Woolwich

I totally agree with you - but then that is precisely the thought process of people who identify with (logically or not) people in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere who have died, directly or indirectly, as a result of British foreign policy, is it not? "Denounce your government, condemn their policy" and so on. I'd hazard a guess that a young lad in Afghanistan or Pakistan whose mam and dad have just been vaporised by a guided missile might feel that the British public has a lot to answer for in voting for political parties that sent death and destruction to their part of the world.

 

They may very well feel that, but that doesn't mean they're right for doing so. If they were right, we'd be sat waiting for the war crime commision. The fact we're not points toward a flaw in that argument.

 

I don't get why hardcore islamists would want to dwell among the evils crusader and infidels in an infidel land full of pork eaters and alcohol consumers.

 

If I sit back and consider their point of view (Muslim extremists, that is), I think they need, not deserve, but need to be taken on. Stuns me me to read some of the ****e on here. These ****s want to take us on, so be it. They will not go away.

 

Well, if we're talking about Afghanistan, a few important points:

1. Afghanistan didn't have a government that controlled the entire country, because we (the US, the UK, and our hardline Islamist allies in Saudi and Pakistan) undermined the existing government there to win the Cold War.

2. In doing so, we armed and trained countless thousands of mujahideen in the art of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. We created the modern Islamist terrorist - this is a fact beyond dispute. We used a bunch of crazy, Islamofascist dicks to defeat the Communists. So in a very real sense, we instigated everything. Before the Afghan-Soviet war of the 1980s, most Middle Eastern terrorists were secular, Arab nationalists of the PFLP, Abu Nidal sort that generally kept their grievances local and their aims and objectives rational. Islamic extremism quite simply would not exist without Western intervention.

In terms of Iraq, we ousted the one guy who held that country together and kept the fundos out. He was replaced by a coterie of corrupt religious bastards. We did the same thing in Libya in 2011, and we are doing it right now in Syria.

There's just no rational way of looking at this issue without attributing a substantial part of the blame for our own security services and governments.

 

How do we do that, Fez, do we start to attack innocent men or women on the street. Or as a nation do we show that we are strong enough to say, do your worse, act like animals in the street, show that it is you who act without morals and respect, we punish those, whoever they are who break the law.
The reason that they have to perform attacks like they have in Woolwich, is because they know that they cannot attack us lawfully, because we as a country have a legal system that makes a nonsense out of the reason for terrorism. We as a country embrace multi cultural society, hatred for one group or colour is hardly ever spoken in front of the people it is aimed at, why is that? It's because we have been brought up not to say these things out loud and that is why most of the country will say they are angered by what happened and want something done about it, but they wouldn't miss Coronation Street to do something themselves.
You get a militia up together, Fez, with the aim of fighting terrorists and extremists, lawfully and I'll join tomorrow. In fact if the government armed all ex servicemen, with one aim, to be there if called, there would be plenty of volunteers. But they won't. Do we really want to go down the same road as Syria?

 

Con Coughlin writing in the DT today:-

"There will inevitably be those who have some sympathy with the justification given by Michael Adebolajo for his slaughter of a British soldier on a south London street on Wednesday afternoon. “The only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers,” was his illiterate pronouncement, made to the mobile phone of a passing member of the public as he waited for the police to arrive, his blood-stained hands still grasping the machete he had used to murder Drummer Lee Rigby.
While Muslims of a more moderate temperament have been quick to condemn the Woolwich atrocity, those of a more radical persuasion, such as Anjem Choudary, the former head of the banned Islamist organisation al-Muhajiroun, seem to have no difficulty agreeing with Adebolajo’s reasoning. The murder of Drummer Rigby, Mr Choudary proclaimed from the sanctuary of a BBC television studio this week, was due to the “presence of British forces in Muslim countries”.
These sentiments were also supported by Omar Bakri Mohammed, another veteran of London’s thriving Islamist scene. From exile in northern Lebanon, where the radical preacher has settled since his banishment from Britain, Bakri Mohammed gave a newspaper interview in which he praised Adebolajo’s “courage” in carrying out the murder. “I saw the film and we could see that he was being very courageous,” the cleric was quoted as saying. “Under Islam this can be justified – he was not targeting civilians, he was taking on a military man in an operation. To people around here [in the Middle East], he is a hero.”
It is difficult to see what, precisely, is “courageous” about butchering an unarmed British soldier in cold blood as he tries to make his way back to his barracks. If anyone serving in the British Forces were to commit a similar act of savagery, they would quickly find themselves facing a court-martial and, if convicted, a lengthy prison sentence. Five Royal Marines, for example, are facing murder charges over the death of an insurgent in Afghanistan in 2011.
But then, Islamist extremists have never played by the same rules that we seek to uphold in the West. Back in 2007, when British security officials disrupted an al-Qaeda plot in Birmingham to kidnap, torture and behead a British Muslim serving in the Army and broadcast his murder on the internet, Bakri Mohammed was secretly recorded urging his followers to “use the sword and remove the head of the enemy”.

Acts of terrorism such as this week’s appalling scenes in south London are, therefore, for the likes of Choudary and Bakri Mohammed, regarded as a legitimate means of waging war against the West and all that it stands for. And in seeking to justify their barbarous conduct, they have proved themselves to be highly skilful at blaming law-abiding countries such as Britain, America and France for their actions. Just like Adebolajo, these radical Islamist preachers – who, by all accounts, helped to indoctrinate him and his accomplice in the first place – argue that they are obliged to act in this way because, in their view, the West is at war with radical Islam. In fact, the opposite is the case: radical Islam is at war with the West.
During the past decade, when British and American forces have found themselves embroiled in long and bitter conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, I doubt there has been a single politician on either side of the Atlantic who has wanted our brave young men and women to remain in these dangerous, hostile environments a day longer than was absolutely necessary.
Indeed, I suspect many of them were reluctant to deploy our forces in the first place, particularly when it came to Iraq. And if you look back at the West’s military involvement in the Muslim world since the early 1990s, it could be argued that, for the most part, Western forces have been fighting to protect Muslim interests, not to violate them.
The first Gulf War in 1991 was fought to liberate Kuwait’s Muslim population after the sheikhdom’s illegal occupation by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, while the subsequent conflict in 2003 was designed to liberate the long-suffering Iraqi people – Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims alike – from his brutal repression. In between these conflicts, Western troops sent to Bosnia in the mid-1990s were tasked with protecting the Muslim population from the Serbs’ genocidal designs, while our more recent involvement in Afghanistan, where Drummer Rigby had served a tour of duty, has been undertaken to help the country’s predominantly Muslim population to rebuild the country after three decades of almost incessant conflict.
For, contrary to the anti-Western propaganda propagated by radical clerics like Choudary and Bakri Mohammed, the 444 British soldiers who have so far been killed in Afghanistan have sacrificed their lives trying to make the country a better place for ordinary Afghans, rather than seeking to subjugate them. Indeed, when you examine the overall casualty rate in that benighted country, the Taliban are responsible for the deaths of many more Afghan civilians than have died as a result of the military action taken by Nato forces.
But this is not the narrative you will hear from Islamist militants who, rather than concede that the West is actively seeking to improve the lot of ordinary Muslims, prefer to portray us as invaders, as neo-colonialist proselytisers attempting to impose alien values on the oppressed masses.
The real reason, of course, that radical Muslims violently oppose these well-intentioned efforts is that they interfere with their attempts to impose their own brand of uncompromising Islamist ideology.
Before coalition forces overthrew the Taliban government in Afghanistan, Islamist hardliners had subjected the Afghan population to a reign of terror equal to the worst excesses of the French Revolution. The only entertainment on offer at the local sports stadium in Kabul during that period was the regular executions that took place after Friday prayers. Not surprisingly, few Afghans want to see the Taliban return, but that has not prevented the movement from seeking to regain power by waging an indiscriminate campaign of violence in which Afghan civilians are as likely to die as British soldiers.
Indeed, the reason our forces deployed to Afghanistan in the first place, in 2001, was because the Taliban had made the error of providing al-Qaeda terrorists with a safe haven from which to launch attacks against the West. And so long as Islamist militants – be they based in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya or Mali – are working on their vile schemes to wreak havoc in our cities, the West has no choice but to defend itself, even it means killing the occasional Islamist militant, such as Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born cleric dispatched by a US drone strike two years ago.
Because of the success the West has enjoyed in disrupting al-Qaeda’s terror network, the organisation has been thwarted in its efforts to carry out spectacular operations on the scale of the September 11 attacks, or the July 7 bombings in London. As a result, Awlaki urged his followers to carry out their own, home-grown attacks. It might be scant consolation to the friends and relatives of Drummer Rigby, but it shows the West is winning the war against radical Islam when its supporters have to resort to such desperate measures as murdering a defenceless British soldier."

 

Can't disagree with any of that, apart from training the afghans in thwart of guerrilla warfare. The afghans have never needed training in that, it's in ther nature

 

Sure, don't get me wrong - I don't agree with their point of view but you must "know your enemy" if you want to defeat them. That involves understanding their grievances, which do have some basis in reality. The question is how do you take them on? Just keep killing them until they give up? They won't give up. Go over to where they are and expend huge amounts of money and lives to rebuild their failing, backwards societies? The public won't accept the losses and don't understand what we're trying to do; and our military and political establishments are piss poor at dealing with insurgencies. Put in place massive changes to our legal system to take the fight to domestic terrorists? Governments don't have the balls or the mandate. Carry on as usual and pretend there's no problem? More bombs, more brutality. Strategically speaking, we have already lost this "war".

 

I'll settle for a gradual tightening up of legislation which currently permits our enemies to thrive among us. Banning the barbaric halal slaughter, imposing the sovreignty of British secular law over sharia law and islamic variants, ban female circumcision, no new mosques to be built, no chadors or niquabs etc

This will send a clear message.

The reasons the 'far right' EDL are growing are to do with the innertness and passivity of our rulers in their response to the islamist threat. The govt do **** all. This is because they fear not getting re-elected. Mainstream national journalists are by and large afraid to express any kind of non politically correct views, as their union would not allow it....so very few are willing to jeopardise their careers. Ditto the police.

Will no one speak up for the ordinary British people who are fed up to the back teeth with this islamist ****?

 

Unfortunately you are wrong, the fact is that we have won the war in Afghanistan. The general populations lifestyles have improved, as they have in Iraq. They can determine their own future and that is why a few radicals have to attack us here, because they have lost in the countries that they say they support. Forget the headline grabbing reports, the good news stories are far more important. The schools, for girls and boys, the electoral reforms, the regeneration and development of civic areas. That's where we have won.

 

That's bollocks. Blair threw up every excuse in the book for Iraq - WMD, collaboration with Al Qaeda, the 45-minute claim - all half-truths or fabrications - the humanitarian reason was the only one that hadn't been entirely discredited. And if we were so concerned with the people of Iraq, why was there ZERO post-invasion planning? We let that country go to hell in a handbasket (and created the conditions for a massively bloody civil war) due to our own negligence.

I like Coughlin, he's a great journo working for a newspaper I read and respect, but this is indicative of the issue I referred to earlier. In one sentence he says our troops are there to stabilise Afghanistan "to make the country a better place for ordinary Afghans", and in the next he says we're there for national security counter-terrorism reasons. These are mutually exclusive - you don't kill terrorists by building hospitals, and you don't rebuild a country by dropping bombs on it. This guy's a defence correspondent ffs.

 

The establishment is relatively happy when different groups of desperate people point the finger at each other because it prevents blame being correctly directed at them.

http://www.russellbrand.tv/2013/05/woolwich/

 

I'm sorry but that is just laughable. You don't win wars by building schools - in fact, if you look at what government ministers have said since about 2008, they've said that the development and reconstruction agenda is completely irrelevant to the medium term aim of stabilisation and the long term aim of British national security. The Afghan parliament couldn't even agree that raping women should be illegal ffs. The Cameron government don't even talk about development anymore, they only talk national security because they know the game's up. The money we've pumped into the country has been pilfered by the drug lords and war lords we are propping up, which goes straight back to the Taliban. Our entire strategy post 2010 was predicated on training Afghan soldiers, at least 25% of whom are heroin addicts and have a shocking desertion/retention rate. Our troops don't even go on combined patrol with Afghans anymore because of green-on-blue attacks. On reconstruction and developing their forces we have lost. On democracy, Karzai is corrupt (rigged the 2009 election) and barely controls Kabul, never mind Kandahar or the rest of Afghanistan. Even on counterterrorism - the most basic and fundamental issue - we have failed, since the insurgents have just gone over into Pakistan where their ISI handlers run things. One of my mates ran an FOB in Helmand and even he reckons its all ****ed.

 

Basket case of a country. Why don't the wealthier muslim states/countries from the Middle East/Gulf go in there I wonder?

 

Agree

 

Every single war has the same rhetoric. The Americans fought against communism in Veitnam and the world saw them withdraw as they lost control. A defeat and yet Veitnam is a country that has been reformed. The Afgan nation will have a simular reincarnation, it will be a mixture of the old feudal system and western ideals. Iraq may well divide, but that may not be a bad thing. But what is good is that it is up to them and not us. The Soviet imploded and countries like Poland are no longer seen as part of an enemy state. The world develops and this is what the Islamic extremist clerics do not want to see. They want to maintain their religious influence on the Muslim faithful. But they know that the fight us lost, there is not a call to arms that is widely followed, the Muslim population as a whole does not support them and therefore they have to resort to more hardcore tactics. If you cannot incite your own people to react, incite you enemy to. If you look at all conflicts of this nature you will see the same pattern. Syria, Palestine, the Lebanon, and Georgia. It happened in Bosnia and Serbia. In Bosnia, factions sold armaments to the opposing side, so that they could recruit more and receive more financial backing, they needed to escalate the reaction in order to win total control.

 

I think too many people misunderstand the 'war' in Afghanistan and the middle east. We haven't just declared war on these countries, we're there trying to help the countries sort their problems out. E.g. In Afghanistan it's about trying to prevent the Taliban's reign of terror on their own people, killing women because they want to be educated etc. All this talk of us going there to steal their oil or drugs is just ridiculous conspiracy ****.

There's no reason that our military presence in the middle East should be a reason for some muslims to hate the West.

 

Oh god that's an awful post plt stick to football.