The post you are reporting:
A couple of points to make here. Actually I brought them up recently on the Forum when the news came out in public after a secret NATO report was revealed.
The Pakistani secret service is believed to be not only tolerating the Afghan Taliban's presence in Pakistan, but actively supplying them with material to blow up allied soldiers, and even telling them when and where to strike. As I've stated, Pakistan has stopped the passage all supplies to allied forces in Afghanistan.
Most of all, and this I say to Barry, no-one is suggesting the Taliban supporters in Afghanistan are a majority. The Uzbeks and Tajiks in the north are not Taliban supporters at all. It is only among the Pashtun population where they have support. Even if this support were a minority among the Pashtuns, it still mathematically equates to a certainty that, if British soldiers stay there till 2014, we will see hundreds more dead and hundreds more wounded soldiers returning home.
Add to this the numbers of our allied soldiers, such as Americans and Canadians.
As for winning hearts and minds, it is simply so: our Government has NO RIGHT to sacrifice our soldiers to win hearts and minds in a foreign country! It should be considered illegal, as no British constitution or law allows it!
Another point to be made, also expressed in the revealed secret NATO report, is that many Afghan officials paid by the Afghan state are in fact cashing in on the opium trade, are corrupt, and have alienated many among the Pashtun population.
But again I repeat, the public in Britain is becoming mightily disgusted with this senseless sacrifice of our soldiers in Afghanistan, that war is becoming increasingly more unpopular.
If this goes on, one day the public will have had enough.
One more note, for Barry: I was born in the British Army, literally, and lived many years in army homes and only knew the Army as my home. I probably know at least as much as you about professional soldiers and their children, their families... I lived with them!
