[QUOTE=Dead Badger]
The OP. It explicitly advocated a cavalier disregard towards said damage, which to me implies no concern whatsoever. Any stronger a statement, and it would no longer be “collateral damage”, it would be deliberately attacking civilians. Which was my point. Your handwavy dismissal of collateral damage as “business as usual” would appear to grant moral carte blanche to take as many civilian lives as seems expedient, assuming of course that it’s “accidental”. Or perhaps you don’t think this - it’s rather hard to tell, since you’d apparently rather pick nits.
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Been away from the computer but yes - I no longer care a flying fuck about these people. Certainly not enough for people I know to get shot over.
Besides - as far as I can make out from all the bombed wedding parties, Canadian soldiers on exercise and civilians slaughtered in their beds on the off-chance a bad guy was also in the house, we pretty much have a cavalier approach already.
I don’t see why one more British soldier should die so that these backward savages can continue oppressing half their population in the name of their ridiculous religion whilst flooding our streets with heroin.
These people simply don’t want to be helped.
The ‘Mayor of Kabul’ continues to bitch about UK actions in Helmand Province whilst the government continues its ongoing quest to raise corruption to the level of High Art.
[QUOTE=Aquila Be]
As far as I’m concerned, all the thousands of lives lost, particularly by the US, the UK and numerous other allies have been pissed away for nothing by those two fools and their brain dead advisers simply to establish a few more Islamic theocracies.
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[QUOTE=George Kaplin]
If I might be permitted to rephrase tagos’ question without the calls for collateral damage:
“Why, precisely, are British politicians sacrificing the lives of British soldiers to safeguard the existence of a society as thoroughly primitive as Afghanistan’s?”
The way I see it, we are fighting for two reasons. The first is to sustain Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy. The second is to ensure that Al Qaeda doesn’t regain a foothold in Afghanistan. Now if, as seems to be the case, the Afghanis are simply using democracy as a gangplank to theocracy, the whole project is doomed from the start. We’ve got to leave sometime, right? And if these people haven’t wised up by that time then whatever government we leave behind isn’t likely to provide much resistance to Al Qaeda anyway. Are we expected to stay until they’ve banished every mad fucking mullah from their law courts, recognised the benefits of a fair trial, and generally ditched their bronze age approach to life in favour of something we could perhaps get along with? Because if that’s the game plan then we’re going to be in for a very long wait. It’d be cheaper just to let them rot in their God boggled cesshole until such time as we need to start bombing again.
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Good rephrasing. If I wasn’t so friggin’ incensed that kids who are the sons of friends are out there getting shot at every day just to protect a fledgling theocracy I might have come up with something like that.
[QUOTE=Baldwin]
Thanks for the invite! That is in fact the case; and the “‘cultural’ shit” can be specified, if you want. (Sorry that you perceive statements reflecting a complex reality as being whining.)
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Too right I consider saying that crimes done in the explicit name of Islam were really down to ‘tribal culture’ or whatever, bullshit ‘No True Muslim’ whining.
These cultures have been Islamic for centuries. They explicitly claim they are acting in the name of Islam. Ergo.
When crimes are committed in the name of that religion and sanctioned by the rules of that society then there are no grounds for cutting any slack.
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
What wrong did the Afghanis do to us.? The training camps were populated and financed by foreigners. (Saudis). They were allowed by segments of the population. Want to get a real enemy go after the Saudis. Prevent them stop funding and populating the “insurgency” in Iraq.
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