British troops

Where is the enemy?

The reality is the majority of British troops (or any army anywhere in the world) is made up largely of young people who sometimes don't have much choice other than to join the army for socio economic reasons. We send 18 and early 20's young men and women to fight wars that they know very little about and they sacrifice their young life's so any criticism against the British or any other army should be restricted to the politicians that get us into messy situations and not the young people who go and get killed. And unfortunately until the united left takes over the world and there is no need for war or conflicts there will be an army and wars will continue to happen.

The greatest issue therefore with the British and NATO involvement in Afghanistan is one of scale. Britain is desperate to show that it still has an imperialist role to play in the world when we clearly can't afford to do that and chasing after the Americans dirty underpants is not a good reason for getting involved in adventures that will yield no fruit. Britain is as important or influential militarily as Spain, France or Turkey and none of those countries insist on putting so many soldiers on foreign battle fields. So the government here should do us all a favor and come to terms with reality? There is no empire to defend any more....