An Illogical Proposal of an Unrealistic Peace

I only caught parts of Brown's scintillating discussion on Radio 4 this morning, mainly because I had it on a portable media system I purchased my milk and cereal, but I can't say that the first message that I took from it was Brown's commitment sending more troops to Afghanistan. Nor was it that Brown concluded that troops will not be in Afghanistan for eternity” . Both are, of course, huge headline grabbers with current public unease surrounding the war in Afghanistan.

While there is evidently a great deal of unease surrounding Obama's "alleged" stuttering and stammering over American involvement in Afghanistan, this did not seem to be the focus of Brown's announcement today.

Instead, what leapt out to me, was Brown's announcement of an attempt to coerce the Taliban into holding shares of full political office on the grounds that the violence and insurgency would cease.

The Analysis presented by The Times attempts to suggest that this is a good thing.

Currently the Taliban maintain their presence through aggressive oppression of the people of Afghanistan, drug and weapon crime and general hatred of Western culture. By strategically manoeuvring them into a political position, judging by the current government regime, they would therefore be able to oppress the people of Afghanistan, maintain drug and weapon crime and perpetuate general hatred of Western culture in the name of "democracy" and "Western culture". We would effectively be sanctioning their behaviour and attempting somehow suggest that we had successfully aided their communities.

While this is not a direct correlation with Northern Ireland, one can see the perpetual state of constant conflict that could be continued for just as long with just as much terrorist fallout.