To accompany today's episodes of Inside Afghanistan with Ben Anderson, we asked Ben what he thought about the media's portrayal of all soldiers as miserable, unwilling dupes and the reason we keep bombing so many weddings. Here's what he had to say.You often get these stories about our poor soldiers, and these harsh conditions. Yeah, they haven't got enough equipment, and yeah, their food could be a bit better, and yeah, they could get a bit more time at home between tours--but one thing you miss out on is a lot of these guys love to fight, and they want to do it. They walk into situations where they know the Taliban think they are leading them into a trap and are going to surround them. Sometimes they even annoy the Taliban enough to provoke a fight. It's an aspect of war which is often forgotten or ignored. Soldiers go out looking for "contact," as they call it, and a good contact is one that lasts a while.
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