100 UK Soldiers Dead in Afghanistan

We are supposed to respect the sacrifice made by these soldiers. This of course I do.

Our soldiers have mothers and family who grieve their loss. They have a vicious enemy which they have to fight in unforgiving terrain. They have limited supplies. They have dreams of a long and successful life, not of perishing in a bleak desert.

But then I'm a Taliban. I suppose the same must be true of the British soldiers.

If we respect the sacrifice made my British soldiers, there is no reason I can see why we do not in the same act respect the sacrifice made by the Taliban.

In 1997 I sent an article to the papers asking for wreaths to be laid at the Cenotaph (in London) in honour of German, Italian and Japanese war dead. They made exactly the same sacrifice, they are equally the heroic victims of war, why are they not remembered?

So it is simple. Either we remember all the war dead, and remember the tragedy that is war; or we remember none.

And, in this it is plain the futility of war, and the profound error that is made by all humans to grasp at that which they can call "theirs" and that which they will dismiss as "not theirs". It is the foundation of all the world's evils as I can see it. It is why my bosses think I don't work for them any more (it is why they thought I ever did work for them). When they buy something in the future which I have made, am I not still working for them? Are we not always working for everyone always? The rest as argued is simply the dressings of vanity and fetishised role playing. People love to dress up and act (suits, robes, gowns, coats, uniforms: see; business men, barristers, judges, graduates, doctors, police) it is just part of the fantasy that obscures life for many people. The red carpets, the entourage of sycophants, the titles, the meetings etc all designed to avoid this mysterious "void" which governs all. I certainly don't fight with bosses to be part of this (or not part of it - I must remember that would only work to suck me in) it is just to get a break from the myths which powerfully perv-ert/ade our world.