Afghanistan Crisis

[Ad Lib]

Just now, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

Therefore you are forcing your belief (whether right or wrong) on people and you expect to succeed (with a military force to back you)?

Yes, I am an advocate of enforcing the belief that women should not be forcibly married, raped, killed, and denied basic civic agency on those who do not believe it.

These things are not "Western" values. These are values shared by vast swathes of the Muslim world and beyond.

As others have pointed out already, Sharia law is every bit as much an "imposition" on Afghans as effective legal prohibitions on treating women and girls as war trophies.

The difference is that one system belongs in the 21st century while the other belongs in the 9th.

Just now, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

Sorry, but you are completely deluded in your thinking. 

You were advocating before to @Left Back about not imposing western democracy, but you want to cherry pick the rights and beliefs you deem acceptable by a western standard.

I do not insist that Afghanistan adopts a constitution comparable to that of a Western democracy. I do not insist even that it has the same laws that we do.

I insist simply that women and girls are treated as citizens and afforded incredibly basic fucking freedoms from torture, rape and murder. If that's cherry picking I'm an enthusiastic picker of cherries.

Just now, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

You are as well have an invasion force and send in the missionaries to knock sense into these backwards people?

We did have an invasion force. It turned out millions of Afghans didn't want Sharia law. We put a military presence in place to stop theocrats from going door to door raping and pillaging Kabul. For at least the last 8 of the 20 years we were there it emphatically worked and was bearing considerable fruit.

Then we threw our arms up in the air and said it was all too difficult and we couldn't "sell" caring about people half way across the planet to our own moral degenerates (better known as the electorate) and basically abandoned women and girls living real, meaningful and drastically improved lives to their killers.

That's a moral stain on the West and one that won't wash away for centuries.

Just now, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

What you want is certainly worthy, but they are many milestones to achieve along the way.

Except in Kabul we had already made substantial progress towards this. Then threw it away.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

54 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

Some people considered World War 2 to be unjust or unnecessary. I'm glad my great grandfathers and tens of millions of others like him didn't.

Right, then - Spitfires away! Honestly, mate, you might as well have a Union flag as your avatar. 

Unless, of course, your great grandfather( or great grandfathers - you're not clear here) were in the Wehrmacht? I'm assuming not the Red Army, as you don't refer to the Great Patriotic War. 

[Ad Lib]

10 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

It just doesn't make much sense to me. You have quite a strong moral feeling on whether or not we should still have a military presence in Afghanistan, surely if you were being asked to go into that area or another area which you strongly felt would destabilise or make things worse then morally you'd be wrong to go if asked?

No. Because it isn't my decision for there to be a military presence. There will be a military presence with or without me. So all other things being equal it is better that that military presence includes people who have concerns about the intervention, rather than just those who enthusiastically support it.

10 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

Does "democracy" trump any moral value you hold?

No.

10 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

I'd take jail over joining the army if I felt the war wasn't worthy of my life - society/democracy doesn't determine that for me, I make that choice myself. 

That's why we don't literally put guns in the hands of people who have refused to obey a conscription order.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

44 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

It depends on the context. If I went into the office tomorrow and was instructed to shoot a civilian, clearly I wouldn't do that.

If I was conscripted into the army, and was engaged in combat operations and was instructed to shoot someone in the course of those operations, as long as that person was not a civilian or the context was not one such that I would be committing a war crime, I would do as I was told.

..and by the time you'd wrestled with your moral compass and come to that decision and ensured the situation fit your personal criteria, you'd be dead. Waste of a uniform and equipment, really. Best you stay home as an advisor.

[Ad Lib]

2 minutes ago, WhiteRoseKillie said:

Right, then - Spitfires away! Honestly, mate, you might as well have a Union flag as your avatar. 

Unless, of course, your great grandfather( or great grandfathers - you're not clear here) were in the Wehrmacht? I'm assuming not the Red Army, as you don't refer to the Great Patriotic War. 

It should read great grandfather.

My great grandfather was hospitalised during the D-Day landings. He voluntarily enlisted in the British Army before conscription came in. He understood that when there is a genuine evil applying military force on civilians, and you have the means, you don't wring your hands and equivocate from the sidelines. You serve in whatever capacity is needed of you and accept that some wars are worth fighting.

[Ad Lib]

2 minutes ago, WhiteRoseKillie said:

..and by the time you'd wrestled with your moral compass and come to that decision and ensured the situation fit your personal criteria, you'd be dead. Waste of a uniform and equipment, really. Best you stay home as an advisor.

I would be a lot more concerned if our soldiers didn't take into account the possibility that what they were being instructed to do was a war crime before doing it.

I'm glad that most of them do.

[Tight minge]

3 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

Yes, I am an advocate of enforcing the belief that women should not be forcibly married, raped, killed, and denied basic civic agency on those who do not believe it.

These things are not "Western" values. These are values shared by vast swathes of the Muslim world and beyond.

Can you define ‘vast swathes of the Muslim world’? More than a quarter of the world recognise polygamy as a legal right.

Nothing to discuss on Sharia Law, it is abhorrent and most Afghans wouldn’t want it. Most would want to live there life by their values and beliefs.

Again, you want to force your values on people.

Enough for me now.

 

 

[The Moonster]

Just now, Ad Lib said:

No. Because it isn't my decision for there to be a military presence. There will be a military presence with or without me. So all other things being equal it is better that that military presence includes people who have concerns about the intervention, rather than just those who enthusiastically support it.

What are you going to do when you're sat in Afghanistan and your superior tells you to get out and murder some locals, and you don't agree with it? What use are your "concerns about the intervention" when you're not the one barking orders?

[NotThePars]

The discussion around whether you'd shoot a civilian is fun given the loose definition of combatants in some of these warzones. Guess we can just keep drone striking village weddings if we get all the women and children out first.

[Ad Lib]

Just now, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

Can you define ‘vast swathes of the Muslim world’? More than a quarter of the world recognise polygamy as a legal right.

I don't oppose polygamy where all the parties involved genuinely consent to it.

The vast majority of countries where Muslims are in the majority have legal bars on forced marriages.

I readily accept that the enforcement of this is much more mixed.

Just now, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

Nothing to discuss on Sharia Law, it is abhorrent and most Afghans wouldn’t want it.

We should probably not let the Taliban take over Kabul and enforce it then, should we?

Just now, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

Most would want to live there life by their values and beliefs.

But when those beliefs deny the civic agency of more than half the population, they aren't legitimate beliefs, and aren't ones we should tolerate where we are in a position to deny them legal force.

Just now, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

Again, you want to force your values on people.

Absolutely I do want to force some of my values on people. Not all of them. Just the bare minimum ones necessary to grant women and girls (and other oppressed groups) agency and physical safety.

 

[welshbairn]

4 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

The discussion around whether you'd shoot a civilian is fun given the loose definition of combatants in some of these warzones. Guess we can just keep drone striking village weddings if we get all the women and children out first.

That's not murdering civilians, that's collateral damage in the course of eliminating a suspected high value target.

Edited August 19, 2021 by welshbairn

[Ad Lib]

5 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

What are you going to do when you're sat in Afghanistan and your superior tells you to get out and murder some locals, and you don't agree with it? What use are your "concerns about the intervention" when you're not the one barking orders?

If I am told to "get out and murder some locals" (by which you presumably mean civilians, rather than armed Taliban fighters) I would obviously refuse, accept being put in military prison, and lodge as a defence for insubordination at my court martial that I was being instructed to commit a war crime.

This isn't fucking hard.

[Zetterlund]

3 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

The discussion around whether you'd shoot a civilian is fun given the loose definition of combatants in some of these warzones. Guess we can just keep drone striking village weddings if we get all the women and children out first.

Now there's an interesting idea, we should try that from now on.

[welshbairn]

Just now, Ad Lib said:

If I am told to "get out and murder some locals" (by which you presumably mean civilians, rather than armed Taliban fighters) I would obviously refuse, accept being put in military prison, and lodge as a defence for insubordination at my court martial that I was being instructed to commit a war crime.

This isn't fucking hard.

It is when the Taliban look pretty much the same as the civilian locals.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

12 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

Yes, I am an advocate of enforcing the belief that women should not be forcibly married, raped, killed, and denied basic civic agency on those who do not believe it.

These things are not "Western" values. These are values shared by vast swathes of the Muslim world and beyond.

As others have pointed out already, Sharia law is every bit as much an "imposition" on Afghans as effective legal prohibitions on treating women and girls as war trophies.

The difference is that one system belongs in the 21st century while the other belongs in the 9th.

I do not insist that Afghanistan adopts a constitution comparable to that of a Western democracy. I do not insist even that it has the same laws that we do.

I insist simply that women and girls are treated as citizens and afforded incredibly basic fucking freedoms from torture, rape and murder. If that's cherry picking I'm an enthusiastic picker of cherries.

We did have an invasion force. It turned out millions of Afghans didn't want Sharia law. We put a military presence in place to stop theocrats from going door to door raping and pillaging Kabul. For at least the last 8 of the 20 years we were there it emphatically worked and was bearing considerable fruit.

Then we threw our arms up in the air and said it was all too difficult and we couldn't "sell" caring about people half way across the planet to our own moral degenerates (better known as the electorate) and basically abandoned women and girls living real, meaningful and drastically improved lives to their killers.

That's a moral stain on the West and one that won't wash away for centuries.

Except in Kabul we had already made substantial progress towards this. Then threw it away.

So, successful for less than 50% of the occupation period, and in one specific area. By Saturday, I've no doubt you'll have the name of the one Afghan whose life has, and continues to be, improved by Uncle sam and his wee poodles. 

As for "selling" the idea of caring for people - that's not something you can sell domestically. It's certainly not something you can sell at that distance. And while you'll no doubt get loads of well-deserved plaudits for your principles*, I'm firmly of the opinion that while vast swathes of our own society are being oppressed socially in the pursuit of profit, none of us are in any way entitled to the moral high ground here, unless we've at least agitated to radically change the system. 

*Which I'm beginning to think are a bit like Groucho's.

[101]

This thread is getting quite heavy, let me try and lighten it up.

Could do with this lassies name badge tbqhwy

 

[Ad Lib]

Just now, welshbairn said:

It is when the Taliban look pretty much the same as the civilian locals.

Yes, but no commanding officer would ever tell you to "get out and murder some locals" would they?

And when you are in the armed forces, you are trained to identify military from civilian targets.

And in our armed forces, the culture is one in which everything is directed towards the minimisation of civilian casualties.

No one is suggesting that civilians are not sometimes killed, for example in cross-fire or in error.

But that is a fundamentally different proposition from the deliberate killing of civilians, whether or not under direct instruction. Which has fundamentally different moral implications.

[The Moonster]

2 minutes ago, Ad Lib said:

If I am told to "get out and murder some locals" (by which you presumably mean civilians, rather than armed Taliban fighters) I would obviously refuse, accept being put in military prison, and lodge as a defence for insubordination at my court martial that I was being instructed to commit a war crime.

This isn't fucking hard.

I was just trying to understand where you draw the line in taking part in things you don't agree with. For me I wouldn't join up, so when folk like you feel so abhorred over UK foreign policy but still say they'd join the army and fight for that policy I'm intrigued to know why. 

If it's not fucking hard then just explain it without being a condescending p***k. 

[WhiteRoseKillie]

4 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

It is when the Taliban look pretty much the same as the civilian locals.

Yeah, I was about to ask what their uniform was like. Or do they have a big "T" tattoo on their napper?

[101]

Seems to be all kicking off again at the airport, potential upsetting scenes depending on your disposition.

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler