when are we going to pull out troops?

[southeastastra]

all these kids dying - for what??

To fight against terrorists. They know the risks when they signed up. It's not paintballing in the welsh countryside. You join up there is a risk you will lose your life.

Oooh and before I am slammed for saying that, in 2004 my brother was killed in Iraq.

Inscotland, sorry to hear about your brother.

I just wish they would raise the age to go to war. Maybe 25, 18 is too young.

am sad for your brother too inscotland. just seems to be so many 18/19 years olds getting killed. they aren't experienced enough.

I am with InScotland in this. The troops over there have a much better persopectiveoin what they are fighting, and the threat to us in the west, than we get from our media. Freedom and democracy is worth fighting - and sometimes dying - for.

Sorry for your loss InScotland.

SEA, it isn;t just in the army that 18/19 year olds get killed - its everywhere. Its not down to inexpereince, it's down to the fact that they take more risks.

And I think pulling the US troops out of Iraq was Obama's first big blunder.

i don't see how an 18 year old can be experienced in anything much let alone fighting in a war.

not experienced, no, but trained - trained very hard and very well. It's shite but blame the terrorists not the government, nor the soldiers. Thats why we are there.

Sorry for your loss InScotland, I've lost friends but not family and the hurt never leaves.

The brave lads out there are fighting a cancerous ideology which has been allowed to fester within one of the world's greatest faiths, thanks to indifferent and misguided Western foreign policies over the decades since oil was discovered. Two things will have to happen:

1. The faith itself will have to go through a phase akin to the same transition we in the West went through thanks to Martin Luther who broke Protesstantism away from Catholicism.

1. We will have to "clean up" this core of fanaticism by the only means possible in lawless lands i.e. militarily, and separate them from the rest of moderate Islam.

So all the intelligence communities thought; which is why we went in initially. My db goes off to Afghanistan this year for 6 months, so I am worried too. He won't be front line, but it is still a dangerous place to be.

I don't think that we can come out until some of the other NATO and EU member states start to do some of the heavy lifting. They are as ever happy for the Brits, Americans, Canadians and the Danes amongst others to do the dirty work in Helmand, whilst they piss about elsewhere. The Taliban have to be defeated, or at least ground down to the point where it will take them years to regroup. The farmers have to be given the opportunity to sell the poppy to the drug companies (and they have to give them a reasonable price) and we have to get infrastructure in there to improve lives.

However, until this bloody government actually takes defence seriously and starts funding it properly, there will be more deaths. It's not just about chucking money at the front line troops; it's about ensuring that procurement for the future is on track as well with replacing trident; making sure we have enough submarines to combat the resurgent Russian submarine threat; ensuring that we have vehicles that have half a chance of withstanding the IEDs used by the Taliban; giving the RAF heavy lift capability; giving all three services enough helicopters for their jobs; making sure the families have decent living conditions with Married Quarters; and that's just off the top of my head.

It pisses me off that we send international aid to China, when that money could be used to improve the chances of those on the front line.

InScotland - I am so sorry about your brother; I'm a service wife, sister, daughter and daughter in law, but however much you tell yourself it's their job and them's the breaks, they are still your family and nothing will ever take that away or the gutwrenching anguish of losing someone like that.

What strikes me with the Taliban and the more extreme manifestations of Islam is that they are where Christianity was 450/500 years ago. Islam was founded in 632 CE (approx), and so the extremists are going through their own 'Bloody Mary' and Spanish Inquisition period when one couldn't question Christianity.

The other problem is that Islam lends itself to a theocracy and the West is democratic, with a separation between church and state. Apart from Turkey, and the fault lines are beginning to appear there, I can't think of any Islamic country that allows the degree of secularisation that we have in Western Europe.

It evolves of its own accord? What does that mean?

1520ish I think was the beginnings of the Reformation, and then in England you began to have the secular/religious divide with the break with Rome. Granted, Henry wanted it for his own ends, but Elizabeth was to all intents and purposes a secular monarch, and it really went from there. That was what I was trying to say with Islam.

It's not an attack on Islam Riven; but it is a counter attack on those who would try to attack our way of life. I don't want the Taliban in the UK. I do not want to wear a burka, a niqqab or a hijab. I want the right to an education; to wear nail varnish, and to be able to go out unaccompanied by a male member of my family. I think that women in Afghanistan should have those rights too.

I don't think that the world can afford to wait 500 years for militant Islam to catch up with the rest of us.

Neither do I, but what is the alternative? I don't think imposing or trying to insert Sharia law works here either.

Freedom of worship means just that, but it doesn't mean that those who follow Islam, Judaism or whatever faith, have the right to bomb the country they live in because they don't like the way we do business. We have a democracy to resolve such issues. Even the IRA saw that in the end.

Clearing up fanaticism which manifests itself by radicalising young men and encouraging them to embark on a warped form of jihad, ending in myriad deaths and a memorial service like that held for the 7/7 victims yesterday.

We also need to tighten up immigration, and to question those young men who come back from Pakistan to see if they have been in the Madrassahs and what they've learned there. Security needs to be overtly conspicuous and at times heavy handed at airports and ports, and if they bring in laptops, they need to be examined thoroughly and then returned. Security also needs to be beefed up on the covert side too.

We also need to tighten up on the radical Muslim clerics that we allow to preach sedition here under the guise of freedom of worship and kick them out. The man we are holding as we can't deport him under the European Human Rights Act (I bet the French would kick him out), because his safety can't be guaranteed in Jordan should be deported, and then those wanting his release could deal with Jordan, and not us.

Yes people change, but that is not a passive phenomenon. People are active agents in the world. "We gradually changed." - actually things have changed with remarkable speed since the Renaissance and Enlightenment, there is nothing passive or gradual about it. 500 years is not a long time. And it came at huge human cost. Liberal democracy at considerably less cost than Marxism or facism though, these ideologies using people as means to an end.

The West fought for its liberties, fought to challenge tyranny and religious dogma. It pulled itslf out of the Dark Ages by choice, not by accident.

"if an outside society had come in and tried to force change poeple get more defensive and militant and entrenched." No, some people become more defensive - usually those with the most to lose, which are not typically the majority. You are right that change does not happen over night. It takes time for seeds to germinate, for people to grasp just what is at stake. To make the choice between freedom and tyranny.

And who has 'imposed' freedom and democracy? They had the choice not to vote for it. They did. Now the ancien regime is attempting to assert itself - so much is predicatble, but it has been fundamentally destabilised by the voices of dissent from within as well as without.

I think when attacks such as 9/11 and 7/7 are carried out, then we are entitled to defend ourselves. Some would argue what we are doing in Afghanistan is doing just that.

Fine if you don't want America or UK to police the world - what would you like to see instead? Iran threatening Israel with nukes, and the Israelis responding in kind? India and Pakistan (both nuclear states) head to head over Kashmir? America isn't perfect, but it acts as a peace broker at times.

Islamic fundamentalists are on UK soil and wish to do us harm. London isn't nicknamed Londonistan for fun, but for a very good reason. These people don't care who they hurt; religion, creed or colour don't mean a thing to them. This fundamentalism is imported from places such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have to combat it however we can, and starting with the Taliban seems a good ploy to me.

7/7 was arguably a response to UK invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. 9/11 was partly a response to US military involvement in the Middle East. It is far from clear that our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has made UK safer from terrorism. The opposite is likely the case.

Also 'police' operation sounds like the US is operating in some impersonal global mission for the good of the world. It is defending its interests (well or badly). Reasonable enough thing to do, but I resent the suggestion that it has the virtue or the mandate to make a moral crusade.