Any chance of someone addressing the OP? I'll try again. ''what do you think the moral of the armed forces will now be seeing as they have now been beaten by a bunch of goat herders and Heroin addicts following quick on the heels of their heavy defeat in southern Iraq?''
Where did I say that? I want the British Government to relinquish all claims to all parts of Ireland.
going into afghan was the right thing to do. going into iraq, and subsequently taking our eyes off afghan was the biggest mistake. we were never going to be able to manage both at the same time. did hussein have to go? probably, but at least iraq was "stable" when he was in charge
I think the moral is: if you're going to get involved in a dodgy third world country, go in hard, take no prisoners, see the job through.
This Ironically, giving what's happening in the middle east we would probably have seen Saddam toppled by his own people. That's what happens when you have a puppet President like Bush in the White House controlled by right wing religious extremists and a British Prime Minister only concerned about his own legacy (although that didn't work out how he hoped!)
Depends. The US soldiers will hate it, almost another vietnam for them. The Brits will be more philosophical about it. They went in with their eyes open knowing that you cannot force the Afgan's into capitulation. Nobody has ever managed to subjugate them before and I doubt anybody will. British military history remembers the disaster of the First Afgan War and the slaughter of Elphinstone's army in 1842 and I recall documentaries with leading british General's before we went in this time around, warning that it wouldn't be easy and that we should not attempt anything like a government change because it wouldn't work.
I think when you are asking about the morale of the troops, Donkey Toon seems to be not far off the mark. I know a few american lads in the forces (or have left recently), and have 2 cousins in the forces back home. For both Iraq and Afghanistan (although seemingly more the former), the yanks saw it as a war. Simple as that, get in, blow **** up, job done. The British seemed to want to treat it more along the lines of their deployments in Ireland and Serbia/Bosnia - less of a "war" as such, that can be "won", but as a requirement for stability long term. I think the difference for both this time though, was the thought of "Why the **** should we be the ones here doing this anyway?", in particular for Afghanistan. As for whether it was worth it, well once the Pakistanis start crossing the southern border again (like they have already to an extent), and the northern warlords kick off, the country will disintegrate into internal strife and civil war. So pretty much the way it was before we got there...
