“if war is essentially about winning” There is as much chance of us finding victory in Afghanistan as there was of us finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ie zero chance. Indeed, the war propagandists no longer talk in terms of victory, they have cunningly changed the debate to terms of defeat eg we will be defeated in Afghanistan if we do not supply Afghan children with schools.

“the point I am making is that we need to adapt to win.” there is no point in adapting as we have already lost because we have murdered too many civilians. When I say we I mean our coalition partners, the Americans who have murdered and bombed and tortured thousands of Afghans. There is no way we can win the hearts and minds of people whose hearts and minds have been blown up by American bombers.

“is Afghanistan a war of survival for the West?” No. No Afghan has ever attacked the British mainland. No Taliban has ever attacked the American mainland.

“What are the criteria for committing our forces now the Powell Doctrine is obviously obsolete,” The Powell doctrine was obsolete at birth.

“and what effect will this have on future foreign policy?” we are not able to save the world, we are not the policemen of the world, indeed we are the criminals so we should concentrate on not breaking international law ourselves before preaching to others.

Sorry to be so blunt but you are over-intellectualising what is essentially a massacre and mistaken mission that we should never have gone along with.

No Afghan was involved in the attacks on the Twin Towers. If the Americans had sent in special forces to neutralise Alqaeda in Afghanistan then fair enough. They didn’t do that, they carried out a land invasion and occupation instead.

Which means they were only using the attacks on the Twin Towers as a cover to invade and occupy Afghanistan. That is a war crime. You talk of the Taliban breaking the Geneva Convention but you fail to acknowledge they would not be doing so if their country had not been illegally invaded and occupied.

We were wrong to occupy the country and the only way forward is to remove our troops immediately.

Mike, interesting to hear from someone on the ground, and that things don’t seem to have changed much. I think we need to start having this debate sooner rather than later…

– of course, and I’d expect the rules governing war to be completely different from those governing other activities. But the point still holds that within each domain, the rules are there to counterbalance incentives that exist to behave unethically. So while war should (of course) be governed by rules appropriate to war, I think it’s dangerous to suggest that the ‘high stakes’ involved in war mean the rules applying in that area need to be treated as more bendable than those operating in other areas. (In fact one could make a case for the opposite conclusion – that given what’s at stake, given what it means in terms of human rights and lives to bend the rules of war, those rules should be regarded as *more* sacred than those governing more trivial activities.)

What you said in that last reply makes sense to me, though: of course there’s always room to review & debate the rules.