War part 1

I have always been a bit of a pacifist, but public opinion is moving away from my views at a rate of knots and I find it a very worrying situation.

We are at war in Afghanistan and I understand the well-rehearsed arguments that once we are there we need to leave the country in a sensible and responsible way.

But let's be honest, since World War 2, no war has been waged that is in self-defence of British citizens. I know some people will argue with me about that but most places where there are wars today are places where the rich west has put its nose in and disrupted how the country works. Afghanistan and Iraq were both sites of previous wars in the last few decades. A lot of the problems in Africa are because white settlers arrived and forced black people to be second-class citizens. A lot more problems exist in Africa because white people decided the nation had to be split into countries, and chose boundaries that were fixed and not necessarily aligned with tribal boundaries. So even in the long term, war and meddling with other people's affairs is usually not justified.

It's even counter-productive, because wars abroad fire people up to be extremists and terrorist movements are bolstered.

In the short term war is even worse. People die, and every person who dies has a family and friends and acquaintances, hundreds of people whose life will be changed for the worse. Most of the people who die in conflicts are civilians. Anyone who has had someone close to them die will understand what I mean when I say that a premature death is a terrible terrible thing.

Civilians die, enemy soldiers die, our own troops die, and every death is a tragedy.