i apologise if this issue has been done to death. i am australian, and the general view here is that the afghanistan war is very different to the iraq war. iraq is seen as a mistake, an ongoing nightmare which we are pulling out of because we should never have been there in the first place.

afghanistan is seen differently. it is viewed as a just war, a neccessary war driven by totally different reasons and with a different aim. australia has had one death in iraq which was interpreted as a complete waste, totally unneccesary and unjust and another good reason to get the hell out. there have been several deaths in afghanistan which is seen as the inevitable toll of war, but we still need to stay the course and fight the good fight.

i was wondering if the same sort of division is seen anywhere else. the media tend to report on both wars as if they are the same thing, but nobody else thinks of them as related at all. does america, or any of the other involved nations, have the same kind of view ? and is the media interpreting them differently or just the population ?

Being in Britain what i see is the media reporting it as you suggest the people see it, while the people see it very differently on the whole.

Afghanistan is just as unjust. It is an occupation and the Afghans dont want us there. The taliban are not my enemy. No taliban has ever done anything to me or any brit. No Afghan ever did anything against American either. No Afghan was on board those planes that crashed into those towers on 9/11. On the other hand plenty of Saudi's were.

America created the whole mess in Afghanistan long ago when they called their now enemies their friiend, when they armed them to the teeth to take down a government that built schools for women, gave free education and started to modernise the country and take it out of the stone age.

I think we should leave the Afghans the hell alone, stop occupying their land. We're not welcome there and never will be. Every day we stay we make another new enemy.

__________________
Viva Fidel

"If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism"

"North Americans don't understand... that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity"

Well that is the general gist of it. Except now the media and anti-administration public has spilled there hatred against Afghanistan as well.

And Iraq, as controversial as it can be seen, was not a total waste. A dictator was overthrown, the local population has turned against radical elements including Al-Queada and other terrorist networks and extremists (part of a larger positive movement in the middle east right now), the people were freed-- kurds refer to coalition forces as "the liberators"--, and a democratic representational government is being established to solve issue that were once controlled either controlled by military power and tyrannical rule or religous zealots vying for power. The tension beneath Iraq was always there, it was only waiting for Saddam to lose power--and Saddam bred it under his regime. The question of oil, un-prepared for casualties mostly on account of sectarian killings and bombings, and poor intelligence on Wmds is still in effect and definately affected policies going into the war. Its a shade of grey--some political motivations for war were ulterior, some were not--the outcome has had violence, but also change and the dawn of a better time for Iraqis as the country is repaired and a democracy is put into place. Hopefully things will end on a positive note.

__________________
"...Follow the crystal star to the pyre of the flame; there exists the dwelling of the spreading fire. The heart of this life rests upon the fate of that place, and what begins there sends a contagion to the rest of the universe.
As long as the fire burns we shall never be free..." (The Shadows of Yavara, Final Reclamation)

Invasion of Afghanistan had a direct link to 9/11. Terrorists were being given safe haven there by the Taliban government, and this included Osama and the Al Qaeda leadership. 9/11 for America is a parallel to Pearl Harbor. I have no issue in getting some payback, closing down a safe haven, getting a new popularly supported government in office, beating back Taliban and Al Qaeda attacks from across the Pakistan border. We also need to be there and negotiating with Pakistan about eliminating their safe haven for Osama and Al Qaeda. And this may entail our cross the boarder strikes either by artillery shelling, air strikes, drones or infantry as negotiated with the new Pakistan government.

And the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden in return for the evidence against him. The offer was ignored.

__________________
"Well done Dubya. You freakin' imbecile." - ViolaLee

I agree with almost everything you say comrade, the exception being this: "the taliban are not my enemy." The taliban are my enemy as they ran a cruel and unjust regime, supressing the people, especially the women, of Afghanistan and as such are my enemy. But the rest of what you say I agree with.

__________________
Trust me, I'm a socialist!

There's power in a factory,power in the land, power in the hand of the worker. But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand, there is power in a union.
The union forever defending our rights, down with the blackleg, workers unite. To our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands, there is power in a union.
Money speaks for money, the devil for his own. - Billy Bragg

And how would you feel if Al Qaeda nuked London and they were still in Afghanistan with terrorist training camps?

Nuked? I think that's going a bit far Michael. The simple fact is that terrorist attacks have gone up since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and it is well known and cited by the terrorists themselves that the attacks on Britain are as a result of our wars on the middle east. Terrorist attacks happen against imperialism, the IRA attacked us because we were in Ireland, the PKK makes attacks in Turkey because Turkey occupies what it would like to be called Kurdistan and terrorist attacks on Britain and America from Al-qaeda happen because of British and American imperialism in the middle east.

__________________
Trust me, I'm a socialist!

There's power in a factory,power in the land, power in the hand of the worker. But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand, there is power in a union.
The union forever defending our rights, down with the blackleg, workers unite. To our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands, there is power in a union.
Money speaks for money, the devil for his own. - Billy Bragg

My wild guess would be UK citizens would be outraged at any major 9/11 type event on their soil and want payback. It would also present a compelling case in point for national security and taking specific terrorist groups out of action.

Yes, but it would be unlikely that there would be any terrorist attack if we kept our armies out of the middle east, the possibility is there but it's highly improbable. I also don't consider British national security any more important than that of Afghanistan, and then there's also the fact that many more innocent Afghanis have been killed in this war than were killed in 9/11, quite apart from the argument that a 9/11 type attack on Britain without the wars on the middle east is highly unlikely.

__________________
Trust me, I'm a socialist!

There's power in a factory,power in the land, power in the hand of the worker. But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand, there is power in a union.
The union forever defending our rights, down with the blackleg, workers unite. To our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands, there is power in a union.
Money speaks for money, the devil for his own. - Billy Bragg