Buy a poppy and remember – but never learn a thing. (The War Against Terrorism)

Member Name: clumsy1974

Product:	The War Against Terrorism
Date:	09/11/01 (109 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: War - need I say more

**UPDATE*****
I wanted to add little prologue to this Op..Developments over the last few days have, I think, highlighted the madness of this current campaign. Comments from Donald Rumsfield have incensed me again and I wanted to vent my spleen.

The allies have pounded the Taliban into submission and they are leaving Kandahar. The Northern Alliance is back with a vengeance, and they have decided that we are no longer needed, and the use of US & UK ground troops in their country is unwanted. Well there's a surprise. I could have predicted that at the start of this campaign, sadly our elected leaders could not.

Mr Rumsfield has vowed to smash anyone who supports or harbors terrorists. Look out Boston - your Irish American community best stay off the streets, and you wont find me in a McDonalds now - least I become a figure in the collateral damage column in this silly campaign. (The IRA found great support in America, and McDonalds have been, speculatively, linked to funds that have provided support to our


Anyway, read on...


Sunday, at 11am we remember the dead of wars past. Those veterans who are still with us from those awful conflicts will no doubt be thinking of friends and comrades lost the things they saw and did and the reasons they went to fight, often in far off places.

Why bother? Harsh you might say. Those brave men and women who gave up so much for us deserve that reflective silence as Big Ben strikes the hour. And I agree, they do. But there’s more to Remembrance Sunday than just honoring the dead. We should be thinking back to the events that lead us to spill so much blood, the causes of war and the outcomes of actions taken by the participants. We should learn from the past. But we have not, and will not. We will all be hypocrites on Sunday, remembering the dead of past wars while the bodies stack up in our current weapons testing exercise.

Afghanistan is one of the world
217;s poorest countries. Its people are blighted by war internally, and have yet to know a lasting peace. The current rulers, the Taliban have often been mocked by the west as crazy extremists. Ed Halliwell in FHM has, until recently kept the Lad population amused with tales of Taliban madness. For instance they invited the Pakistani football team to play, then shaved their heads and sent them home in disgust when they ran out onto the pitch in shorts an T-shirts. However the iron fist of this brand of Islam is far more sinister than that. Women have been stoned for removing their veils in public, most education has been banned, technology is practically no-existent – in fat where Pol Pot failed in Cambodia, the Taliban have excelled in Afghanistan.

The country has been under the boot for many years, not just since the rise of the current dictatorship. Those in control of the west’s best friend, the Northern Alliance, had power after the Russian occupation ended. They were viewed as no better rulers. The USSR were brutal in their attempts to maintain occupancy of the area, and fought a hard battle against the resistance fighters, armed and trained by the west. In fact we in the west have been aiding Afghan fighters for many years, although we had our own pop at taking the country by force swiftly stamped out in the last century. All in all, most of the world has tried to control the region and its people. The key point to remember is – ALL HAVE FAILED!

So now I come onto the real point of this rant. Afghanistan is unfortunate; it seems to attract the attentions of aggressors, both external and internal. Yet, it is a fortress of a country, with both dessert and mountains and extremes of climate from hot to freezing. It was unlucky for them that Osama Bin Laden choose to relocate there, but I think he gave it a lot of thought. Now America has decreed the country Public Enemy Number One, I fear we will be able to add another countr
y to the list of those who failed to take Afghanistan by force.

I am 100% against this conflict, and they way it is being executed. There seems to me to be no reasoning behind it, and no clear plan to guide it. The USA were hurt badly on September 11th, and none of us will forget the horror of watching those planes slam into the WTC. They need an outlet for the pain and grief caused, but to repay grief with more brutal grief is not the way to rid the world of fear and terrorism. This war is not like recent conflicts such as the Gulf War. It is not a CNN special; it is not a short sharp shock with America’s Big Stick. It is not a conflict backed by the UN to liberate an occupied country. It is, as far as I can see, a giant Band-Aid to salve the USA’s open wounds.

The aim of this conflict is, we are told, is to target and bring to justice those responsible for the terror attacks on New York and Washington, but it appears to be an open assault on Afghanistan. The people taking the full brunt of this attack were, I am sure, not in any way involved with planning or perpetrating these evil acts. Imagine if the UK government were to respond to the bombing of Manchester, Canary Warf or Hyde Park with the same style and subtlety. Ireland would be a wasteland and we would have raised an entire nation of terrorists instead of a handful of radicals acting alone.

I do agree that we have to bring those responsible to justice, but we need to attack the cause of this type of horror, rather than the hiding place of its supporters. Financial attacks on the funding for terror, negotiation and diplomacy to solve the reasons for these attacks are much more appropriate responses in the 21st Century. This current aggressive response only goes to harden the resolve of those wishing to commit acts of mass destruction, and will serve as a fine example for future Osama Bin Ladens. On the 11th November we should maybe imagine how those remembrance para
des would look when we they are made up of hundreds of young faces returning from a far off war that was allowed to escalate and drag on. All because the leaders of the 21st century failed to learn from the mistakes of the past.

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