Afghanistan: Our troops are giving their lives to safeguard a rigged election

The Telegraph ^ | July 13, 2009 | Mary Riddell

[myknowledge]

All wars have anthems for doomed youth. Afghanistan is no exception. At a memorial service yesterday, senior officers paid tribute to the eight British soldiers who died in the worst day of attrition since the Falklands.

Of the three youngest, William Aldridge had a gift for friendship, Joseph Murphy was a fine artist and James Backhouse, who wanted to be a fitness instructor, could run faster than the wind. Like his two comrades, he was 18 years old. Like them, he was, according to his superiors' eulogies, prepared to kill and to be killed.

Helmand province is not the Somme, but Wilfred Owen's lament for squandered life has seemed, back in the UK, to echo down the years. "What candles may be held to speed them all?/Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes/Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes."

Owen blamed the state for sacrificing the young. Now, once again, government is deemed culpable as every parent sees, in the faces of the juvenile dead, an image of his or her own child. "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?" Owen asked.

[myknowledge]

The Brits have sent troops to Afghanistan, along with nations of allies, to secure a hopeless corrupt regime?

If this is true, then the soldiers must have died in vain.

[SatinDoll]

Hamid Karzai has had to confront ‘real polititc’ - and was consumed by it.

It ain’t easy running a medieval nation without a viable economy or a cohesive government.

[rawcatslyentist]

>" Our troops are giving their lives to safeguard a rigged election"

We know the feeling

[blueplum]

Harrump...and paashaw. no soldier ever dies ‘in vain’.

[x_plus_one]

What about our own rigged elections? Has No one seen that the millions of ACORN votes were cast in blue city states - places where there was no opposition or oversight to ballot box stuffing? The dead vote twice in Chicago.

Get ready for the next Iranian election right here in the good old USA in 2010. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

[wny]

In Minnesota?