Re: Lest we forget...
 

Maybe if people actually tried to understand why these peoples religion motivates them to undertake this kind of fundamentalist approach, they would have got to the conclusion that they couldn’t win a ground war with western troops a lot earlier

Still they didn’t, or maybe they did but some still thought that deep deep down they really did want to be westernised and if we shot a few they might change their minds

Wasn’t the approach called Shock and awe

Shock and awe, technically known as rapid dominance, is a military doctrine based on the use of overwhelming power, dominant battlefield awareness, dominant maneuvers, and spectacular displays of force to paralyze an adversary's perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight

It really wasn’t a very well though out approach to a group based on a fundamentalist religious foundation, in fact in hindsight it looks rather stupid

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Please don't post abuse, disagree respectfully or the thread will be closed.

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[QUOTE=MikeUK;6963043]Maybe if people actually tried to understand why these peoples religion motivates them to undertake this kind of fundamentalist approach, they would have got to the conclusion that they couldn’t win a ground war with western troops a lot earlier



Understanding why people are willing to blow themselves up. Sounds like a contradiction in terms! How do you go about understanding that then?

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I should show this opinion and your others to the 8 yr old daughter of my close friend who was killed recently in Afghanistan. Whilst out there he made a small difference to your daily life from a long distance. The local dealers where you live and many other towns in the western world are effected by the deterrence of the drug trade from the poppy fields in Afghan to your neighborhood hood - of course you will have an opinion on this, that you have read in a newspaper whilst drinking a hot coffee over your homely comforts. I suggest that my friends opinion was formed when sweating to bring to bear his weapon against the enemy in the arid heat, the constant tension of patrolling in a hostile enviroment only known to a soldier in combat would be somewhat different and still I know that he believed that he was doing this for people just like you, sadly I know he would do it all again for people like you. Yet you can slate this and many other soldiers from all conflicts when all they ask is 1 minutes silence for the freedom they have chosen to allow you to enjoy whether a volunteer or a conscripted man or woman. I hope that the Americans do withdraw from all conflicts and a diplomatic solution is found, if for nothing else just so children can have there parents with them as they grow up!

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He made no difference to my daily life, we are adequately supplied with a variety of drugs. Anyway, I thought they were claimed to be saving us from terrorists, not from recreational drug use.

If he wanted to go charging around in the wilderness at the risk of making his child an orphan then that's his choice but he should not assume that anyone is interested in whether or not he does it. I think it's a bit irresponsible on his part.

The troops of today are not asking for a minute of silence for them. They are seeking to usurp someone else's minute of silence. They seek to cash in politically on the sacrifice of people who did not take up war as a career but as a necessity.

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Perhaps we could say similar to WWII - were the Nazi party not a fundamentalist religious ororganisation.
If Sadam Hussein was left in control would he have launched chemical weapons against his enemies? Or is it worth the risk to thousands of innocents.
Or perhaps we should ask the survivors of the Nazi concentrationamps should we have bombed the camps to have ended the suffering?
Perhaps with hindsight - we could have changed the world, but we dont have that luxury, we have to make a dediscissionnd act on the inintelligencee have gained.

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He already did that. They excuse for starting the war was that he was going to use Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Godwin, btw.

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Do you actually have any idea how stupid you sound! Did you not read Dinger24's post or mine? Are you on some of them drugs mate!

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So where do you live? Must be nice not to be affected by the drugs that are effecting everyone elses lives.
You have a very poor opinion of the armed forces that are employed to defend the nation. You also have a very relaxed opinion of the drug abuse that is effecting your daily life, whether it be known to you or not. The drug dealer that gives small amounts of drugs to children to make a market for his product, the drug addicted criminal breaking into houses and stealing to feed his/her habit, the nurses and doctors employed to look after the innocent person mugged for petty cash by the desperate crack user. Yet you would rather pay them the taxes than the soldiers employed and deployed by the government you vote for?
You are a strange one? Both nieve and opinionated on subjects that you have no idea about. People like your self have the rights and freedom that others have given their life for! Charging around the wilderness? Cashing in politically? Are you for real? Do you have any inclination of your surroundings? How can one be so easily miss lead in the western world is unbelievable!

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Sorry about your mate Dinger, I got back from Basra in April thankfully, but sadly many haven't. My wife works at Selly Oak, a ward that many of these people don't know about, we do. Sadly, I believe your words have fallen on deaf ears. I joined twenty years ago, not to invade another country or go to war but to travel and work hard play hard. WE are just the pawns to carry out the political dirty work even if it's delivering petrol or fire fighting when the civvies decide to cry about their pay. Keep your head down. We will remember...............

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I don't remeber any chemical weapons being launched at me. Maybe I was in bed for that attack

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We will remember them.....

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Emm! You believe the hype of the media and the miss interpitation of what was actually said. I do not believe and have never heard any political source from the UN before the war, that has ever claimed he had WMD it was on the principle that he was not allowing the UN employees to prove otherwise. He in fact ensured that the UN was lead to believe that he did have them!
Read the story not the headline!
I am fully aware that Sadam Hussien used chemical weapons against his own people, he also encouraged the brutality of his regime to keep control. If this man had been left in power he would have held the UN to ransom with the threat of using chemical weapons against innocents. It is also one of the main routes used by drug importers to the western world.
I draw your attention to the beginning of world war 2 Hitler was given time to prepare for war, if Chamberlin had acted the year before when Hitler was known to be planning to attack Austria then perhaps he wouldnt have went on to kill thousands of innocent Jews, gays, gypsyies etc not to mention our fore fathers that you have slated during this thread!

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Your wife is doing a fantastic job and she and he peers are a fantastic asset to the injured. I have had a few friends who have been to Selly Oak, in fact a couple are still having to have operations and rehab etc. It is another job that I know is greatly appreciated by the lads so please pass on our thanks to your wife.
Basra in April? then it would have been the rest of my unit that took over on that tour. I went to Afghan in the Feb.

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Between my early post on this thread and now, I have been to the ceremony at the cenotaph in my town. Stood in the pouring rain with hundreds of others, including many young people. We remembered and prayed for those who fought in all wars.

I came back and read several pages of postings, and feel ashamed for fellow Brits. The original post was made in good faith. It doesn't surprise me who amongst the regular posters denigrated this thread into a fight over Remembrance Day.

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Please accept my apologizes I did not intend for this thread to take this route and if I have offended anyone then I do apologize.
However I am only airing my beliefs and exercising my freedom.
I too have been stood in the rain today by the graves of young men who died in Germany during the second world war.

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My humble apologies. You are quite correct.

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No...I don't think anyone was...and that in itself is very sad...almost as sad as the individuals concerned...

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Of course I'm aware of the effect of drugs on western cities, I just don't think the armed forces can make any difference on that score. As long as the demand exists so will the supply.

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He gassed the Kurds. Perhaps you're not a Kurd.

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Remove the supply?

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Hair splitting. He had made a fool of Bush the elder so Bush the younger picked a fight with him by claiming he had WMDs. He didn't, of course.

Ah but do you attack everyone who has the thought of invading another country? Should we have intervened against the US to prevent it from attacking Iraq?

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Impossible. We have helicopters flying overhead here every day in the summer but they don't make a dent in the marijuana production and that's in a country at peace. In Afghanistan, Colombia, Bolivia, Burma it's infeasible to stop production.

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Me too. There was a touching parade, but it was about the two world wars not every military action since.

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The title of this thread is lest we forget
Perhaps in your case we should re address it to lest we remember!
You are both offensive and boring.
Your intention is clearly to upset ppl on this site and this thread has proved to others how low you will stoop to achieve your petty aims.

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I disagree with the expansion of Remembrance Day to include volunteer troops fighting wars in the current era. That's all.

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Well, I don't know about you lot, but I've been out drinking with the Boche.

They seem to be pretty pissed off with western attitudes towards Iraq and Afghanistan too.

One of them, in his Teutonic manner, even pointed out that the Taliban had virtually eliminated poppy based agriculture before they were buggered over by the West.

Another, utterly cynical, Kraut, went so far as to suggest that if the CIA hadn't got involved in the Eighties, none of this would've happened in the first place.

Oi vey! Lest we forget.

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The desperation of a claw at the myth of drug dealers giving away product.

You are just clueless.

R.

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That's the way to get over the history of wars and death and misery.

And last comment, touche, indeed.

R.

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I wouldn't call him cynical just historically accurate

Both sets of ‘terrorists’ in Afghanistan and Iraq were once well backed and trained by the same governments they fight today, because we wanted them fighting somebody else
One could go so far as to say if we hadn't been so keen to see Russia fail in Afghanistan we wouldn't be fighting today, they were at least winning….. until we gave the Taliban high tech weapons……..

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Not so Rich....in my last life in Glasgow as a plod, I know of kids that got back from Rehab...having kicked their habit so to speak, were targetted by dealers and GIVEN...yes Given drugs to get them back on the spiral....their investment was repaid in spades! FACT! Some only lasted a few weeks before they were once more hooked.

Sad but true. That was the trouble with many rehab programs...no thought to relocating kids and providing on going support for their first tenuous months back in the world so to speak ...back to the very environment where their addiction began...

Oh well...what do I know....

Having said that I fail to see what this has to do with 11/11?...:huh:

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Fair enough, but was everyone conscripted in the war to end all wars and WWII? Whether I agree with it or not I get sent, then again I didn't have a masters in politics or military history at 17 yrs old. Twenty years down the line I've lost some of my mates to ill health and RTA's not on ops unlike a lot of personnel. If you choose to remember WWI & WWII and not the rest fine. Why turn it into the Bush/Blair bashing that this thread has become? These people deserve a lot better than they have received, regardless of their nationality.

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No, no. This is a public forum and the nature of it means that anything that gets posted will attract different points of view.

I personally found dbd33's point of view worth consideration (it wasn't boring) and has given me something to think about. It really irks me that instead of it leading to debate it just prompts emotional response.

I always think that if you want to post something online and don't want an opposing view then put it in a blog and disable any comments.

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^^^^^^^ What he said. :thumbsup:

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This raises a few good points. I believe that all soldiers from all forces should be remembered whether conscript or volunteered. The war they fought in should also be remembered irrespective if it was the Great War, the Falklands or any other conflict. It is a time to remember the suffering these men and women have gone through for us to live our lifes today.

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I was away form my desk for most of yesterday afternoon so missed some of the debate - and slanging match - on here. Here are my thoughts, for what they're worth.

I disagree with dbd's attitude towards Remembrance Day, though I understand his reasonsing and defend his right to hold the opinions that he does.

Armistice Day was first marked in the years immediately following WWI, in memory of the fallen in that conflict. It was "expanded," if that's the right expression, to include a remembrance of those killed in WWII, then Korea, and (for the British at least) every significant action since - the Malayan emergency, various UN-badged peacekeeping missions, Suez, Aden, and so on. Some time during that post-WWII period (1964, I think) the nature of the British armed services changed with the ending of compulsory National Service. In the years leading up to that change, the makeup of the services gradually became more voluntary than compulsory - a transition that was complete after the last national serviceman left in the mid 1960s.

To reduce dbd's argument to absurdity, we should remember a little bit less of each action since the 1950s and pay no attention at all to anything from about 1967 onwards, despite the fact that the same forces were engaged in the same conflicts during that transition (Brunei, Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation, peacekeeping in Cyprus, for example). While the theatre of operations for armed conflict since WWII has been remote from the UK (wiht the notable exception of Northern Ireland, of course), the same forces were on garrison duty in the UK, formed the NATO defence against the (very real) threat of Soviet action in central Europe through the height of the Cold War, and have since formed the basis of UN-mandated missions elsewhere in the world.

It is sometimes difficult, but in my opinion necessary, to separate the function of the armed services from the instruction of the politicians who deploy them. Some of the claims made further up this thread are laughable and thoroughly discredited. There is now little doubt that politicians misled the public about the justifications for the second Gulf War by twisting the words of the UN inspectorate on WMD (in Britain's case, the "dodgy dossier" incident); a graph of the trends for production of opiates in Afghanistan against the intensity of Western troop involvement in that country show that more poppies have been produced every year since that involvement began, having been significantly reduced under the Taliban (though there were of course many other very good reasons for disapproving of the Taliban regine).

Added to which, the war-by-proxy policies of previous (particularly US) administrations - in arming the Mujahideen against communist-sympathetic Afghan leadership, leading ultimately to the Soviet invasion of 1979; of arming the more-West-friendly Saddam Hussain against the Islamic Iranian state that had deposed the US's friend the Shah; of arming anti-government rebels in several sub-Saharan African states in an effort to destabilise Chinese-friendly governments - have come back to bite all of us in the backside.

For myself, as the grandson of two men who were deeply affected by WWII (one grandfather was killed, the other taken prisoner and put to work on the Burma-Thai Railway), the son of a retired Army officer, and a former Territorial reservist, I marked my remembrance of ALL those who have died in conflict, at all times since WWI and on all sides in battle.

That is all.

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Great post, I think that says it all.

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as the grandson of two men who were deeply affected by WWII (one grandfather ( in the family regiment KRR’s) went on to be part of the of the Artist rifles later to become the SAS and, the other a medic who spoke very little but what was said was disturbing), and the son of a retired Army Sergeant
I nearly joined the RAF and at one point was expected as the oldest son of the oldest son to think about the family regiment but the fiasco of the Falklands and the realisation that governments cause wars and sometimes for political gain spun a wholly different and much more cynical point of view

but think a few on here forgot that they fought for us to have the right to express our opinions freely in public

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Novobo__ks and DBD33....same old shi_e, not that I was expecting any change.

Anyway, feel free to read more on Remembrance Day.

http://www.cstc-a.com/News/2008%20ne...norheroes.html

As for the country from which the article is derived, 62% of the fighting against against the enemies of this place, is now led by the indigenous folks themselves, people who want a better life, just like the one you enjoy for themselves and their families.

You pair, just don't have a clue.

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62% by rounds fired or blows landed?