What the hell is wrong with this nation.

[Sheff]

Nato's cohesion and credibility

These are the kind of daft comments that these dimwits make and they can't even see the irony. Nato is effectively the US with Britain's support. The rest is entirely incidental and irrelevant.

I don't think the Conservatives intend to shift policy either, indeed it's only the Libdems that seem to have any appetite for raising the fundamental question of what we're doing in Afghanistan. I've communicated with Nick Clegg directly about this (he's the local MP!) and he seems keen to go further down this line and I hope he does.

Thing is, I don't think it matters whether Labour or Conservative policy is any different. This issue is going to be forced by the public and the media sooner or later. Our silly politicians are fooling themselves if they think otherwise.

[Sheff]

Think the basic truth of the matter is that the Treasury could support the MoD perfectly well if they were engaged only in the defence of the United Kingdom, instead of having to finance stupid (and lethal) overseas crusades that have absolutely nothing to do with defending the UK and everything to do with global politics.

[garethbrum]

Think the basic truth of the matter is that the Treasury could support the MoD perfectly well if they were engaged only in the defence of the United Kingdom, instead of having to finance stupid (and lethal) overseas crusades that have absolutely nothing to do with defending the UK and everything to do with global politics.

What would happen if everyone pulled out and came home?

Genuine question.....

It's something I've been wondering for a while and, let's not forget, ISAF is there with a UN mandate and supported by 40-odd countries in varying degrees.

[Sheff]

What would happen if everyone pulled out and came home?


Who knows? More to the point, who really cares? It's what happens to the UK that should be our concern and nothing more.

The implication (which is spoon-fed to us on a daily basis) is that Afghanistan would become a haven for more terrorist camps and this would therefore put the UK at a greater risk of attack. Clearly, a growing proportion of the population just don't accept this notion any more (I'm certainly one of them) and in the absence of any evidence to support it, you can understand why. It's almost as plausible as Iraq's WMD stocks. The whole proposition is just absurd. It has been established that AQ comprises of probably no more than 100 terrorists which are scattered across remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. No matter what we (ie Britain and the US, not the other Nato countries who are there only as a token gesture) do, they will still be there whenever we finally leave. So what has our presence (and the loss of more than 200 lives) achieved? Nothing. The best that Brown and his cronies can do is try and sell this daft idea that we must now take-on the Taliban as they will somehow provide a haven for AQ if they are not defeated. In actual fact (and this has been explained at length) the Taliban see AQ as a liability and they have absolutely no desire to support them at all. So even if the Taliban could be defeated (which they obviously cannot which is why today we've heard the first official suggestions of actually negotiating with them) it would achieve absolutely nothing. Terrorist attacks are planned in squalid flats in the UK, not in mythical training camps.

We went into Afghanistan in order to defeat AQ (because George Bush wanted to achieve public revenge for 9/11). When it was realised that even finding AQ was impossible, we were sold the idea that we were actually there to destroy the poppy industry in order to solve the UK's drugs problem. Now that we've been told by Afghans that this has simply pushed people into the Taliban, we've moved-on to some bizarre quest to eradicate the Taliban and educate the masses. What the hell has any of this got to do with the defence of the UK? It's absolutely absurd. Three completely different (and equally ludicrous) reasons for being there and not one of them has any chance of success.

Clearly, there are other motives behind our presence. We are there in order to stand with America. Why America is there is anybody's guess but many (including me) think it probably has more to do with the future of Pakistan than anything else. It's all about our relationship with the US and maintaining our world status, not defence of the UK. This is why the other Nato countries have no appetite to become engaged in the war (and why they have all specified withdrawal timescales - apart from us). Nato isn't interested. Neither should we be. UN mandates mean nothing - we know that from experience. The US would have gone in with or without the UN. The folly of this war is that we stupidly went along with it because Blair was incapable of separating our interests from those of the US. The irony is that a significant proportion of the US Government also wants to get out too now.

So what would happen if we pulled-out? In short, I suspect very little would happen. Afghanistan would doubtless return to being the lawless hotch-potch of misery and lawlessness that it has always been. But so what? This isn't our responsibility. Britain has no obligation to put the world to rights (not that we ever will even if we kept trying). The Government insist that this is all about defending the UK from terrorism. Leaving Afghanistan wouldn't have any affect on us at all. Terrorists would still exist, be they in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Bradford. In some respects we might actually be safer, given that the Taliban and AQ cite our involvement in the region as being the key reason why we are a major target. They want us to get out of the country, we want us to get out of the country... and yet...

I don't think anyone seriously believes the rubbish that is being peddled to us by the Government. The only reason that there is still even a minority (and diminishing) support of our presence there is because some people have rather foolishly adopted the supposition that by not supporting the war we are not supporting our troops. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The much-used argument is that if we don't support the mission (whatever it happens to be this month) then all the lives that have been lost have been for nothing. The tragic truth of the matter is that they have indeed all been for nothing. But encouraging the loss of even more lives simply compounds the tragedy still further. Gordy Brown's garbage-speak about having the strength and bravery to stick with the fight is just grotesque. The real strength required is to be able to accept that the whole mission was a mistake when it began and that it is better to walk-away now, rather than allow yet more people to be killed for nothing other than foreign policy pride. It doesn't take guts to write notes to the parents of soldiers that he's sent to their deaths - it takes strength to take a stand and accept that this is a deadly no-win situation which has no chance of victory, chiefly because nobody would even know what victory looked like even if it could be achieved.

[T_J]

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Busine ... 3551?f=rss" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

'Waitrose has pulled part of its Christmas TV advert after complaints it was offensive to the families of British soldiers.

Several complaints were received after a scene appeared to show troops returning home to celebrate with relatives.
The one-minute commercial ends with the slogan: "This Christmas, there's only one place to be."

The store has been forced to remove the sequence and has admitted it may have "distressed" families whose relatives had been killed or who were not returning home.
Waitrose has insisted the scene in fact showed a photojournalist returning home, but conceded it may have been interpreted otherwise.

Colonel Bob Stewart, the chairman of Action for Armed Forces, said he believed the advert was "a bit insensitive".

A Waitrose spokesman said: "We have removed a scene from our Christmas ad of a photojournalist stepping out of a helicopter.

"We would never wish to cause distress to anyone, and although the sequence was not intended to show a member of the armed forces coming home, we understand from a small number of customer letters that it could have been interpreted in that way.

"We're sorry if we unintentionally created an upsetting image for anyone. Our thoughts go out to those serving abroad this Christmas, and their families."