AUSTRALIAN soldiers have been involved in an incident in Afghanistan.

Defence Minister John Faulkner will address the media at 10.30am (AEST) in Canberra.

A statement from Defence says the next of kin of those involved in the incident have been notified.

No further information is available at this time.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/australian-soldiers-in-afghanistan-incident/story-e6frfku0-1225908073007#ixzz0xBomxTl2

Next of Kin being contacted first


How many more Australian must die for this pointless war


Bring Them Home

____ wrote on Aug 21^st, 2010 at 9:17am:

Next of Kin being contacted first How many more Australian must die for this pointless war Bring Them Home

Hear, hear!

1. Yes, bring them home.
2. Then carpet bomb the place.
3. Then give 'em 3 months to show if they have grown a brain.
4. If not, 2 above.
5. Repeat until 3. is 'yes'

The only good reason for us to be in Afghanistan or the Middle East at all is if we're actually taking part in a strategic attempt to secure some critical resource (namely crude oil) or to destroy some adversary who attacked us. If we are attacked, the only appropriate response is a Roman one; entire cities suspected of harboring aggressors should be denuded of their mortals, and the skulls of the dead should be piled up into an enormous pyramid, sending a warning to all others that dare cross us. Authorities responsible for lending support to our enemies should simply be boiled alive. The Muslim world should be allowed to exist as it desires, and I have no interest in "nation building" or bringing it democracy, but if we are attacked by it we should respond like with like; in the most brutal and unforgiving manner imaginable.

Two Australian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan yesterday, my thoughts are with their family & friends.

perceptions_now wrote on Aug 21^st, 2010 at 10:38am:

Two Australian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan yesterday, my thoughts are with their family & friends.

Ditto!

This is very sad news...  :'(

We're only there to protect American interests. It is part of the deal Howard signed with Bush et al.

The Russians who had a far more disciplined and aggressive army than us had to retreat, so where does that leave us. Stuck there for decades defending the interests of the multinationals.

The number of our troops dying are increasing rapidly - so how many Australians do we have to lose before the government of the day withdraws from this contract?

Obviously the western presence in Afghanistan hasn't improved living conditions or stopped the "enemies" - just the opposite - but the gas and oil pipelines have to go through regardless of the financial and human cost.

mantra wrote on Aug 21^st, 2010 at 11:11am:

We're only there to protect American interests. It is part of the deal Howard signed with Bush et al. The Russians who had a far more disciplined and aggressive army than us had to retreat, so where does that leave us. Stuck there for decades defending the interests of the multinationals. The number of our troops dying are increasing rapidly - so how many Australians do we have to lose before the government of the day withdraws from this contract? Obviously the western presence in Afghanistan hasn't improved living conditions or stopped the "enemies" - just the opposite - but the gas and oil pipelines have to go through regardless of the financial and human cost.

In the big bad world, it`s called National survival.

Quote:

We're only there to protect American interests. It is part of the deal Howard signed with Bush et al.

I would like to think they are getting something out of it, like democracy.

True democracy comes from grassroots domestic uprising - and definitely not from a foreign invasion to install a proxy regime favoured by the invaders...

Democracy is rule by majority, nothing more. Grassrooting or not, it is still democracy.

freediver wrote on Aug 21^st, 2010 at 3:21pm:

Democracy is rule by majority, nothing more. Grassrooting or not, it is still democracy.

Even by that definition, those waging the oxymoronic 'war on terror' do not appear to be empowering the peope nor facilitating rule by majority - nor is there much freedom of speech or press...

Certainly, Westerners are receiving a heavily pre-sanitised pro-Western propaganda version of events in the ME - and that is neither representative nor reflective of the true state of 'democracy' (or otherwise) in the ME...

Western-led globalisation-cum-exploitation is at the root of most of the humanitarian and civil troubles around the world today - and,  there is no hope for world peace and harmony, unless and until Western powermongers start to take responsibility for same (and start respecting the fundamental rights, resources and other interests of the peoples of Non-Western nations)...

I can't take your blather anymore. It makes me want to pull out my hair in frustration.

Following on from Imp's post, and with regard to the thread title, out of respect for the lost soldiers and their loved ones:  I, for one, shall refrain from making further comments on this thread about the agenda of war.

Equitist wrote on Aug 21^st, 2010 at 3:28pm:

Even by that definition, those waging the oxymoronic 'war on terror' do not appear to be empowering the peope nor facilitating rule by majority - nor is there much freedom of speech or press...

"War on terror" is not an oxymoron... It's another way of saying "fighting fire with fire" and while that might be ironic, it ain't oymoronic... As opposed to, say, "warriors for peace burning down the village in order to save it."... Which is what the US ended up doing to Iraq... well... they burnt it down, anyway... The chances of its razing being its salvation... Pretty slim.

On the Iraq catastrophe, I was watching a recent video of Canon Andrew White... A man clearly being driven into madness by his enduring hope for Iraq and his unfailing respect for the Iraqi people in the face of the country's unprecedented destruction.

____ wrote on Aug 21^st, 2010 at 9:17am:

Next of Kin being contacted first How many more Australian must die for this pointless war Bring Them Home

No, Afghanistan isn't the 'pointless war'...Iraq IS...

It is never pointless to stand up to oppression and brutality.  Disbursement of resources, and prioritisation though, are other matters.

Equitist wrote on Aug 21^st, 2010 at 3:28pm:

freediver wrote on Aug 21st, 2010 at 3:21pm: Democracy is rule by majority, nothing more. Grassrooting or not, it is still democracy. Even by that definition, those waging the oxymoronic 'war on terror' do not appear to be empowering the peope nor facilitating rule by majority - nor is there much freedom of speech or press... Certainly, Westerners are receiving a heavily pre-sanitised pro-Western propaganda version of events in the ME - and that is neither representative nor reflective of the true state of 'democracy' (or otherwise) in the ME...

They have some stiff opposition to free speech and democracy. It would be a great shame for the Afghani people if that opposition won out.

freediver wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2010 at 9:56am:

Equitist wrote on Aug 21st, 2010 at 3:28pm: freediver wrote on Aug 21st, 2010 at 3:21pm: Democracy is rule by majority, nothing more. Grassrooting or not, it is still democracy. Even by that definition, those waging the oxymoronic 'war on terror' do not appear to be empowering the peope nor facilitating rule by majority - nor is there much freedom of speech or press... Certainly, Westerners are receiving a heavily pre-sanitised pro-Western propaganda version of events in the ME - and that is neither representative nor reflective of the true state of 'democracy' (or otherwise) in the ME... They have some stiff opposition to free speech and democracy. It would be a great shame for the Afghani people if that opposition won out.

True, but let's hope our coalition of the peacemakers don't inflict the same fate as has been imposed on Iraq - Burning down the village in order to save it.

It's 'killing the chicken and letting the monkeys watch'.

Or carpet bomb until desired result emerges.

Which is what? Killing them all?

aikmann4 wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2010 at 8:31pm:

Which is what? Killing them all?

Not all. Just the enemy.

How do we know which ones are the enemy and which ones are civilians?

aikmann4 wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2010 at 8:34pm:

How do we know which ones are the enemy and which ones are civilians?

It is easy to tell when you are flying a fighter bomber, apparently. Technology, innit.

Soren wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2010 at 8:32pm:

aikmann4 wrote on Aug 22nd, 2010 at 8:31pm: Which is what? Killing them all? Not all. Just the enemy.

Ah - I see you were on the advisory board for the Vietnam war too, dear. Of course, the carpet bombing there went much further. The enemy were hiding in Cambodia and Laos, and would have been sharpening their bamboo spikes in China too, if the Chinese didn't have all those nasty nukes and a million soldiers to back them up against the US's shag piles. I guess we can't carpet bomb everywhere...

Or can we?

Can I ask though, old boy, apart from assisting the shareholders of companies like Lockhead Martin, what purpose does carpet bombing serve again?

Apart from destroying villages and crops and jungles and fostering groups like the Khmer Rouge, or encouraging the "enemy" to work in ingenious underground tunnels, or creating a resistance that will, as history has shown, become harder and stronger and more mean when you eventually leave a country, say, in 2011?

Don't get me wrong. I love a good carpet bombing as much as the next person. Guernica is one of my favourite paintings of all time. I love the sheer beauty of mass aerial destruction, the dazzling display of technological supremacy, the sight of all those backward, tinted peasants running into the jungle and, just as they get there, being felled by machine gun fire.

I like to watch it on TV.

But apart from the all the pleasure we receive from carpet bombing, what purpose does it actually serve?

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2010 at 11:12pm:

Soren wrote on Aug 22nd, 2010 at 8:32pm: aikmann4 wrote on Aug 22nd, 2010 at 8:31pm: Which is what? Killing them all? Not all. Just the enemy. Ah - I see you were on the advisory board for the Vietnam war too, dear. Of course, the carpet bombing there went much further. The enemy were hiding in Cambodia and Laos, and would have been sharpening their bamboo spikes in China too, if the Chinese didn't have all those nasty nukes and a million soldiers to back them up against the US's shag piles. I guess we can't carpet bomb everywhere... Or can we? Can I ask though, old boy, apart from assisting the shareholders of companies like Lockhead Martin, what purpose does carpet bombing serve again? Apart from destroying villages and crops and jungles and fostering groups like the Khmer Rouge, or encouraging the "enemy" to work in ingenious underground tunnels, or creating a resistance that will, as history has shown, become harder and stronger and more mean when you eventually leave a country, say, in 2011? Don't get me wrong. I love a good carpet bombing as much as the next person. Guernica is one of my favourite paintings of all time. I love the sheer beauty of mass aerial destruction, the dazzling display of technological supremacy, the sight of all those backward, tinted peasants running into the jungle and, just as they get there, being felled by machine gun fire. I like to watch it on TV. But apart from the all the pleasure we receive from carpet bombing, what purpose does it actually serve?

It controls the weeds in your garden.  ;D

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2010 at 11:12pm:

But apart from the all the pleasure we receive from carpet bombing, what purpose does it actually serve?

It's educational.

where are the talibans ?? or just road side bombs ??

Soren wrote on Aug 23^rd, 2010 at 12:11pm:

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Aug 22nd, 2010 at 11:12pm: But apart from the all the pleasure we receive from carpet bombing, what purpose does it actually serve? It's educational.

It certainly is, old boy. The Taliban obtained a masterful education from the Russians.

Imperium,


Quote:

The only good reason for us to be in Afghanistan or the Middle East at all is if we're actually taking part in a strategic attempt to secure some critical resource (namely crude oil) or to destroy some adversary who attacked us. If we are attacked

We are there to serve the interests of the nations we are little lapdogs for. Nothing more nothing less. This nonsense about having our own national interests is just fairytale stuff, and I suspect you know it.


Quote:

the only appropriate response is a Roman one; entire cities suspected of harboring aggressors should be denuded of their mortals, and the skulls of the dead should be piled up into an enormous pyramid, sending a warning to all others that dare cross us

Actually that'd be a Mongol-response. It doesn't surprise me you'd consider such barbarity to be acceptable. Your ideas have nothing in common with Rome or any other civilisation for that matter, they are basic primal instincts of racialism/tribalism/nationalism. You are little more than an ape who learnt how to type and realised he might get more bananas by sticking together with the other apes who look and smell just like him.

hilarious! gee that one got to you, abu.

fd,


Quote:

I would like to think they are getting something out of it, like democracy. Democracy is rule by majority, nothing more. Grassrooting or not, it is still democracy.

I can't believe you honestly still believe this nonsense. How much more does the Western campaign to "democratise" Afghanistan have to fail for you to finally wake up to the reality?

Quote:

We are there to serve the interests of the nations we are little lapdogs for. Nothing more nothing less. This nonsense about having our own national interests is just fairytale stuff, and I suspect you know it.

Of course. But we're a little country with no real ability to project our power abroad. The reality of geopolitics is that many small countries are ineluctably brought under the aegis and influence of major powers; in our case, the United States.


Quote:

Actually that'd be a Mongol-response. It doesn't surprise me you'd consider such barbarity to be acceptable.

I see no reason from our vantage point in this situation the denziens of the Muslim world deserve their existences to be valued in any significant way. If we ever let the lives of a few people get in the way of the eradication of those that seriously our threaten our kin and the integrity of our tribe we will only find ourselves pushed aside by others that have sharper elbows and a firmer sense of their own peoplehood.

Your brothers in arms certainly aren't reluctant to apply this principle in their treatment of Westerners.


Quote:

You are little more than an ape who learnt how to type and realised he might get more bananas by sticking together with the other apes who look and smell just like him.

Wouldn't he? If he started letting the other, weaker, band of apes into his territory they would probably just start complaining about how their inability to obtain as many bananas as his group of apes was directly a result of his apes discriminating against them in the banana collecting process. Then a small, effeminate subset of his apes would start sympathizing with these apes and start passing jungle laws establishing that his apes are required to relinquish 5% of their annual bananas and mangos to the weaker apes and start allowing more and more of the weaker apes in via junglegration. Eventually the weaker apes would form a majority group and start creating, without the aid of the sympathizing apes of the other group, overtly discriminatory policies in banana and mango collecting schools and the palm tree corporate workforce. The territory would then become so inefficient and poorly run that the band of monkeys from the east end of the rainforest would notice and overrun and destroy the former territory, taking it, and all of the bananas, for themselves.

Karzai slowly peels his banana. His boy should be doing this. Where is the boy?

Ah, yes. In the Ministry of Mining and Energy, being briefed. Allah be praised, these are dark days indeed. A servant gets to be a cabinet minister - why not send in a dozen apes? A thousand?

Karzai knows that his entire cabinet are apes, but at least they are HIS apes. The boy? Not to be trusted. Rule number one in politics is to never trust your underlings. You can trust your ape effendes because you have certain informations on them. Karzai has informations on his entire cabinet. Corruption, sodomy, murder, drug trafficking, the lot. The worse they are, the more useful they are, it is an old rule of thumb.

Democracy in Afghanistan is just a way for the scum to float to the top. Everyone knows it. If you went into the streets of Karbul and picked a random 20 rickshaw wallahs, porters, tea boys and drug dealers, you'd get a more effective and congenial government than the present one. But no, it could not be done this way. Democracy requires apes, and apes it shall be.

Karzai throws the peel at the wall. Kabesh! Oh, why bother? No one listened anyway.

Only on this forum can you read smacking Hamid Karzai fanfiction.

aikmann4 wrote on Aug 24^th, 2010 at 3:44pm:

Only on this forum can you read smacking Hamid Karzai fanfiction.

Yes, but it's quality Hamid Karzai fanfiction.
Therein lies the difference.  ;D

My thoughts are with their family & friends of the Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan yesterday.