Thursday, September 14, 2006

BBC Comments on Afghanistan

They was a wide range of comments on NATO's request for more troops for Afghanistan in the Have Your Say on the BBC website. Some were smart and some were very stupid.

Of course other nations should do more. I understand and agree with the opposition to participation in Iraq, but Iraq is not Afghanistan. It is ironic, because, during the Cold War, some Europeans questioned whether or not the US would really defend Europe and accept the casualties of a Soviet invasion. Now, in a much less costly conflict, some of these same nations are not meeting their commitments that they had agreed under the NATO founding document. Afghanistan is not Iraq!

He is right in that the war in Afghanistan was a direct response to the Taliban's hosting of the terrorist group who attacked the US on 9/11. Whether you agree that the war in Iraq was necessary or not, the Taliban's Afghanistan was already a failed state that allowed terrorists free reign to attack the rest of the world from it's territory.

The current Afghan government was elected with a higher election turnout than most western democracies and we can't leave them to armed insurgents who would love to retake power before this democracy's army and police force are rebuilt.

Anyway, all the recent fighting against the Taliban is because the Afghan Army and NATO Forces are moving into previous areas that they didn't previously control. The Taliban are not making some big comeback in Afghanistan, they are just fighting for these lawless areas where they had previously been hiding out.

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NO. Take our troops out of there. Stop interfering with people who are different to you.

For centuries, white people have invaded other cultures, forcing our ideas onto them about what is 'civilised'. It happened with the Plain's Indians, the aboriginies, etc.

Stop interfering. Let them change on their own if they want to.

I guess this person is saying that the when the Taliban took power, they didn't force their ideas on Afghanistan. The Taliban blew up ancient monuments in Bamian, forced Afghan women from the workplace and schools, outlawed traditional Afghan sports, songs and traditions that went against their strict version of Islam. If anything, removing the Taliban was the best way to allow the Afghans to be able to practice traditional activities freely instead of those being forced upon them by religious police.

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In the EU surrounded by the Human Rights legislation it is easily forgotten the suffering of women under the Taliban. Since the invasion women teachers & doctors have been able to resume their careers and schoolgirls to rerun to their education. Can the free world afford to turn its back on Afghanistan and return to the days where multiple hangings at the city football stadium were a regular occurences. Ask yourselves that from the comfort of your living room?

This is an excellent response to all the commenters who want to pull out of Afghanistan because it is getting a little tough.

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It's all about oil; rather, it's all about blood for oil.
Think about that every time you fill your car.

This guy is so enamored of inaccurate anti-war slogans that he can't even keep track of the difference between Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Why don't the West just buy the opium harvest in Afghanistan each year and burn it? Surely that way everyone would be happy (except the Wests drug dealers of course).

My first response is great idea, why don't they? If the military can buy weapons back from militants, why not drugs. As a short term solution to wean the farmers away from the Taliban in the south and take opium off the market, it would probably work great. But it would probably need to have some kind of program where the farmers would have to guarantee to use the money to switch over to new crops in a year or so. One problem is you would probably get an influx of opportunists growing opium just for the cash.

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