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Posts Tagged ‘Pakistan’

The Economist is an excellent newspaper that often produces highly thought provoking articles on a wide range of topics, the following on the concept and use of “Drone or UAV” aircraft is well worth a read, it puts some good points – http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/10/robots_war

I am a great advocate of using pilot-less aircraft wherever possible and from a military and commercial perspective, am surprised that we in the UK haven’t already got well into developing them. The problem with the current mindset seems to be to produce highly sophisticated solutions when come the day, expendable units produced in high volume will be the solution as the Russian T34s demonstrated in WWII whenever they came across more sophisticated and technically superior German ones.

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With a new Government and the inevitable trip by Senior politicians to our troops in Helmand Province the question looms large as to what we are doing there and just how quickly we can get out. New Government, new look but alas, I doubt any new answers, for now Afghanistan is as devoid of new solutions as reforming the House of Lords is.

We walked blindly into this Afghanistan deployment, remember the famous statement by John Reid, doing his stint at the MOD that likely, our troops would return”without a shot being fired” and over 200 lives lost later, they are still heavily engaged.

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Although not my favourite Candidate for the US Presidency, the choice of the American electorate was Barack Obama and I admire his efforts over Healthcare Reform, he is right and I am sure he will be judged so over time. I personally don’t care too much for his style because to my mind he is far too laid back and often seems somewhat disconnected and right now over Afghanistan, this is very dangerous.

The biggest single problem currently is not whether the Americans send in more troops or just how many if they do, it is President Obama’s dithering over the matter and Karl W Eikenberry, a former General and now American Ambassador to Kabul, with his leaked communication advising against further reinforcements, really doesn’t help anyone whether they are in favour of getting troops out or, of hanging on in there. The advice given to parents about not arguing in front of the kids, comes to mind, the White House seems to be in total disarray.

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Sooner rather than later, we the US and NATO will have to withdraw from Afghanistan simply because the Western public are not prepared to accept the cost in cash or casualties. There is no risk of a military defeat but I think that the main problem lies in there being no obvious and attainable goals either military or political unless the West is prepared to ‘dig in’ for a 20 year haul.

The sounds from President Obama suggest that despite this ‘surge’ of 17,000 combat troops plus support, it is likely that US policy over Afghanistan will change in the immediate future.

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It is said that “history Repeats Itself…” and indeed it does but never, in quite the same way which is what we in the ‘West’ need to understand most when dealing with “Moslem Countries and their Culture” abroad and most of all “Our Enemy OR Asset Within” local Muslims who due to previous immigration policies are resident here. They need to evolve their faith and approach to a secular society as British Muslims and whilst keeping their faith ‘pure’, reject what were or are just local ‘tribal customs’ which are irrelevant to their lives here in the UK.

In order to deal with the current Middle East situation on the one hand we have to understand that the situation in Moslem countries today is little different from that of the internal circumstances faced by Christian countries in the ‘Middle Ages’ which led to the ‘Crusades’.

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