Support for British troops?
We reported today the deaths of two more British soldiers in Afghanistan. Judging by some of your messages there's quite a lot of confusion and anger about the reasons why the British are there, and also, I sense a feeling that people here want to do something to show support for the soldiers.
Ian in Luton asks "What can we do? Is there a way of sending something to our troops? How can we show our support?" Do you feel the same as Ian?
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Supporting our troops and respecting those who've perished can only be achieved by dealing head on with the politics of why they are deployed in Afghanistan in the first place!
Welcome home parades or armed forces days etc are all well and good but in many ways their effect can tend to dumb down large sections of the public who might fear that by criticising foreign policy they are insulting our forces.
This confusion is exactly what the likes of Brown, Cameron and Clegg want in order to obscure how all our mainstream political parties are pitifully subservient to US foreign policy!
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Recent BBC coverage has sought to mould public opinion with a seemingly never ending stream of negativity. The families of troops serving there must despair at the very "knowledgeable" young reporters including Victoria who appear to have become experts in all things military and by the selection by programme editors of those who have nothing positive to say. Is it not arguable that we have to confront Islamo-fascism at this stage rather than further down the line when its strength will have grown. The failure to tackle it in the 1990's especially after the attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993 -- yes,long before the war in Iraq -- must have encouraged the terrorists in their belief that they could get away with even greater atrocities. Have we learned nothing from the appeasement of the late 1930's.
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lifegrumpy!
Appeasement with the Nazi's in the 1930's was because the Tory establishment in the UK that monopolised UK politics at the time just as they do now under New Labour were quite prepared to do business with the Third Reich and turn a blind eye to the repression of the Jews because it thought it could eventually do business with their friend Adolf Hitler.
That's hardly comparable with global 'neoliberal' political events that have occurred since! Every USA subservient British military intervention since, in countries that weren't attacking British territory has stoked the terrorist threat, albeit the fact we've sustained few terrorist attacks which the 'gung ho' bigots who rule us don't want to admit. (No disrepect to the relatives of those who lost their lives on Jul 7th)
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