Posted on 10/27/2007 11:44:10 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
THE death of Special Air Service soldier Sergeant Matthew Locke on Thursday in Afghanistan is a terrible reminder that there is rarely such a thing as a war without casualties. Sergeant Locke died fighting a barbaric enemy that seeks not just to take Afghanistan back to the dark ages but to use it as a base from which to destroy us. Worryingly, the death of two Australian soldiers in three weeks is not just a tragic coincidence. Things are not going well in the poorly named war on terror. As Frank Furedi writes in Inquirer today, we have been unable even to name our enemy. It is not terrorism as such we are fighting but Islamist terrorists. We have been unable to say so because we believe those who claim that merely by identifying our enemies as Islamists we are demonising Muslims. Yet as Sally Neighbour recently said, it is not naming our enemies that makes Muslims look bad. Terrorists who kill civilians while shouting "Allah Akhbar" make Muslims look bad.
Yet that is only the beginning of our problems. Al-Qa'ida and the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan because, in neighbouring Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf ceded control of the lawless northwest provinces in September last year. These provinces are almost certainly sheltering not just Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri but 30 terrorist camps of the kind that trained Mohammed Atta and David Hicks.
Al-Qa'ida is already seeing dividends. The attack on Benazir Bhutto was almost certainly prepared in the tribal provinces. Since September last year, US military intelligence estimates that cross-border attacks on Afghanistan have increased by 300 per cent.(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
|
Seems like if they're no longer under Pakistani control, we don't need no steenking badges to go in there.
Were they ever under Paki control?
Pakistan ping
Maybe in the past, but not now. But the Pakis will scream bloody murder if we assume we can go in there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.