Monday 27 July 2009

Going nowhere 2

Another new word heard on Radio 4 this morning. Somebody was blathering on about how it might be a good idea to negotiate with members of the Taliban who were prepared to "renunciate" violence. I don't think this guy was trying to introduce a neologism, he just needed to look up "renounce" in a proper dictionary.

I was only half listening, but I'm not sure that there's much room for negotiation with a bunch of religious monomaniacs who detest all the values the West is fighting to preserve in Afghanistan. Maybe the military need to change tactics to stop their own people and Afghan civilians being killed at such a rate. Maybe they might even have to conclude that the war is unwinnable with the resouces they could reasonably commit, but negotiating with the Taliban? You're not going to convince anyone to do that if you can't even learn to talk proper...

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