According to The Independent:
British soldiers are engaged in “a surreal mini civil war” with growing numbers of home-grown jihadists who have travelled to Afghanistan to support the Taliban… Interceptions of Taliban communications have shown that British jihadists – some “speaking with West Midlands accents” – are active in Helmand and other parts of southern Afghanistan… the numbers of young British Muslims, “seemingly committed jihadists”, travelling abroad to commit extremist violence has been rising…
It would appear that people from the UK, evidently disappointed that they do not live in a mediaeval theocracy, are prepared to go overseas to fight for such a theocracy against all comers.
Would it not be rather easier, and perhaps cheaper, for everybody if the people who do want to live in such a society, and who is to criticise their individual choice, were all to go to Afghanistan, where they would doubtless be happier, and the Army were to return to Aldershot (etc.)?
If I thought that there was a country anywhere on Earth in which a truly Libertarian government obtained then, believe me, notwithstanding my distaste for foreign climes and the usually poisonous beasties therein to be discovered, the Villa Underclass would be on the market right now.
I certainly wouldn’t stay here and indulge in any more possibly futile attempts to change the Democratic Republic of Great Britain into something resembling what I’d call a civilised country.
So why don’t we retrieve what’s left of the Army (including my unfortunate cousin, who seems increasingly likely to die of old age in the theatre of war) and spend a tiny fraction of what is currently being spent on the absurdly nonsensical and militarily worthless Afghan ‘campaign’ instead on free air fares, hotels, taxis and whatnot for the disaffected Muslim youth of the West Midlands to indulge in a bit of what when I was a lad was called ‘voluntary service overseas’?
All they would have to do would be to give an undertaking to require their host government (in the majority of cases this would be the Taliban) to make similar provisions in respect of their return when ‘their Services were no longer Required’.
