h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just watched the repatriation of a bomb disposal expert who was killed last week. News of another five soldiers, two of them local to my home town, renders this memorial Sunday even more poignant. All those familes affected, more losses and the mourning perpetuates. Today's ceremony of walking/escorting the coffin through the streets of the lad's home town, we even saw his shocked family when the hearse stopped so they could place single flowers upon the roof of the car. When the newsreader on BBC news invited the war correspondent on afterwards to talk about him, and she also announced the names of the five shot by a "rogue" Afghan policeman on Tuesday, she could barely finish speaking, and I too, was completely welled up. How much longer is this going to go on? What price peace? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8344648.stm

It's difficult to really reply to this one, GB...

I saw footage from an interview with that bomb disposal guy, filmed just a day or two before he was killed. It was awful to think he was dead.
Similarly, but years apart, when I was editing Kitty's photos from the War Graves in Belgium and France, I had tears in my eyes from just looking at row upon row of grave.
It's made me think that bit more as I bought my poppy the other day...

It's horrific, I've got mates out there and I think of them every time I hear or see stories like this.

But we stirred up that hornet's nest and I think we've got a duty to stay there until the Afghans have some form of functioning society, and for that we might be looking at 10, 20 years and maybe even more.

Same here, HI. I've got some mates out there, and some mates are married to guys about to go there (and/or Iraq)

But we started it and we have to find an end.

this is sad and i do not have an answer

I have just caught up with this thread.

I wonder how many people remember the tyrant Saddam Hussein.? He invaded Saudi arabia I think it was first, and then went back to Iraq and was a total tyrant there. That was the "given" reason for the invasion of Iraq. The "real" reason might have been because Ira1 has vast supplies of petroleum - I do not know.

However, my analysis is a phenomenological one and that is what my philosophy of life is/ One always has to understand what one's reasons are for any particular action.

With Afghanistan, I believe the Russians were there initially and then they pulled out.

I do not know if there is an ulterior motive such as the existence of petroleum in either of these two areas.

However, I do wonder if the time has come now to let countries seek out their own social destinies - if that is possible.

I do know that the plight of women has been very difficult in some cultures. However, it was also difficult in the West. I wonder if many of you young ones remember that it was women of my mother's generation who fought for women to have the right to vote, and that in England they only won this right, the year before I was born. i.e. in 1927.

I am horrified when I read,at my great age that the overt reasons for various wars which we were blissfully taught were wars of "liberations" and which were in reality wars of possession and exploitation.

Last night I watched a programme called Kamikaze. You see, I remember the whole of the last year of the 2WW, I was sixteen at the time, and at University, and I can remember the end of the 2WW in Europe. the fighting and the end of 2WW in the Far East.

Basically, although the programme did not mention it, the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima ended the 2WW within two days of it being dropped. I know I did not know what an atom bomb was - who did I wonder? - I know that when I heard that it had been dropped I burst into tears. I wonder why. I did not know what atomic energy was in those days.

Atomic energy, misused, is the total destruction of everything. However, well used, it can be used to provide energy which we need so badly. Thank goodness I am not a politcian and do not have to make these important decisions.

I am, as I have stated before, a pacifist. I do not believe that wars cure anything.

This is the first time I have ever entered a debate on politics on the website. However, as long as one has tyrants ruling countries in the world, I guess they must be contained. Sadly however, many many innocent people get killed in the process.

I believe there was a famopus slogan
Education, Education, Education

That is the answer to everything I believe.

Christiane.

Sunday.6/11/09 6.30 GMT

My journal was not meant to be political, but about the tragic loss of young lives.


I know all about suffrage, I wrote A517123 way back in 2001, one of my first edited entries which got a BLOB, I recall. I have always insisted to my daughters that they must vote - if only for the women who died for the cause, just as my mother did to my sister and I.

Education, Education, Education is still a famous slogan, my father used it on us and everytime he encountered his grandchildren, my daughter now has a University degree thanks to that advice.

GB

another danish soldier was killed in afghanistan this week. this made people here suggest once again that we should pull our forces out of afghanistan. our foreign minister answered: you should know that schools would be burned and teachers hanged by the taliban if we pulled out. we may never win over the taliban and we may never be able to establish democracy - but if we pull out all hell will break loose and terrorists will be given a firm base to operate from

up until now it was a question of wiping out the taliban completely and establish democracy in afghanistan. the rhetoric seems to have changed completely...

I keep reading about the stuff that's happening in Pakistan; i actually saw the place i used to work in there, it was blown to bits.

That hurt.

I was in Kuwait when it got invaded & lost everything, though did manage to escape. I saw fiends of mine being held hostage, i know my landlord's brother was hanged outside our house, because he dared to try & save some of our stuff (personal photos etc)

"War doesn't determine who is right, it determines who is left."

zdt