Woolwich Attack

[Pentagathus]

The invasion I was referring to was the invasion of Iraq. I know we aren't involved in Iraq anymore but Iraq is still pretty much in a state of civil war, partly thanks to the invasion. And I don't think that our government actually had enough popular backing for the invasion of Iraq for that to be considered a democratic choice. As to soldiers outside a war zone, who gets to decide what is and isn't a war zone? If we were to attack another western country we wouldn't be able to claim they can't retaliate because our country wasn't a war zone.
I know that our involvement in Afghanistan was/is probably a good thing and not done for personal gain, but these guys have been led to believe it isn't, and they presumably believe that the withdrawal of western troops from middle eastern war zones will lead to a quick ceasefire. If that were the case then there could be justification for their actions if they also believed their actions would lead to said withdrawal of our troops. Obviously it isn't going to affect our foreign policy and I don't understand how they could expect it to do so, but at least I can see some logical reasoning for this attack, unlike the attacks of radical muslims who believe that any westerner is a legitimate target because somehow thats what they think their god would want.

[Clockwork]

But they didn't attack any (civilian) citizens, although they had plenty of opportunity to do so. We are actually at war, and we have been for more than a decade. We also chose to enter these wars. That does make our soldiers legitimate targets for the enemy, whether they are at home or fighting in a foreign country.

As an addition to what Jubal said. Not only is it extremely dishonorable to attack an unarmed soldier, even in a designated warzone, it's not the way the UN has declared is proper to conduct warfare. Crtisize my old fashioned expectation that war should follow rules if you wish but I do think there should be honor and pride in justified armed conflict (though don't start on whether this war is justified, that's a whole different debate and I doubt we'd ever finish it). If our soldier had been armed when this attack took place, it would still have been wrong, but it would have been less utterly dispicable.

Now I'm not agreeing with the attack, but I can certainly sympathise with the attackers (well, at least the one who seems to be from a nigerian christian family, haven't heard anything about the other guy) since they have actually tried to get us out of the war through peaceful protest (see his involvement with the Muslims against crusades movement.) They don't seem to be motivated by the fact that they are muslims, but rather by the fact that they believe our government is discriminating against muslims in an extremely heavy handed way, and has caused vast amounts of suffering and civilian casualties.

Again in addition to what Jubal said, about Muslims against Crusades. So their peaceful protest failed, you're saying that gives them the right to persue this protest in non-peaceful terms? That's simply absurd. I've also not said they use violent means or that the attack itself was because they're muslims. The vast majority of muslims living in the UK are decent, regular British citizens who I'd be more than happy fighting for the right to practice their faith and for their freedom. This attack was in the name of the Muslim faith, it's not mere speculation because they're Muslim: they shouted something along the lines of 'allah is greatest' though the actual wording is mentioned in one of the links posted here.

Except of course we can't send them to Afghanistan because they're not Afghans.

I wasn't claiming the two cases were directly comparable, but there are similarities - any hate crime is in some sense designed to increase fear and mistrust in a particular community. This one clearly was an extremely explicit and disgusting act of terrorism and was very public for media effect, but I just think the Prime Minister wasn't dealing with it in quite the right way.

Been extremely disturbed by reports of revenge attacks on mosques this morning.

True, we can't deport them, they are British citizens that should continue to have the rights of British citizens. I was answering the questions directly and outside of context I guess. The attacks on the mosque were barbaric. The EDL are a group of racists and people living in fear. I guess I've come across a bit like one of those assholes but in reality I'm not. I'm not anti-Muslim and I'm sure as hell not a racist.

[Pentagathus]

No you didn't come across as racist, although it seems I've come across as supporting the attack. I don't support it in any way, or think it was the right thing to do, but I can see how the attackers could think so.
War has never been honorable. Is it honorable that we use drones to attack Taliban members/supporters who have no means of defending themselves? Was it honourable when Bin Laden was shot dead whilst unarmed by US troops? You take any advantage you can in a war, providing it doesn't cost civilian lives. If we were to fight honourably in afghanistan then we would have lost already.
No I'm not saying Muslims against the Crusades have the right to pursue violent methods of protest, but if we were to accept that our forces being in A'stan is causing the conflict there then violent protest could be justified in the same way that using violence against the Taliban is justified. (I'm not against our involvement if A'stan by the way, although I feel that the invasion of Iraq was utterly immoral and has caused a great deal of suffering.)
I wouldn't even say the attack was necessarily in the name of the muslim faith, it seems more like it was motivated by the attacker's belief that british soldiers are indiscriminately killing muslims. If I believed that british soldiers were doing that I'd be utterly appalled, and I'm not a muslim. Obviously their involvement with Islamic radicals has led to the attackers believing that they were doing the right thing, but that doesn't mean their actions were carried out in the name of Islamic faith,

[Clockwork]

I didn't believe you did, it just seemed an odd (to my small mind) point that because their peaceful protest failed that this woud be the next logical step. I agree that the attackers would think they're in the right, everyone with those kind of convictions always does.

First off, I've only recently become interested in politics and world politics, so my knowledge on the Iraq war is non-existant(still catching up!) so I don't have a leg to stand on about the ethics or legality of that war. I have however seen interviews with soldiers posted in both Afghanistan and Iraq and almost universally they say that they're unsure of what they really accomplished in Iraq but in Afghanistan the reaction from the Afghan people was on the whole very positive, which corroborates what you have said.

Military service has a very long history of being honorable. Fighting wars decently and honorably is not the same now as it was during say (early)WW1 where marching towards entrenched heavy machine guns was the norm and while incessantly stupid from our point of view, anything less was considered dishonorable and no man worth his weight would consider running. Consider the Samurai with their code of Bushio (bear with me, I know this was a fair while ago). They would still use artillery to weaken the opposing army before closing with the enemy and initiating duels. Now take the drone example, that is the artillery in a sense. It's aim is to weaken the opposition, but ground troops still walk/ride in with every possibility of being killing and being killed fighting for their country, it takes bravery and courage associated with and contributing to militaristic honor. Yes I took a fairly tangential route to get to what I mean but I think it demonstrates my point a little more clearly.

The attacks were carried out in allah's name (last post refers to it more). It definitely doesn't represent the muslim faith but in the minds of the attackers, allah would be proud of them.

[Pentagathus]

Well the official reasons given for invading Iraq was to disarm them of WMDs which were a threat to global peace. However WMDs have not been found in Iraq and there was never any solid evidence that Iraq had them, so that smells most mightily of bullarmadillo. The war led to the toppling of a brutally oppressive but relatively stable government and replaced it with a weak democratic(ish) government which has been unable to prevent sectarian violence throughout the country. It also happened a couple of years after we entered Afghanistan, so took resources from there and probably allowed the Taliban to regain power within A'stan, and almost certainly led to a rise in anti-western sympathies within the middle east.
On the other hand we were invited into A'stan by their government aid their civil war against the Taliban who were a minority group largely funded and supported by external parties (funded by Saudi Arabia and provided with military support from pakistan and with mercenaries from parts of the asia and africa) and who enforced very strict interpretations of islamic law, carried out massacres against the afghan population and a scorched earth policy as well as denying UN food supplies to starving citizens. AFAIK the only real reasons they're still quite strong is that they are still aided by external parties and the Afghan government is highly corrupt.

And as to military honour, yes I suppose it does exist. But its absolutely worthless. Samurai may have treated each other with honour, but many of them had no qualms about mistreating civilians and peasant troops.

[Clockwork]

Well the sub-point about military honor I was making is that it's the reason we can say we can conduct war in a foreign country as the good guys. Samurai mistreatment of peasants was a class thing not a military thing.

Thanks for the info! Good to get some grounding on it at least.

[Jubal]

Yeah - though most of the main problems with both Iraq and Afghanistan were not our interventions per se but our totally dumb way of going about them.

Like when we went into Iraq the US guy in charge unilaterally disbanded the entire Iraqi army and security services, then was surprised that there were a armadilloload of unemployed men with guns wandering around. Also, for any intervention the main issue is reconstruction. That's been the issue in Afghanistan - the Afghan government is so corrupt that for law and justice people will often still go to the local Taliban who enforce strict Sharia but at least don't take bribes.