I'm not particularly for or against the Afghanistan conflict. I can see the pros and cons, the ways in which it hurts Britain and the ways it may benefit the country. I largely consider the extended skirmish to be an important training exercise for British troops. If they weren't there blasting shit up, they'd be sat, bored at their barracks in England, or else dossing about in Cyprus raping Swedish tourists and beating up the barmen and club owners of Ayia Napa.
In any event, I am uninterested by what squaddies get up to. My few experiences of them have been dire (they are generally the types of people that are seriously ill-equipped for normal, civilised society and are best kept out the way in their area of expertise - being cunts in a field with a gun). Soldiers are, obviously, not all bad men. Whatever their stripe, they join the army for certain reasons (not all of them fluffy) and they understand the risks involved. If they don't, then it's a mighty strange career choice.
So, let them get on with it I say, and if they return as a band of men more capable of understanding battle and the rigours of modern conflict, then I guess that's a good thing.
It's not even as if the battle is costing that many lives. At the time of writing, it's 191 Brits.
Yet, according to the Independent today, the wave of recent K.I.A.s is too much for the British public to stomach.
"A majority of the public believes that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable and British troops should be pulled out immediately, a poll for The Independent has found."
...
Fuck sake. What a bunch of pussies we are in this country. It's almost like we have forgotten what happened in World War II, where the casualty figures that are making us bitch and whine today would be the sort of tally that would have made a General weep with joy."More than half of voters (52 per cent) want troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan straight away, with 43 per cent disagreeing. Opposition to the military action is even stronger among women.
By a margin of nearly two-to-one, the public believes that the Taliban cannot be defeated militarily. Fifty-eight per cent view the war as "unwinnable", with 31 per cent disagreeing."
"The growing opposition to the military offensive emerged as another two UK soldiers were killed, bringing the number of deaths so far this month to 22"Wow. 22. Shit me, that's getting out of hand, huh. I mean 22 people, we may as well get that white flag out now and offer to provide our freshest and rosiest backsides to the Taliban for a round of victory rogering. If it carries on like this, we'll have no soldiers left and we'll have to declare a state of martial law, form a 'Home Guard' and make everyone eat bully beef.
Then what will be do when Tesco has run out of ready meals and Goodfellas pizzas?
A Labour Minister greets the press to announce Britain's withdrawal from Afghanistan...Just imagine if our pussy arsed, nannied, bitchy, molly-coddled, supermarket / X-Factor obsessed, tosser, fucking moron Joe Public had this attitude in the summer of 1940. You might remember something about that year - it was when the Dunkirk Evacuation took place, following Hitler's resounding success at the Western Front.
We lost 177 planes and 6 destroyers. I might be an incorrigible cynic, but I guess it's fair to say that a number of British people died at that very early juncture of the war.
What if we just said, 'Nope! Sorry, it's all too much. I can cope with us losing three men every ten years, maybe by the odd mine or lucky sniper's bullet, but all those poor boys? The frogs and Pollacks will have to manage themselves. We quit'.
What sort of message would that have sent the enemy? Apart from 'fuck my arse now, I have no balls, call me bitch'?
Why was the public all hunky dory about Afghanistan three minutes ago, but after a series of deaths within a few weeks, now it's a bad idea and there should be no reinforcements?
The fact is, like it or not, it's too late - if we pull out now, we'll (rightly) be the biggest fucking laughing stock out there. Known as the country that bottled it. Couldn't hack a bunch of 'rag heads' in the desert, with all that technical superiority and financial backing. The Islamists will piss themselves. Our enemies would gain succour and the lefties in this country would fill the pages of the Guardian for a fucking eon.
Therefore, whilst my base point is one of cavalier indifference, I'm annoyed at how the public have reacted in such a weak and fickle manner, I suspect this has occurred because the population has largely grown fat on nanny's teat after decades of socialism and peace and I cannot bear the notion that left wingers will wring their hands with 'I told you so' glee if we do pull out of Afghanistan.
Our soldiers should stay and get the fuck on with it, reinforcements or no. And yes, I am still open to the suggestion of the formation of penal battalions to help with some sort of 'big push'.
There are many ways to crack a nut, as a wise old fucker once said.
Adios.
9 comments:
Couldn't have said it better myself. We're never going to win, but as a training exercise, is it actually that costly? I'd be interested to see figures of deaths in live-fire exercises over a similar period.
You could really headline any aspect of British life with "are we a bunch of fickle, nannied pussies?"
I have to say that by most definitions of libertarianism, non-interventionism is a pretty standard tenet. We shouldn't be in Afghanistan at all, because it's got nothing to do with us.
As to not "being able to handle a bunch of rag heads in the desert", that piffling bunch of pussies called the Russians took on the Taliban with no shortage of hardware and still had their arses handed to them on a plate.
I would suggest that what we really SHOULD do is decriminalise all drugs and set up an agreement to buy the Afghanistan opium crop for processing in the UK. That would, at a stroke, boost the Afghan economy and remove a major, non-ideological reason for supporting the Taliban and probably do more to create a western-favouring bourgeoisie than any amount of bombing or banana-waving. The Taliban would lose up to 80% of its support instantly and Afghan people would be able to earn a decent living.
And I can't stress this enough: we have no business invading foreign countries, whether it's Iraq, Afghanistan or Iran, unless they pose a direct threat to us. I agree that withdrawing from Afghanistan now would make us look weak, but really, now we look like bloodthirsty imperialists and arrogant fuckweasels.
@wh00ps
I think we're lucky the US armed forces aren't there in any numbers. I'd bet hard cash our casualty figures would be higher through 'friendly fire'.
@Obo
Excellent idea re opium crop. Given that the Taliban have no proven desire to invade the UK and that all they seem to want to do is be top bastards in their own country, it's really a no-brainer.
obo does have a point, they're no threat to us and we probably shouldn't have gone in in the first place, but we are there and and to be honest i don't think it's making any difference. afghanistan has been a war zone for decades and will probably still be one for decades to come.
He's right about the opium crop too: i recall reading somewhere recently that there was a shortage of opium for the manufacture of morphine. Another solution that is not being pursued.
The morphine idea has been put forward before, by a number of reports etc. Ignored.
There is indeed a shortage of morphine and it is all sitting there under our noses, so to speak..
Some key points make it a good idea. The farmers do not grow it because they want to, they grow it because the warlords will kill them if they don't. The taliban dumped on the warlords and ordered the farmers to stop da crop. The did.
What we are doing is saying the farmers 'Oh Mr Farmer man, please don't worry, if you side with us and stop growing the poppies we will protect you'
And they say 'Yeah fuck off, that's what everyone has told us and we always end up getting fucking shot'
If we simply struck a deal that we would buy everything they can grow, it would totally outflank the warlords and strip the taliban of their income.
But we won't because it equals bad press or some such shit.
A war run by morons.
And it would probably be cheaper than running the war as well.
Most probably. I would say it would almost certainly end the war pretty quickly.
The nutjobs would run out of cash, the warlords would be fucked and the local morale would be up. Ish.
The reason the war was ok yesterday and 22 lives later not ok is someone DECIDED to change the idiot public mind, dimwit.
Oh, really. And that 'somebody' is, whom exactly?
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