What's your view on this "War"?

After posting the "Are You Religious?" thread and getting a decent response with no back-chat, I thought I'd ask this; What's your view on this War?

I really feel as though it's costing us in the UK a lot of cash, and lives (all young), and we're not getting anywhere with it. I'm starting to think that we should defend our countries more and stop attacking others. Surely if we had 10,000 (or whatever it is in the UK, it's loads more from the US) in our own countries defending the ports and whatnot we'd do a better job.

The crazy claim from bush about nuclear weapons that sort of kicked all this off as now turned into us being responsible for other people's countries and their well-being. I really don't understand where the transition was and why?!

We don't run around Africa with guns killing "badies", though we seem to want to in Afghanistan and Iraq. I understand Islamic extremists want to kill "The West" as they call us all that are not in their country it seems, though why do we need to go in their countries to stop that? Surely just keeping the troops at our own borders would be a more suitable way of ensuring we're actually defending our country and not just attacking others and then creating a trend in the news that we're doing good?!

It seems crazy to me.

What's your view?

Can anybody convince me it's okay?

Should I sign up and collect my gun after 2 weeks and be in their country fighting after 6?

 

I honestly don't have a problem with war as long as it's worth fighting but this war in Afghanistan isn't one. Afghanistan is just another Vietnam war that is never going to be won. That is because we're not fighting some guys running around on horse back hiding in caves. No, we're fighting the whole middle east. Countries like Yemen, Iran and Syria has been supplying Iraq and Afghanistan forces since day one. Then lets not forget about North Korea and China selling arms to the region. It's a mess and to top it off our own President left our troops hanging without support for the better part of a year. The guy spent more time trying to figure out a dog for his kids than coming up with a plan to save American lives. It's just sad really when you think about it. I mean the Democrats busted George Bush's balls about this war and now that they have complete control, they did NOTHING. It just goes to show you that all our troops are just expendable pawns to the democrats.

 

I'm a pretty strict libertarian and fully admit this is an unconstitutional war for the US to be in the way that we're there in the first place. But the fact is that we are there now so we can only move forward from there.

I think the problem with the way war is fought today is that the "civilized" world has put too many rules on the good guys fighting the war. We are fighting a tactical war trying to only eliminate precise, known or highly suspect threats and surgically operate around the "innocent" the enemy surrounds themselves with. While the enemy could care less how many of their own people they kill, they hide in schools, mosques, and highly populated civilian areas. They operate under no rules and know the rules we operate under and use them to their advantage. This is not saying we should act as savages either.

IMO we will never win this war as long as we try to operate in this manner. This does not remove the enemy's will to fight and even more importantly it does not make the civilian population around them want to make the enemies stop. We need to unleash the full fighting power of our military to remove their will to fight. I'm not saying we need to go nuclear, but it should always remain an option.

This is the ugly truth of fighting a war; "innocent" men, women and children will be killed and there is no way to sanitise this. But that is exactly what our politicians are trying to do in order to make themselves feel better and the exact reason wars should be fought by Generals in the field rather than politicians in Washington.

So in short we need to either fight to win and win quickly and decisively or get the hell out.

 

Do you think if we pulled out and simply defended our countries we'd be better off?

 

I was talking to a friend who used to be in the Air Force last nigh about this very subject. We've got the Ganiva convention, Nato, and the UN to contend with while the other side could careless. Then our own government is looking to press charges on our men all because some bad guy claimed they hit him...WTF? Now foreign enemies get Myranda Rights as well as other Constitutional Rights? How about our President wanting to try enemy troops in a civilian court...across the street from the place they attacked? This Liberal BS on top of our hands being tied is seriously hindering our ability to fight this war. This on top of other countries supplies our enemies is why this is going to be another Vietnam.

 

They should make a rule. If you're a civilian there and you know of a terrorist (a word we've made up for them, they're often just workers getting paid a better wage for fighting thant they would otherwise, like our Gurkers did some time ago for us) lurking around you then get the hell out of the way and shout about it to the troops we have there. Then they could go in guns blazing and deal with them properly. Some civy's might die from it at first but eventually the "terrorists" won't bother hiding out with them!

Does my bloody head in this war does.

It's why I'm thinking if we pulled out, but just defend, which is the word the top boys use "we're in this war to defend our nation" type spiel. Then perhaps we'd have less of our own boys die young. Less money spent on it all. And perhaps we'd even find they have nobody to fight and their troop numbers fall somewhat.

Then it's just a case of defending the borders we have with better scanning equipment and troops standing at ports with guns etc checking suspicious people.

 

No. It's much easier to be proactive and prevent the forces from entering your territory than it is to defend your territory with no leeway. Home-field advantage hardly applies in this sort of scenario.

 

Hmmmm. I think the fact we stormed their country sparked them off in wanting to kill us all though. If we just let them shoot and blow up each other, and just stop flights from the dodgy countries to our own would mean I don't have to pay more tax for a war that's not in our country, especially during this recession when we could do with all the money we can get our hands on country-wise.

I'd like to think our young lads would stop signing up to go fight personally. 120 deaths, mostly under 25, many under 21, out of like 10,000 or something. We've even been killed by the US via "friendly" fire.

And at the end of it all, what happens then? Their government take over, we assume we've stopped all the extremists, and then we get another couple of bombs go off and we go back in? I doubt we would, THEN we would realise we just need better defence. IMO.

I can't see what we're doing stopping anything at all personally. Most the extremists are in our countries it seems, such as the Xmas day bomb attempt.

 

My statement was more of a generalization and wasn't meant to be applied specifically to this situation.

 

No worries. It's something I'm sick of hearing about in the news to be honest. And to think I'm paying higher taxes so troops hand out money to to afghan's who whistle blow "terrorists", and then the troops don't have the right boots and enough ammo. I really really think we should pull out and just defend properly, at a defence position, right by home.

 

What happens then when nuclear missiles are fired at any one of us? How do we defend ourselves against that? If we're not there to prevent it in the first place, we're SOL in the end.

 

lol Nick's trolling my posts again!!! ahhhhhh.


Who has ever found any nuclear missiles, or even evidence of any, ever? It's N.Korea that has those, are we storming their country?

It's just the way the cookie crumbles, don't pss them off storming their country and they wont shoot at us - and that's proven with N.Korea!

Afghanistan, Iraq and the likes don't have anything like that, they not long got G2A defence against the choppers and likes.

 

N. Korea didn't plot, compromise airliners, and plunge them into buildings, nor did they invade a nearby country.

Deterence was the game for nuclear arms of super powers. Now we are dealing with rogue super powers (some might say). You have multiple enemies, not just by Country proper, but ethnicity and other tribe factions. Those from the Afgan, Iraq that are the primary warzones, but also Pakistan, Egypt, etc. Meaning its not a completely unifified ideology that the battle is with relative to Vietnam war or prior Cold War.

I hope that nuclear is never ever used.

Be that as it may, there is distinct difference of proactive deterence. One in which is based on sound evidence or one based on perception. Clearly not simple things to define with this subject.

IMO, the evidence was not there for WMD, after the fact. Intel prior made it's case. We'll never know all the facts, but I really haven't looked that closely myself. It's widely known that no actual usable WMD material was ever found, however, it was a large premise to the war's basis.

Things have changed, evolved since that episode, now the US and associated parties have countries that are effectively rid of dictator heads of state. Ironically, they kept things in check and today....it's chaos. All those tribes fighting for control.

The region has always been said to be under Trial.

I support our Troops and an effort to stabilize and balance the aggression between the east and the west.

 

Neither did afghan or irag people per se, it was extremists which are global. The guys that did the 911 lark were trained in somewhere over there but got their pilot license and education in the UK and US. Storming their country wont ever stop that. IMO. the day we pull out and we assume it's fixed, it could happen again, surely?

That's the thing see. Bush claimed they had "weapons of mass destruction" and actually, until we stormed their country, they had only AK's! And they didn't employ tribes from poor countries on a good wage, train them up, and create camps teaching extreme hate against "the west" as they call us.

I support our troops too, don't get me wrong here. But do they really understand what they're fighting for?

I really think that if we just sorted our heads out, pulled out, defended our own countries and not went all "proactive" (which I don't think it is personally) that we'd have not upset them so much in the first place.

I think governments can't say "peace" and "war" in the same sentence like they do so many times when they're trying to prove to nations that they're doing good getting our own men killed for Oil, to prove a point, or even if they really did have WMD.

I don't see Afghans wanting to attack China, N.Korea, Iceland, Australia or whatever, it's always UK and US. It's not our bloody war. We're only in it because we owe the US so much cash and Tony Blair was up Bush's arse else it'd just be the US battling this out.

I think it all comes back to the 5% of the people that have 95% of the worlds money, and they want more of it and somehow fighting like this causes some sort of order where the tax payers have to pay up for it all.

It all sounds corrupt to me and has done since the start, and to think our troops are going out there with 6 weeks training to fight such a terrible war with an outcome that surely can't just end up with peace to the world?!

 

I know many hard core conservatives who find the war a ridiculous waste of money now, compared to when we started. That says a lot.