Go on then tell me how to judge Afghanistan
With the 100th British solider being killed this year in Afghanistan this week, those named by the media as the British Military bosses are again saying don’t judge us by the casualties alone. But what am I then to judge them on? I’m no stranger to the news, especially online - I even listen to Radio 4 occasionally but yet I don’t see many reports on how the ‘war’ is progressing?
I’m not 100% sure that I was convinced by the initial arguments for the campaign in Afghanistan but we now have troops there I think that they deserve our support and respect for what they do. I think that ultimately ensuring peaceful democracies around the world is the ‘right’ thing to do even if sending in the troops to do it does seem a little hypocritical. Gordon Brown’s argument that we are protecting Britain by bringing stability to this region does seem to hold some truth but then it doesn’t seem to cut it in Europe so why should we buy that without question in the UK? The mainstream media would have us believe that the Iraq war was based on a transatlantic whim so why should we just accept what the Government have to say this time?
We are constantly told that the campaign is progressing on one hand then that we’re not getting anywhere on the other, depending on who is talking. There are various commentators that talk about how we’re getting nowhere and that we should bring the troops home and there are those who are all for sending more. I’m not sure who we should believe.
I think that we need (deserve?) some more concrete statements about what a difference our involvement in the region is having, stories from the area where we learn about children able to go to school without risk or farmers that can now support their communities without having to grow drug crops. There is some of this around but I haven’t seen it in the mainstream media - they prefer to focus on bashing Gordon Brown it seems. I may be wrong of course and may have just missed the human story that would go a long way to showing the British public what a difference we have made to the lives of these people, and how we should be judging the campaign.
Good Hunting