I agree a lot of liberal commentators did support the afghan invasion in the beginning, but they did so because of human rights violations as main reason and the whole 9/11 thing. But with drip drip of reports showing nato forces involved in civilian massacres, torture, rendition flights, etc and recently wikileaks and other sources showing the reality of what was going on a lot of them have changed tune.

They were not the very same people, no matter how often you and other liars repeat the lie. The Taliban began in the 1990s. Their main enemies in Afghanistan have always been those who largely made up the Afghan Mujahideen of the 1980s, i.e. roughly the later Northern Alliance, who are not much better than the Taliban, certainly, but who are still not the Taliban.

In any case you are using a tu quoque fallacy which has nothing to do with today. Even if it WERE true, it would be about as useful as arguing from some kind of moral ‘principle’ that since the British government had appeased Hitler up until September 1939 it was ‘hypocritical’ to fight him thereafter. It is the moral reasoning of the madhouse.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/34834977/Secret-Quilliam-Memo-to-government

Joe90, I agree that the Afghanistan mission might be doomed to failure – but it’s not just neo-cons who supported it. Sunny himself did, and there were plenty of good reasons for hoping for the best from the NATO stragegy.

I still wait to be convinced as to why new Tory MP Rory Stewart has been wrong in his assesments about Afghanistan over the last several years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jan/14/rory-stewart-tory-mp-penrith

your comment is highly dubious because it has no link to my comments.

The point stands the nato mission is a failed one, except in the view of last remaining neo cons who still consider the war a success.

shouldnt we have dealt with IRA terrorists in the same way?

Joe90, this sentence of yours is highly dubious, as the people you talk about could be living in England tomorow.

… you cannot place a western blueprint and expect people from poor nations to adopt it when they have nothing in common with you in the first place.

a)providing a base for Al Qaeda
b)beheading captives,
c)murdering schoolteachers and burning schools down
d)executing adulterers and homosexuals
e)throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women

are being hunted and killed.”

funny because the same majority of people would 30 odd years ago have been quite satisfied that the very same people were being supported by the west in their noble war against communist Russia.

I didn’t say or imply anything like that, I indicated it was stupid to assume that in a war the Taliban should be put on trial rather than killed. They are enemy combatants. Mostly they will tend to be killed in action rather than arrested. That shouldn’t surprise, intrigue or outrage anyone.

How dreadful. It will really disgust the odd minority of people who believe that the NATO should behave like a police force not an army, and simply arrest, rather than fight and kill, their armed enemies.

Meaning that by contrst the majority of people will be quite satisfied to hear that members of the Taliban, an enemy military force with a habit of

a)providing a base for Al Qaeda
b)beheading captives,
c)murdering schoolteachers and burning schools down
d)executing adulterers and homosexuals
e)throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women

are being hunted and killed.

Presumably in WW2 the British shouldn’t have been killing those poor Nazis, either, just arresting them? I notice that during the Battle of Britain Luftwaffe pilots didn’t get a trial before they were shot down. Shameful.

And now from what point at the history timetable should compensation be paid ?

Of course we should leave Afghanistan and Pakistan alone, and at the same time deny immigration to the west in a given period, until they have sorted things out.

Afghanistan, now an unwinnable war?

Depends on your definition of ‘win’. I never took it to mean the decisive military defeat of the taliban. Afghan opinion polls have consistently showed the people have no appetite for a return of the taliban. The taliban strongholds lie in Pakistan not Afghanistan; and even at their peak the Afghan taliban needed the active input of the ISI.

Broadly the right of afghans to choose their own path, to elect their own leaders and make their own decisions – which may be in disagreement with NATO – is a victory.

The underlying premise seems to be the idea that the taliban will ‘takeover’ afghanistan if NATO leaves. I’d argue that whilst it might make life for the afghan government and ana substantially more difficult it would put afghanistan in a similar position to pakistan – where a punjabi (as opposed to tajik) dominated military is taking on a predominantly pashtun taliban, ethno-nationalist separatists in Baluchistan, and sectarian violence in Sindh.

I.e. if the argument is that Afghanistan ‘will collapse’; then why not Pakistan?

That would depend whether they were genuine or whether they were, like you, using it as a hobby horse for political axe-grinding.

‘History cannot be forgotten – we need to remind the Christian West of their crimes and instill some sense of guilt and remorse in them – and demand compensation.’

Tempting bait, I’ll give you that. That appears to be a priori moral condemnation based on nothing other than where people are from. There are words for this. One of them begins with R.

I’m fed up with cobblers like that comment.

Sure, we must hold ourselves accountable 100 per cent of the time, but when the local Taliban start rounding up people in football grounds I presume that you will see that as all somehow morally superior. Scream, ‘colonialism,’ often enough and anything suddenly has a veneer of acceptability, right?

Moral equivalence is the standard tactic of those caught in the ethical vaccuum.

Not one western leader will comment on the central point of the leaks: to reveal the huge number of unreported civilian casualties and the callous treatment by the Euro soldiers. To them, Afghans, Pakistanis, any non-Euros are just many worthless insects – a carry-over of the colonial attitude to the natives.
Will any Christian leaders chide the West for its conduct of the war?
And for that matter, will the South Asian governments utter a word of condemnation?