G Huxley

Terrorists use the exact same logic. To the terrorist the 5 year old i just collateral damage, just as NATO considers the 5 year old as collateral damage. In fact memos found on the boston bomber listed the targets as collateral damage. Its two sides of the same coin. The pot calling the kettle black. If you target a funeral you are intentionally targetting everyone there, which includes loads of innocent civilians. That's not collateral damage that's outright mass murder. On both sides.

The west already made them the enemy ages ago. So there's nothing new here. Just a stupid war started by hawks. Not if there is an official state religion the church of England. Coronations of the head of state in Westminster Abbey etc. The above statement is sheer idiocy. Only because you don't understand the meaning of the word democracy. I condemn them for trying to meddle and dictate the affairs of other countries and especially through the promotion of violence.

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"It is still a secular country with a secular society." No if it has an official national church it is not a secular country. sec·u·lar /ˈsekyələr/ Adjective Denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis: "secular buildings". The UK is actually a non-secular constitutional monarchy and is not a democracy. And that is laughable when the police in the UK have killed an innocent man in the streets, and when the UK is funneling thousands of dollars of weapons into the Syrian streets where Syrians are killing each other, and invading and occupying the streets of numerous foreign countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes I don't see how that follows from my above comment.

The Islamists weren't elected and thus don't represent them.

Complaint: Terrorists attack planes with 5 year olds aboard. Complaint: US air attacks target funerals with 5 year olds in attendance.

It was a 100% topical response to what you said. Get over it.

It was 100% topical. Its called hypocrisy 101 or the pot calling the kettle black.

Or the 5 year old at the funeral who gets hit by a US drone strike.

Argus interestingly the UK is not secular eg. it has a National Church, the Church of England. If a government abuses its powers, and engages in wars, it is likely that some of its citizens will turn against the government, and its forces as happened to the Taliban and in the UK. Afghanistan is not the only country the UK has attacked either in the Middle East. Iraq, Libya, active sanctions against Iran, funnelling arms to the Syrian Civil War (Syrians against Syrians) etc.

Red White and Blue the Harper Conservatives true colours.

NATO used Afghani citizens to fight Afghani citizens, that's how they conquered the Taliban why might it not work in reverse?

Agreed, but this should be top in mind in any decision to go to war. Another reason why the war was unwise. Who was not Afghani, nor were any of the attackers on 9/11. So why do the Afghanis have to suffer? Osama's plan was to lure NATO into a deadly war in Afghanistan. He succeeded in doing so by the invasion/occupation playing perfectly into his hands, while he made a beeline for neighbouring Pakistan. As events have shown the capture of Osama didn't require an invasion, merely the skilled use of special forces. The invasion of Afghanistan did not capture Bin Laden. He escaped during the invasion to neighbouring Pakistan. And with such little regard for the actual Afghans into the equation and the cost itself which was Bin Laden's plan for NATO to greatly overspend, it is no wonder the invasion both spent way too much filling Osama's goals, and greatly cost the people of Afghanistan. According to mathematics it worked perfectly. Yes, but then why play into his hands? And neither does NATO. So how come Osama and NATO have the same attitude? He was caught by a team of special forces, not even in Afghanistan. So the Afghanistan mission didn't even achieve that goal. It costed the Afghanis a priceless tragedy, and it left the US in the doldrums financially with a crippling debt it may never recover from borrowed from China, which appears to be heading in the direction of eclipsing it as world superpower. The Taliban Islamic fundamentalist 'students' originated with the madrases founded by General Ali Zia dictator of Pakistan who was also the head of the ISI as head of the military, which rules over ISI. So no the Taliban was always in the hands of the ISI.

Peeves: Where did Saddam get his nerve gas? From the USA, France and Germany as they backed Saddam's campaign of murder against his neighbours. Iraq was 100% invented by Western Imperialism and in its design screwed the Kurds so that the West could keep oil flowing to its imperial war machine. Who is the most reviled person in Iraqi Kurdistan next to Saddam: A: Henry Kissinger

That's the whole point. It should not be the goal to send a bunch of people into a meat grinder to turn into monsters. Again just because an attack was made doesn't mean it has to be answered in a thoughtless and ill planned manner. The invasion of Afghanistan (as opposed to the special ops raid that killed Obama) has caused the largest civilian refugee exodus in the history of the world, and has led to the deaths of 10s of thousands of people. Just by mathematics the numbers don't make any sense, and that was Osama's plan to lure NATO into Afghanistan into a war it couldn't win like the Soviets did with supply lines stretching around the entire world, and costing billions upon billions. Forget wikipedia. Actually read some books on this. The word Taliban literally means 'the students,' in Arabic from the word Talib 'student.' The US government backed the dictator of Pakistan general Ali Zia, as he was a bulwark so they thought against the Soviets in Pakistan, as the Mujahedeen were in Afghanistan. General Zia was an Islamist, and promoted extreme Islamism domestically and abroad. While Zia was receiving millions upon millions in US aid he was building up training for Islamic extremists both to try to gain control of Kashmir, and to gain control over Afghanistan. The focal point for this movement was the Pakistani universities. The Islamist student organizations received millions of dollars that he'd received through US aid, hence the rise of the 'taliban,' 'the students.' These radical Islamists actually attacked the US embassy in the fallout of the Iran embassy crisis and were a hairs breath from killing everyone inside. During the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, ISI largely with US funding and cooperation with US intelligence armed and financed Islamic Fundamentalists to drive out the Soviets, but rather than simply do this, ISI was trying to consolidate its own power and influence over Pakistan, this made them militantly opposed to Masoud in the Panjshir and for years they blocked the CIA from doing much business with him. When the Soviets pulled out eventually Masoud and other warlords went into Kabul, but then they turned against each other and decimated each other in civil war. Taking advantage of the vaccuum and chaos the ISI sent the 'Taliban,' 'the students,' in to turn Afghanistan into a Pakistan friendly Islamic fundamentalist state, which would secure Pakistan's flank and help it in the battle of Kashmir. That's the point when you destabilize a country through war and turn it into chaos you create a massive humanitarian disaster, and that's why this war was a mistake, similar to but not as much a mistake as Iraq was. This is simply not true. Russia tried to totally modernize Afghanistan. Trying to turn it into an atheist secular industrial workers state via its puppet government and through Soviet Aid. When the locals fought back, only after years later did the Soviets finally invade with the military. The US created and Massively funded the Pan Islamic terrorist extremism against the Soviets which eventually led 9/11. The US only had a problem with Islamic terrorism when the guns were turned on the US. Its not a democracy if the person doesn't get elected and stays in power as Karzai did a few years back. Karzai is an ultra corrupt figurehead backed by US, and Iranian funding. He is the mayor of Kabul. Karzai stays in power by maintaining a rough balance between keeping Pakistan, the US, Iran, and the warlords of Afghanistan/heroin lords including his brother happy. That's not democracy.

Every attack on a funeral. That is a knowing attack on civillians. Yes there might be one or two potential terrorists there, but those comitting the attack know full well they are targeting civilians.

g bambino so protecting civilians from terrorists by killing civilians. Makes sense doesn't it? No it doesn't.

"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster...' - Friedrich Nietzsche 3000 died on 9/11 There have been well over a million refugees from Afghanistan and 10s of thousands have died in the conflict. Saying that 'war is horrific,' and you haven't experienced it, isn't a winning argument. It shows what we already knew from the beginning that war is horrific and should be avoided at all costs. You aren't the first soldier that's ever lived and you're not the first soldier to ever adopt the soldier's arrogance. Humanity has had millions of years of soldiers and the only soldier to ever see the end of war is the soldier who doesn't survive. Actually it was only after years of Russia's trying to build up Afghanistan before they sent in the military. You say Russia did it at the point of a gun (when they saw no other alternative) but what have you done gone in at the point of a gun just like the Russians did claiming there was no other alternative. No you need to do more research. ISI invented the Taliban. Read Steve Coll's Ghost Wars, probably the best book you could possibly read on modern Afghanistan. http://www.amazon.ca/dp/0143034669 Quite the contrary its you who are trying to speed up their evolutionary development by pushing them towards a western style democracy. There is a saying that if you try to push things move faster than they naturally move then disaster awaits. A natural evolution doesn't require outside intervention and an arrogant attitude of cultural superiority. Afghanistan has seen each wave of arrogant foreigner believing in the superiority of his civilization from the Greeks, to the Persians, the Mongols, etc. etc. There is nothing new here, but the failure to learn from the endless repetitions of history.

Then you might as well plan on being there for another 50 years. That's how guerrilla warfare works.

The Taliban has been out of power for years. The current warlords which run the country are a bunch of corrupt thieves, and their policies are hardly different.

Learning your tactics from the Taliban eh? I rest my case on committing war crimes. No I don't blame the US soldiers. The US soldiers are being used as pawns. I blame the politicians feeding the blood hungry primal bloodlust for revenge of their post-9/11 citizens. Only in that the Russians were smart enough to leave sooner. The Russians tried to totally modernize and secularlize Afghanistan, and they pumped tons of money and resources in doing so, when that wasn't working they sent in the military, and that didn't work either. Largely because the US started funnelling weapons to Islamic extremists in a global jihad against the Russians. That's in fact where the Mujahedeen/AQ/the Taliban learned IEDs from the CIA and other intelligence services such as the Pakistani Intelligence Agency which which created the Taliban and had worked and received funding from the US for years..

That was the laugh of the day.

No, only to greatly reduce our dependence on oil. Drill baby drill.

We already produce far more electrical power via Hydro than we use. We sell massive amounts of power to California. There are of course other renewable resources like windmills, solar etc. But all you get is the usual sad excuses. Some birds fly into them. My grandma doesn't like the sound they make. They ruin the view. You'd need to actually build them and we are conservatives in power so we never will. etc. etc. etc.

Rubbish. We have electric technology right now. 100% of Iceland's energy is renewable. 90% of BC's energy is renewable. All we need are electric vehicles. Yes we can still use a bit of oil, but only a fraction of what we are currently using.