I saw a little bit of the interview before I

a. spillt some very good red wine and

b. got very noisy

after which Mrs LB advised turning the box off, perhaps wise under the circumstances.

I did like the cretinous turd phrase penned early on, except old Karzi is a cunning bastard and runs rings round western governments. A pox and a murrain* on him.

* Murrain does not refer to any specific disease but was an umbrella term for a number of different diseases, including rinderpest, erysipelas, foot-and-mouth disease, anthrax, and streptococcus infections. Some of the diseases could also affect humans.

'Op Ground Zero Ocean' increasingly seems like a sound solution to the Middle East problem.

Spent all that money building Tridents, would be a shame to waste them......

;)

Of course my analogy is sort of flawed, still we have the problem "Afghanistan" was NOT responsible, even though 'they' (the taliban) gave Al-Quaida shelter. (or were unwilling to give them to the 'mericans)

Its worth to remember all the colleteral damage - as soldiers so neatly put it - did not help the western cause at all. And anyone with a little bit of thinking left would know that before the invasion.

I feel very strongly about the politicians that sent troops there, as German mainly about the idiots that sent our troops there. "Germany is being defended at the Hindukush mountains" was one of the slogans used. Just plain BS.

All the killed soldiers, regardless of which nationality, are just wasted and their cause was lost on day one. They are victims of our governments IMO. As are thousands of civilians in AFG.

US tells Karzai "Sign Security Deal or we leave."
Expected Karzai response: "See ya!" This is more or less what the folks in Iraq did when the SoF agreement would not fly.

In other news, Afghanistan wants to go back to stoning audlterers, which was apparently their law before all of these interfering foreigners showed up.

To thine own selves, be true.

I once heard a saying that seems to apply here: one cannot polish a turd. Another saying I once heard was that one cannot inflict democracy upon a nation at the point of a bayonet. It has to grow from the ground up.

Something like that.

No true, as demonstrated in this episode of Mythbusters...

It might be more accurate to say "It is pointless to polish a turd".

mel:
You are free to retrieve your own turds from your next stool, and polish away.

Let us know how it went. :sad:

Fox3: point taken. :ok:

Polishing a turd?
 

But you can roll it in glitter;)

Why shouldn't the Afghanis stone adulterers? Saudi Arabia does* and that doesn't stop most western Governments doing business with the House of Saud?


Reserves the right to, but usually carries out about 100 public beheadings a year instead (including one last year for sorcery)..so that's all right then.

F3WMB, You make a valid point, you cannot drag these countries from the 5th century into the 21st without using an awful lot of nuclear weapons and starting again from scratch or fence them off and let them kill each other. Certain Middle East countries would be back in the dark ages literally if all the western and educated Asian ex-pats pulled out tomorrow. These states have few indigenous population willing to put their noses to the grindstone and work for a living.

Air pig.

Quite correct. That part of the world has primarily been a herding lifestyle, watching the goats, sheep, camel procreate whilst sucking on the hubbly bubbly with the slaves doing any required manual labour.

Practically speaking the western world went from a subsidence survival culture to a work for luxury (keep up with the Jones) culture with the industrial revolution, over 4 or 5 generations. Where dad went from working hard just to feed the family to working hard for rewards. The Middle East culture has gone from a nomadic survival culture to “sheet look at all the money we have from our oil” without learning to toil. Hence no idea of how to put said nose (and they are beauties) to grindstone.

Imploding "again"?? Surely that's a description of normal operations there

One of the first rules of a counter insurgency is political primacy. Political direction and the desired effects have been poor at best for both Iraq and Afgan. So epic fail and strategic defeat would be a fair assessment for UK. I'd say we have been very lucky on the ground, and, as usual we have got away with it. I dare say at times a more well trained, we'll co-ordinated enemy would have and could have over run various locations at various times, with disastrous consequences.