gut feeling that when people like yourself say “What is the end game here? How many people are going to get killed in achieving it?” etc etc that you privilege a retrospective view; should the fact that we might lose deter us from trying to nip a global terroristic problem?

I have my own ideas on suitable responses to Afghanistan, and funny enough they’re nothing like your comedy ones; I’ve spelt them out here

I won’t labour over them here, read if you wish to – and there are some minor changes to my thinking – but my charge is that troops should provide oversight in army development, while a government equipped with what is necessary ought to be installed to curb a growing internal problematic.

As for wikileaks, I have it on good authority that a lot of that stuff has been printed elsewhere, so it’s by the by. Wikileaks as an organisation, however, and Julian Assange in particular, will only hold publication of something if it reveals personal addresses and personal information of the type that could endanger, I don’t think they have too much of an issue releasing stuff that could potentially jeopardise national security, so long as it is in the name of “freedom of information”. Make of that what you will.

Well yes, but this does look a bit like a foreign policy of tautology and self-reinforcing violence, doesn’t it? I’m not pretending that either Afghanistan or Iraq would be oases of tranquility if we left – they definitely wouldn’t, and we wouldn’t be blameless for that situation – but our stated policy in both seems to be that we must fight until both countries return to the status in which we found them. Additionally, this logic offers the depressing likelihood that the reason there have been brutal insurgencies in both countries is because of all the foreign troops.

I mean, if our rationale is now to keep fighting in Afghanistan in order to ensure that, at very best, the Taliban remain a tribal faction incapable of exerting force beyond their own regions, then we are fighting for a return to the situation as it was in 2001.

This is a similar to Iraq, where we’ve been fighting for a loosely cohesive and oppressive state that uses lots of violence, disappearance and torture to keep its fractious population in line.

Frankly, after almost a decade of a War on Terror that has produced exponentially more War and Terror than would likely have occurred otherwise, I think everyone should realise that our governments are going to continue talking bullshit about this until they’re either a) ordered to leave by the electorate, like the Dutch; b) forced to leave by prohibitative expense, like the Soviet Union or c) somehow an unthinkable, magical deus ex machina fairytale ending will allow thousands of NATO troops to… Stay.

Carl, I know you’ve said that any war is justified if evil, misogynistic Muslims are the target, but will you not accept that the war in Afghanistan has made Pakistan much more unstable?

Weell… In 2001 Pakistan was a military dictatorship and its previous president was charged with hijack, kidnapping, attempted murder and terrorism. It’s never been exactly stable.

…should the fact that we might lose deter us from trying to nip a global terroristic problem?

Yes, if it’s pretty clear that the harm to good ratio would send even the most careless utilitarian into a fit. There’s no value in mere effort.

…a government equipped with what is necessary ought to be installed to curb a growing internal problematic…

This is just utopian. Never mind “ought“: where are you going to find a government that’ll “curb…internal problem[s]“? How would you “install” it? Wouldn’t the Afghans become a mite leery about all this?

for this also see the current time cover – the picture of the woman whose nose has been cut off. Yes, we are fighting to stop that, but as it stands we are fighting to keep an ‘elected’ govt in power who will, as soon as we leave the country, legalize rape, and who knows what else. that’s why this is so questionable:

a government equipped with what is necessary ought to be installed to curb a growing internal problematic.

equipped with what is necessary? have you seen the type of people who are currently in power – our ‘allies’?

also also – we will never be able to fully defeat the taliban, it’s impossible. thy can just hide out for a while and reappear. as FR says, upsetting as it may be, whenever we do leave they’re likely to be in control of as much of the ocuntry as they were when we first arrived.

@15 flying rodent;

…also I worry that the “war on terror has created terror” argument can sometimes excuse terrorism as merely reactive to the nasty West. Of all wars, one on terror sounds quite nice, perhaps our leftist sensibilities just hates the fact that George Bush was an architect of the war on terror, and we don’t like him do we.

Let’s cut to the chase, obviously a war forever would be inconceivable, and if the effort is failing then either we change strategy (I like this idea) or leave (I can see me soon having to accept this idea). Or we do the first one, before heading into the second one, rather than just leaving now.

But, my major two hundred zillion squid problem, when reading articles such as the one above, is that it ponders only upon the failure of the effort in Afghanistan. This makes me shit myself, and is a disaster for peace in the middle East. Others seem to celebrate it. There’s a smugness present when talking about Afghanistan; my point is there is nothing to be smug about – civilisation should have won the war against fascistic, tyrannical nut-fucking-cases like the Taliban; whenever anything is written about how the war effort is coming to a close and not enough has been done, it should be followed by “so what the fuck will Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Uzbecks the Chechans etc etc do now”.

For societal perfection in rich nations we the left often ask the impossible, nay, demand the impossible, but this is not good enough for the middle East, where if it is not possible, or “unwinnable” then we probably shouldn’t do it. Well that’s perfect, but I for one, in the fight against fascism, am not deterred by difficulty.

I’ll say one thing for the war in Afghanistan – it makes re-purposing old protest songs easy. Just swap out “Vietnam” for “Afghanistan” and the job’s done. “Iraq”, on the other hand, is a bit more tricky…

@19

Of all wars, one on terror sounds quite nice, perhaps our leftist sensibilities just hates the fact that George Bush was an architect of the war on terror, and we don’t like him do we.

Well, other than it being a war against an abstract noun with a very elastic definition… (war on drugs, anyone?)

We didn’t beat the IRA’s terrorism by occupation and military force alone you know. At some point we’re going to have to sit down with whatever “moderate” Taliban are out there and carve up a deal. It’s a horrible truth but until then the deaths will keep coming, on both sides, and the civilian casualties will increase (not that we’re allowed to know about that, of course).

Of all wars, one on terror sounds quite nice, perhaps our leftist sensibilities just hates the fact that George Bush was an architect of the war on terror, and we don’t like him do we.

On the other hand, it may be due to its mendacity and downright incoherence. It led the U.S. – with us in tow – to pamper vile regimes while savaging bewildered innocents elsewhere. However nice it sounds, it hasn’t been exactly cordial.

For societal perfection in rich nations we the left often ask the impossible, nay, demand the impossible…

Which is silly.

…but this is not good enough for the middle East, where if it is not possible, or “unwinnable” then we probably shouldn’t do it…

Well, yes (without the “probably“).

Well that’s perfect, but I for one, in the fight against fascism, am not deterred by difficulty.

A “fight” we take no part in; “difficult[ies]” we don’t have to face. If the price of failure was discomfort for oneself then, yes, one would be justified in acting. It’s one’s own responsibility. When the act affects thousands of helpless souls elsewhere, however, we’d be cruel and reckless not to guard against furthering harm.

Well that’s perfect, but I for one, in the fight against fascism, am not deterred by difficulty.

Am I the only one who’s thoroughly sick of this lazy assumption that absolutely everybody who opposes “us” in any way is the re-incarnation of Hitler? We are not fighting “fascism” in Afghanistan, we’re fighting a diverse, fluid and eclectic range of ethnic, cultural and political groupings (although primarily, we’re fighting the Pashtun). Admittedly pretty much all of them hold some fairly nasty ideas to one extent or another, but that is equally true of the diverse, fluid and eclectic range of ethnic, cultural and political groupings we are currently supporting (and were opposing prior to 2001, whilst supporting the lot we’re currently opposing). None of them are actually “fascists” is any meaningful sense, and none of them have a bunch of Panzer divisions poised to roll over Western Europe.

And if you’re actually concerned about the horrors of strict Wahhabist Islamic theocracy, why aren’t you agitating for a war against Saudi Arabia? They’re the worst of the lot. At the very least, we should perhaps stop selling them weapons and cooperating with their vile, human-rights-abusing, torturing security services.

@ Galen 10

Afghanistan was never going to be an easy win. Transforming a society like that into a functional democracy will take decades

You’re not getting it.

It is not our business to try to transform other states into functional democracies any more than it is their business to try to turn the UK into an Islamic dictatorship.

The OP is absolutely correct.

Invading Afghanistan following 9/11 made no sense whatever. It would have been just as logical to have responded to the Yorkshire tube bombings by invading Glasgow.

@23

if you’re actually concerned about the horrors of strict Wahhabist Islamic theocracy, why aren’t you agitating for a war against Saudi Arabia?

I have always wondered that.

21 – Yeah I buy most of that

22 – I failed to learn anything from your fisking, and I love learning

23 – I’m not bloody selling them anything (pedantic maybe, your point is general, but you quoted me at the beginning, so juust saying). We’re not fighting “ideas” though are we, though if we accept fascism contains ideas, then we are fighting an expression of fascist ideas.

Should be noted that Saudi Arabia rates worse than Cuba and way far worse than Venezuela on human rights and still the EU is umm-ing and ahh-ing about trade with Cuba, and Boris cut oil deals with “that dictator Chavez” but not Saudi.

On the question of weapons, vested interests are often at play, but don’t let that sway your answer.

Don’t forget everyone, this post is about Wikileaks.

Carl @26

23 – I’m not bloody selling them anything (pedantic maybe, your point is general, but you quoted me at the beginning, so juust saying). We’re not fighting “ideas” though are we, though if we accept fascism contains ideas, then we are fighting an expression of fascist ideas.

Maybe I’m being thick, but I fail to see how any of this relates to my comment. DId you reference the right one?

We’re not “fighting an expression of fascist ideas”, we’re fighting a diverse collection of people. Many of whom are, for one reason or another, rather pissed of at us for invading their country / overthrowing their (personally) preferred government / killing their relatives. In their situation, I have to admit that I might feel the same. In fact, that sort of situation is about the only one in which I’d probably abandon my otherwise more-or-less total pacifism.

On the question of weapons, vested interests are often at play, but don’t let that sway your answer.

Answer to what? You haven’t asked a question.

oh you’d like that Mr Dunc, the only people fighting the jihad in Afghanistan are people who are “pissed of[f] at us for invading their country / overthrowing their (personally) preferred government / killing their relatives.”

You’ve a strange set of ideas about what is going on in Afghanistan, though, sadly, not a peculiar one.

Christ, Carl, how can you defend the war when it’s not only failed to defeat the “fascist” Taliban, but has actually let them back into power into parts of Afghanistan, widened their power base into Pakistan, and led to the deaths of innocent Afghans?

How many innocent Afghans who didn’t ask to be killed, need to be killed before you are satisfied “we” have achieved “our” objectives?

As brutal as the Taliban were/are, killing ordinary Afghans in order to somehow hurt the Taliban, which actually helps them, doesn’t seem justified.

Go bomb Saudi Arabia or Iran or Morocco or Britain (other countries that produce terrorists who threaten “us” in our cosy little homes in the West, as we type our bloodlust out onto the internet).

@Pagar “Invading Afghanistan following 9/11 made no sense whatever. ”

Sense doesn’t come into it. Some people just want an excuse to kill other people in other countries because it makes them feel like a great nation.

Dunc -

…we’re fighting a diverse collection of people. Many of whom are, for one reason or another, rather pissed of at us…

Dunc, translated by Carl -

…oh you’d like that Mr Dunc, the only people fighting the jihad in Afghanistan are people who are “pissed of[f] at us for invading their country / overthrowing their (personally) preferred government / killing their relatives.”

Come on, man, let’s keep up the good faith assumption that nobody here supports the Taliban.

29 @blanco

that’s the second time that has come up, why are you allowed to have an opinion on the internet but I am not?

I can assure I do not want dead innocent Afghans, I wish it was all about dialogue and peace building, but people from all over the world who have a warped idea of what Islam is, are travelling to Afghanistan to fight the jihad.

Their vision is not predicated upon anti-imperialism, or anti-neocolonialism, they’ve signed up to a prophetic political fascism that has strongholds on the Afghan/Pakistan border (among many other places).

Take issue with particular strategies at times by all means, but lets be clear: if we lose this war and have to leave, we still have a global network of fascists called the Taliban, with links and networks worldwide – I’m sure everyone is sorry for the deaths, but by god there is nothing we should want less than more Taliban strongholds. I fail to see any other way of tackling this than by military presence not because I have a bloodlust, but precisely because I do not have a bloodlust.

31@BenSix

I’m sure nobody here supports the Taliban, but I think it perversely settles some people’s mind to assume that the West created the conditions for which the Taliban can grow, and though this may often be true in cases of those who hate the West’s presence and decided to root for their enemy, many of those people who support the Taliban were never likely to be on the side of progressive values anyway.

Point in fact; I have not said anybody here supports the Taliban, but I sense a cognitive failure by some to comprehend the fact that Middle Eastern people can often be straight up fascists without it being in any way linked to anti-imperialism or anti-colonialism.

My working day ended one hour ago, so I bid you all farewell, you’re all welcome back to my place where the IPPR and Demos all share the same shelf space as the centre for social cohesion.

I sense a cognitive failure by some to comprehend the fact that Middle Eastern people can often be straight up fascists without it being in any way linked to anti-imperialism or anti-colonialism

And the evidence for this supposed congitive failure is that someone suggested that many people in Afghanistan are “rather pissed off at us”. Not very convincing!

Well, I feel a bit bad joining the general pile-on – I thought I’d left more than enough flame-bait in that post to attract a supporting cast.

Still, this is fun –

…perhaps our leftist sensibilities just hates the fact that George Bush was an architect of the war on terror, and we don’t like him do we.

Hey, I like war, in the abstract. I’ve got five days racked up on MW2 and two on the last Killzone. I heart Band of Brothers</em., Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. I can handle wars – you should see the daft books I buy.

What I can’t handle is insane wars started on braggadocio and continued solely because nobody has the balls to bite the bullet and admit we have no fucking idea what we’re doing. I can even deal with huge, pointless bodycounts if there’s an achievable and beneficial aim, but I have a really low tolerance for huge, pointless bodycounts racked up over long, long years on vague promises of future magical ponies.

Barack Obama is also promising future magical ponies, you’ll notice. He came to power on promises to quit Iraq – there’s going to be a massive “over the horizon” force in reserve once they’ve finally left, by the way – and to focus on Afghanistan. Obama’s policy on Afghanistan is every bit as ruinously violent as his predecessor’s, and every bit as likely to result in some kind of deus ex machina, miraculous victory.

So sure, plenty of people instinctively hated George W. They were right to, as it happens, but the problem is not the Republicans – it’s the insane, unwinnable, unending, ultraviolent, bloodthirsty wars.

I predict that the war in Afghanistan will have the same level of success as our ‘war on drugs’
http://www.usip.org/files/taliban_opium.pdf

And, now that I come to think of it…

This makes me shit myself, and is a disaster for peace in the middle East. Others seem to celebrate it. There’s a smugness present when talking about Afghanistan…

Oh, woe! Oh, alack and alas! Everyone is upset about the human carnage, of course, but say not that some dick with a blog shall be a bit smug about having correctly assessed war (x) as a lunatic, Vietnamesque project doomed to failure! Cruel fate, why must you mock me so? etc.

I hear this sorry song again and again – it’s one of Professor Norm’s favourites. Why oh why must those awful people who opposed the war assume that those who pushed for it are villains, liars and/or total dumbasses? Truly, a tragedy.

While the human heart is surely too small and the English language incapable of expressing the sorrow felt by a blogger when some anonymous stranger is rude to him on the internet, I suggest that nobody gives a shit what, say, Professor Norm thinks about the matter.

Always thus for suckers, though. I don’t think it’s surprising that folk who have spent the last decade watching certain victories turn into brutal bloodbaths with exploding WTF?!? bubbles bursting out of the tops of their heads every five minutes would like to talk more about how very smug some jokers on the interet are.

It’s very instructive and suggests a more base reason for attacks on Wikileaks, I think – if the message is that the war itself is fundamentally indefensible, then well, why not just shoot the messenger? After all, what do you have to lose?

Point in fact; I have not said anybody here supports the Taliban, but I sense a cognitive failure by some to comprehend the fact that Middle Eastern people can often be straight up fascists without it being in any way linked to anti-imperialism or anti-colonialism.

Look, the point I’m making is very simple: the people opposing us in Afghanistan are not monolithic. We are opposed by several different constituencies, for a variety of reasons, some of which are entirely valid and understandable, and simply calling them all “fascists” is completely fucking stupid. This is linked to a secondary point, which is that many of the people we are currently supporting are every bit as “fascist” (for want of a better term) as the worst of the people we’re fighting against. Therefore, the idea that we’re “fighting fascism” in Afghanistan is, at best, an absurd oversimplification likely born of a mind ruined by watching too many WWII documentaries on The Hitlerly Channel.

The actual reality of the matter is that we’ve taken (or rather, switched) sides in an extremely complex civil war with tribal, ethnic, religious and political dimensions.

You’re not Rick off The Young Ones by any chance?

@FR I’m with you on the war games. War is great fun when it’s fought in computer games like Modern Warfare (I go in for a bit of CS, or at least I used to), and I like Tom Clancy novels just as much as the next guy. War in reality shouldn’t be taken so lightly, I agree. What I don’t get about people like Carl, is phrases like this:

“people from all over the world who have a warped idea of what Islam is, are travelling to Afghanistan to fight the jihad.”

No one is disputing that, but does that justify:

a) NATO fighting a ground war in an attempt to hold territory and keep a puppet government with no power in place?

b) killing Afghan civilians in the process?

Carl, if this war is about fighting the women-hating, burka-enforcing, FGM-wielding Islamist hordes, can I suggest that fighting a ground war in a country like Afghanistan is not the right way about it?

First you lot say it’s about building democracy and saving women. Then you say it’s about killing nasty bearded Muslims. You’re not even sure what the objective is.

You say if we leave, the nasty bearded Muslims win. We’re not beating them now, and we’ve not beaten them in 9 years. What makes you think we’re any closer to victory now than at any time in the last 9 years? The Taliban are even stronger.

By all means, promote a global War on Terror (Muslims). But I don’t see how a failing ground war and non-attempts to make a destitute, impoverished, corrupt nation akin to a 21st century democracy go in away towards fulfilling your global War on nasty bearded Muslims.

[39] There are many (including myself) who do not fully understand the nuances of the situation in Afghanistan – perhaps initiatives like this will help shed more light?
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/war/massive-gig-to-explain-pointlessness-of-afghan-war-201008032967/