TV pictures of Sunday's Rememberance service at Afghanistan's Camp Bastion pose a question.
The need to honour Rememberance Day is clear, but the appearance of crucifixes on these occasions in Afghanistan itself, is a bonus to the Taliban. You can bet that copies will be being passed around amongst them, especially the young and impressionable ,as undeniable evidence of a jihad on the part of the western alliance. Time to delink religious from military affairs? The same though occured recently when standing on the site of the Isandalwana massacre of the British by the Zulus and reading the sad epitaphs "For God and Country". What had God got to do with it? We had turned on our erstwhile allies. There were no religious factors involved.How could we justify what we were doing by claiming it was some kind of crusade? It wasn't and nor is Afghanistan. A war against extremists, yes, but against Islam as a whole no. That has to be completely clear to avoid any possibility, intentional or unintentional, of being accused that it is part of our agenda.
