Dear Diva Dan

Sorry, my (emotive) post to Gary Brown has mislead you. I should have expressed myself better. I should have said something like: Thanks for a well written and interesting article ... rather than "great" which suggests that I agree with Gary.

I do not support our troups returning but I do not have sufficient knowledge or related understandings of the current scenario to present a balanced argument. I would like our troops to be here with us in the event of a terrorist attack. I am extremely concerned about what is happening in Australia as we speak. For example, how many "sleepers" visit On-Line Opinion as regular posters? Sounds paranoid eh? And the "terrorist" books being sold in a Lidcombe Muslim bookshop.

With your Viet Vet background you must be experiencing (and re-experiencing) a rotten time. I have nursed many WW1, WW11, and Vietnam Vets in a range of psychiatric/mental health settings. My heart goes out to you. I understand related psychoses, suicidal behaviours, post traumatic stress disorder, protracted drug and alcohol use, protracted clinical depression, relationship breakdown, and children who have become the victims of their "victim" war parent.

Take care
Kay

Just a bit of nit picking .... my understanding was that when the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, they just about wiped out opium production , that it is our friends, the Northern Alliance warlords, who are responsible for this particular enterprise.
I have some sympathy for the Taliban altho not their former guests. Who would you rather have rule over you - a bunch of fundamentalists, living by some medieval set of laws, or a bunch of murderous thugs, living by the law that might is right.

To Sien's question, "why wasn't Afghanistan a sufficient place to take on terrorism?" I suspect this is where the idea first came to deploy as bait and attract hidden enemies. The Agfgan deployment got the Taliban out of power quickly but many had slipped the net and were a potential danger. There was no evidence of any willingness to return to continue the battle. The threat remained and Iraq provided the next best option as it was closer to other centres of militancy. There was obviously many resons behind the Iraq invasion.

Pericles appears intent on using Sun Tsu like some sort of drop down menu without regard for context. Two things were clearly established after 9/11. 1) that this was an entirely new kind of warfare, and 2) that this war will take a long time to win.

The workers of Manhattan or the commuters of London and Madrid may not share the view that they were not in a theatre of war but, "simply a terrorist target". Smells like sophistry to me.

Point 2), that this will be a long war is a simple assessment of the situation. All the actual battles that have been fought by the coalition have been quick, decisive, within capability and entirely consistent with Pericles' quote from Sun Tsu. But the distinction between the tactical need for quick decisive actions and the broader strategic demands of a long campaign appears lost.

As for understanding the nature of the enemy, a strategy that draws out a host of hidden and probable enemies into an open context where they can be dealt with decisively sure beats sitting back waiting for the next hit.

What would you do in the circumstances, Pericles, look up Sun Tsu, declare the prospect of a long campaign to be ultra vires and give up? A student of Sun Tsu would understand the principles of out thinking the enemy while recognising that certain prescriptions are applicable to certain situations. There is probably a quote to that effect but someone 'borrowed' my copy.

Kay……….

True what you say in your last paragraph……… fortunately that does not apply to myself…………………. but consider;
What I implied in my comment above, to our friend Gary Brown was simply , how many times in a lifetime do we hear argued , most loudly by academics, who do, I believe, live life in a foxhole protected by the surrounding “buzz” of the status-quo argument.
It is the same academics and their verbigerations, that engaged us in a protracted war in Vietnam, and were ultimately proved wrong. They appear to me to be sadly dislocated.

Kay…sometimes wars are necessary , this one is not. Argue all you like

The London bombings did not expose the iraq war as being a blunder, Mr Brown, they exposed Multiculturalism as a blunder.

The fruit cakes who blew themselves up were not Iraqi "freedom fighters", they were second and third generation "Britons".

Now, don't get me wrong, I disagree with the war in Iraq. I liked old Saddam. It has been estimated that he was responsible for the deaths of well over one million Muslims, [deleted for inciting violence and poster banned from forum for one month].

redneck, you are an unwelcome arrival at these posts. there is a great spread of opinions expressed on this site, many of which i do not agree with, but which i respect and even admire (in some cases) for their reasoned, principaled and often well researched contributions which, importantly, further the discusion and i hope contribute to a greater understanding of the people that make up this society of ours.

your posts do none of these. while Graham has previously defended you right to an opinion and i guess i support that, your recent posts on this topic and others are disgusting. calling Reason your 'enemy' and hopeing for his death, and now displaying your support for saddam and your implication that the only good muslim is a dead one, i would suggest count as flamming.

redneck, while you criticise the tolerance and openness of our society, you would do well to remember that it is you who is tolerated as well. you may well find that we greeny, bleeding heart, lefty, chardonnay sipping intelectuals are not as soft as you think.

sorry about this Graham but i couldnt let that last post slide.