Afghanistan

SheWolf wrote:

Feel free to jump in T. There's lots of marshmallows to roast on the fire.

Marshmellows, that's much better than Hot Dogs.

I'm waiting for the Christians who invaded Iraq and Afganistan to fight the Muslims to stop the killing and turn the other cheek; treating others the way they'd like to be treated; and, the Muslims to live up to the peace agenda of Allah. The only one who seems to walk the talk is the Dali Llama. Gee, I must be missing something. Oh, yeah, I remember, now; the future of "peace" is in the hands of video gamers in Las Vegas who fly drones flying over the mountains of Afganistan with real missles guided by lasers all paid for by money we borrow from the Chinese.

Sorry, I forgot this is a discussion of religions, love, forgiveness, and faith.

taoshum wrote:

I'm waiting for the Christians who invaded Iraq and Afganistan to fight the Muslims to stop the killing and turn the other cheek; treating others the way they'd like to be treated; and, the Muslims to live up to the peace agenda of Allah.

I'm in the military biz, so I find those concepts a bit interesting.

Whether you agree with religion or not, the great majority of people subscribing to religions don't use that religion as an excuse to go forth and commit mayhem, whether they are Christian, Muslim, or whatever. The view that's what religions do is like suggesting everyone with dirt bikes just goes out and tears the hell out of environmentally sensitive areas, because that's what dirt bikers do. It amounts to cherrypicking the exceptions to prove the rule.

The last time I looked, the oath our militarys take has no reference to defending - or serving under the tenants - of any religion. And having spent a lot of my time on military bases, the idea of tacking a religious label on our forces is pretty ridiculous. The church parking lots seem fairly quiet on Sundays, and I can't quite remember the last time we were addressed by any padre, short of a funereal. And I have been in several Muslim countries where many people don't make multiple daily prayers a part of their life.

I also don't buy into the idea that those who are religious are negated from the most essential human right, which is the right to life and security of the person. I didn't have to sell my cloak to buy a sword as Jesus suggested, the government gave me something much better. When somebody is murdering you, attacking you, etc, I don't find it inconsistent with religion to go and do something about it.

BTW, where - exactly - in the Bonn Agreement, the request to the UN from Afghanistan for help, the UN Security Council Resolutions establishing ISAF, etc is there any reference to religion or religious objectives? A short history lesson for you: The Afghan government had been crying for help against the Taliban since as far back as 1997; you can find it in the UN's online archives if you bother to look. The Taliban never were the government of Afghanistan, any more than the Nazis were the government of France after occupying it. In fact, the Taliban couldn't even get recognized by the Organization Of The Islamic Conference as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Not surprising perhaps when you consider that at the time we first went into Afghanistan - with the Afghan government's blessing - the bulk of Taliban fighters were from places like Yemen, Jordan, Chechnya, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. Still are, come to think of it, and the ongoing influx of foreign fighters is one of our greatest problems over there. The ISAF mission we're under has been in existence since 2001, and is renewed annually by way of a request from the government of Afghanistan. Hardly an invasion, and certainly not an occupation.

In fact, what we have in Afghanistan is Muslims fighting alongside Christians, if you insist on stereotyping NATO forces as a Christian force.

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The only one who seems to walk the talk is the Dali Llama. Gee, I must be missing something.

You are. Historical context.

I'm not sure that the Dali Llama's views include concepts of freedom and individual choice. I do note he chooses to live outside of his occupied home country where he enjoys those things, rather than in his occupied homeland where he does not.

It is a matter of history and public record, however, that the Dali Llama, his predecessors, and his religion are hardly pacifists. The Dali Llama has said in interviews that using lethal force in self defense is not wrong. In fact, the previous Dali Llama (i.e. the current Dali Llama in his previous incarnation), advocated war against the Communists where necessary and the raising of armies to fight those battles. Buddhist Tibet was a powerful warrior kingdom during the latter part of the first millennium. Somewhere around the 1500's, the Chinese managed to conquer much of the provinces of Kham and Amdo, and merged them into Chinese provinces that become known as “Inner Tibet.” The Buddhist Khampa tribes of Inner Tibet were battle-hardened warriors, described by a Chinese observer in 1666 as people who “delight in wars and conflicts, not hesitant to die.”

Not exactly the pacifist panorama painted by the mainstream press.

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Oh, yeah, I remember, now; the future of "peace" is in the hands of video gamers in Las Vegas who fly drones flying over the mountains of Afganistan with real missles guided by lasers

Very dramatic, incredibly inaccurate.

When technicians flying UAVs start setting strategic - or even tactical - policy, then you might have something. Drama aside, they are simply one more arrow in the quiver.

If you want to define peace, you might take a shot at explaining how you can have peace - internationally, or on a more local scale between you and a mugger/rapist/whatever - when only one of those involved intends to live in peace.

Personally, I have no problem with waging wars when it is right. We've seen the results of handwringing in the preliminaries to WWII, in Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Afghanistan. Maybe my outlook is a little twisted after seeing concentration camps with kids in them in Yugoslavia, and then helping to dig up mass graves of those who had been "ethnically cleansed". On the other hand, maybe a bunch of people could get their heads screwed on straight if we could somehow give them the experience of digging up mass graves, experiencing what the guts of little kids smell like while you're removing them from the walls they were nailed to, or drive some woman to the medics who had all her fingers sawed off by the Taliban because she was terrible enough to wear... nail polish.

In fact, I think that whether someone is religious or not, standing aside and going "Not my problem dude", is evil as well.

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Sorry, I forgot this is a discussion of religions, love, forgiveness, and faith.

It all fits together. I do know we wouldn't be having this discussion in Afghanistan if it were just the Taliban there and there weren't any UAVs or anything else there, would we?

taoshum wrote:

In the post you quote, "Christians" is a metaphor for "W" and "Muslims" is a metaphor for "OBL"; not an all inclusive category in either case. Reaching for the sword, IMHO, after centuries of war killing about 2.8% of the world's population every year; it continues to amaze me that Gandi, Mandela and Gorbachov were able to "win" without firing a shot but the foreign policy neo-conservatives of the US cannot seem to learn such obvious lessons.

Wow. Where to start...

Can you give us an estimate of how long Gandi would have lived if he tried his tactics with the Taliban? Or perhaps the Nazis under Hitler. Or an Idi Amin? A Pol Pot, perhaps? How about a similar estimate for Mandela under those circumstances? Or a Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha for that matter.

My guess is that they wouldn't have lived long enough to have even become known in history - maybe a week at best. That's my time frame for how long they would have lasted, now let's hear yours.

The reason Gandi and Mandela lived to be successful is because they employed those tactics against governments/countries that had Christian principles - sufficient, at least, that they simply didn't take them to the nearest soccer stadium or construction crane and hang them. That's the normal Taliban response to anyone who objects to what they're doing. And maybe that's the obvious lesson that some politicians get but you have a problem understanding. Those politicians just might realize dealing with a multinational gang of thugs and terrorists like the Taliban is a little bit different than the elected governments in the largely Christian countries of Britain and South Africa that Gandi and Mandela dealt with.

The "neo conservative" thing kind of amuses me, just as it does every time I hear somebody trot that line out. A neo conservative is, by definition, a modern liberal who has seen the error of their ways and moved to conservatism i.e. neo=new + conservative: new conservative.

Now I know a lot of people out there these days like to just parrot that line, because we're all supposed to take that as our sign we're dealing with Really Bad People. But I'm sure you're beyond that, so perhaps you could enlighten us with the names of which reformed liberals/new conservatives in the US you're talking about. To the best of my knowledge, all the conservative voices in US politics now have always been conservatives, so I'm at a loss as to who these new conservatives are. A few names would be helpful - surely it isn't just a trite buzzword?

Frankly, when any country's foreign policy is to step in and lend a hand against oppression when requested by the host country and vetted by the UN through a mission like ISAF, then I'm fully supportive of that and I don't care what side of the political spectrum the government of the day is. The observation that all that is required for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing was never truer than it is today.

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If Iraq wanted to get rid of SH, they could have and if Afganistan really wanted to get rid of the Taliban, they could... I mean if Mandela could liberate South Africa from prison, Afganistan oughta be a cakewalk.

Jeez, I don't suppose international pressure and decades of sanctions and trade restrictions against South Africa had anything to do with the eventual outcome in South Africa, do you?

When Rhodesia - subjected to the same international pressure and decades of sanctions and trade restrictions - gave way to Zimbabwe and "One Man, One Vote, One Time" Mugabe, which prisoner in jail at the time gets credit for that "liberation"???? Mandela wasn't there to claim victory from prison, so should we pick somebody else to give credit for "freeing" Rhodesia while imprisoned?

For those of us who have been in Afghanistan, your comments that Afghans shouldn't have any problems getting rid of an international band of thugs who also get much of their funding externally is amusing. Afghans are tied to their land and their homes by financial necessity and the presence of their families if nothing else. The Taliban overwhelmingly have no homes in Afghanistan and so are free to roam, they don't need a job to survive, and very few have families. There is also the small matter that the Taliban have no problems getting weapons which is not true of Afghans, and get to pick the time and place where they will strike.

Still, nothing to it. But your analysis does remind me of a quote from 150 years ago:
It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and
our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered
by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my
strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was
too late. Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these
obviously superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the
Cause by writing editorials - after the fact.
- Robert E. Lee, 1863

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Plus, there was a Special Forces Col on the news last night saying that the DoD, as a whole, uses more hydrocarbon fuel than any other country in the world, hence more CO2. What good does it do to win the skirmish in Afganistan if we lose the planet?

That's interesting. Did he explain how this is so when China is expected to surpass the US in oil consumption within the next five years? Or this:
PARIS, July 19 (UPI) -- China officially became the world's most
voracious energy-consumer last year, the International Energy Agency in
Paris said Monday.
China's energy consumption in 2009, the equivalent of burning 2.3
billion tons of oil, outpaced the United States by 4 percent, The Wall
Street Journal reported.

And then there's India, not far behind China in raising fuel consumption and about to also surpass the US. Did he say anything about that, perchance?

It's interesting that a Special Forces colonel would comment on raising CO2 levels and the supposed threat to the planet. The SF folks I've worked with usually have their expertise in other areas. Did he also explain how CO2 levels were higher in ages past when nobody was running around in Hummers and there wasn't anybody to worry about the carbon footprint of the DoD?

You'll have to forgive me if I'm a little skeptical of the IPCC and the idea of CO2 being a pollutant. It might be because it is anything but settled science. Or perhaps because of the blatant fiddling with the data. Or maybe I remember a brilliant young scientist speaking at my grad nearly 40 years ago, awing us by telling us the world was going to depend on our generation to find a way to live under the ice because of the upcoming ice age. That brilliant guy's name was David Suzuki, and now he's one of the leading shills for the perils of global warming due to excessive consumerism. Imagine that: ice age to greenhouse sauna in just 40 years. Of course, like his fellow traveller Al Gore, when he isn't warning us about the dangers of our excessive consumerism, he lives between the various houses he owns and maintains.

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Whoops, sorry, I got off the subject again... please carry on.

Actually, you aren't. The radical environmentalism of today bears little resemblance to conservation, and is more like a religion to those who participate in it than anything else.

Jäger wrote:

Still, nothing to it. But your analysis does remind me of a quote from 150 years ago:
It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and
our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered
by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my
strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was
too late. Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these
obviously superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the
Cause by writing editorials - after the fact.
- Robert E. Lee, 1863

This has never been more true than the present time. There are so many editors out there who have never seen the ravages of war first hand, but yet declare themselves experts on the subject matter. The arrogance that these liberals editors have is really amazing.

I yield to such superior intellects. Let's devote the entire US GDP to the military industrial dynasty. Already the scale of military spending is already higher than all of the other federal agencies combined. The US spends more on its military (about 700 Billion) than the next 17 biggest spending nations combined. China is second with 98 Billion, Russia third with 61 Billion and so on. The MIC owns/leases/controls acerage equal to the size of NY state. It has 539,000 buildings and other structures located at 4,700 sites in every state, 121 sites in American territories and 716 sites in 38 other countries. This current and anticipated DoD "mission" seems to be nation building in Afganistan, keeping Pakistan from going rogue, kill the al-Qaida, getting out of Iraq, protecting Europe from Iranian missiles and "securing cyberspace" and maybe helping Mexico with the civil war against the drug cartels. It seems reasonable to ask how our military installations in Antigua, Aruba and the Bahamas are pivotal to this mission;or, the 270 facilities in Belgium, 29 in Luxembourg and 277 in the Netherlands. These must be indespensible to accomplish the anti-Taliban mission? Then there's Germany with 187 sites, multiple air bases and a presense to repel the anticipated invasion from the East... Then there's the presence in the other 35 countries???? All this and financing 40% of it with borrowed money from the China.

This a picture of a foreign policy based on protecting an empire. The "Cold War" ended 20 years ago, national debt is exploding and last month, June, recorded the highest temperatures in recorded history for June. In spite of this, we have more resources devoted to the DoD than ever.

BTW: the Col never mentioned CO2 and you're right China is coming up quickly... that certainly justifies expanded buring of fuel by the US. China had the planets leading economy for 19 of the past 20 centuries; they will likely regain that position soon.

BTW: MLK (amoung others) was murdered in the US, kinda like the Taliban, and still won the civil rights battle in the US without firing a shot. If the people of a country get behind a respected leader amazing things can happen, even in Afganistan or Iraq.

BTW: The neo-conservatives are probably neither "bad" or "good"; simply unable to believe the lessons of recent history. Gandi, Mandela et al never did nothing; they were just smarter than their opponents. Trade sanctions have a mixed history at best. Some say, they do more harm than anything.

BTW: The newspapers are in deep trouble... if they are a threat to the military command structure, the military command structure is in more trouble than anyone knows, including the newspaper generals.

BTW: Even if you ignore the CO2 explosion, there is a finite amount of oil. What will we do when the number of humans on the planet reaches 20 billion? 40 billion? At the current rate of growth, doubling about every 15-20 years, it will reach 15 Billion by 2025.

BTW: how many "radical environmentalists" own WRRs?

Carry on. When you have the entire GDP where will you turn for more?

taoshum wrote:

I yield to such superior intellects.

The fact that you can't or won't address questions about what you posted on this subject has nothing to do with intellect or varying degrees thereof.

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Let's devote the entire US GDP to the military industrial dynasty. Already the scale of military spending is already higher than all of the other federal agencies combined.

I'm not sure anyone here suggested devoting the entire US GDP to the "military industrial dynasty" (whatever that is, but presumably it is the thing that produced spinoff technologies like lasers, LIDAR, GPS, MRI, the Internet, etc that we have socially and financially benefited from in many other ways that nobody bothers to figure in while pissing and moaning about the defense budget). I know I didn't suggest an unlimited Defense budget. There is certainly a lot of waste in military spending and which should be addressed, but it is really no different than the way Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac were allowed to contribute to the current economic crisis by sages like Barney Frank, even after well known dummies like GW Bush repeatedly warned of the consequences of staying on the course several times throughout his presidency.

It would be interesting, however, when we do start figuring out the excessive Defense spending, to calculate how much of that spending we intend to eliminate includes jobs, both in direct employment and in spinoff industries, services, etc. And have a plan that includes maintaining that employment rather than shifting excessive Defense spending to excessive welfare and other social support services for those who find themselves unemployed after those excessive jobs and industries are eliminated. Nobody crying about Defense spending, rightly or wrongly, ever seems to have a plan for that part of the problem. Would you care to share your rough guess on how many jobs would be lost and how much social support spending would increase as we cut Defense spending back to levels more to your liking? I'm just wondering how much money we would actually save at the end of the day, in your opinion.

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last month, June, recorded the highest temperatures in recorded history for June.

Does that version of "recorded history" start before or after the temperature monitoring stations were moved and/or selectively rechosen? You know, like the temperature monitoring stations that were once in a wooded area and are now in the middle of a few acres of black asphalt? Just askin'...

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BTW: the Col never mentioned CO2 and you're right China is coming up quickly... that certainly justifies expanded buring of fuel by the US.

I think my question had more to deal with the veracity of a claim that Defense consumes more petroleum than any other country. The reality of consumption by other countries in present day makes that a bit hard to believe - aside from the fact I hope we can agree that Special Forces officers don't generally devote their time to becoming SMEs on international energy consumption.

That aside, I don't recall anyone mentioning that it would be great to expand the consumption of energy in the US, although I do note that current increases in energy consumption are lower than population increases. So despite the horrors of Defense energy consumption, it appears we aren't doing quite as badly as some would think.

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BTW: MLK (amoung others) was murdered in the US, kinda like the Taliban, and still won the civil rights battle in the US without firing a shot.

We certainly have a different view of history.

I'm not aware of many people who would consider James Earl Ray to be an army, a religious movement, a terrorist organization, a multinational gang of thugs, or any of the other descriptions that can be applied to the Taliban with accuracy. I would consider him an individual, acting pretty much on his own, and having to do it in secrecy. Which is very much unlike the Taliban and how they operate.

And, while you (understandably) are reluctant to give us your personal thoughts on how many hours or perhaps days Gandi or Mandela would have lived if they had tried their approach to winning freedom in the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, I think it is fair to say that Martin Luther King's lifespan also would have been measured in the same hours or days if he had tried his approach to gaining rights in Afghanistan. He too wouldn't have lived long enough to even become a name known in history.

I might also suggest that MLK may well have inspired blacks to demand their rights - and they could act with relative impunity because they lived in a country that is recognized even then some basic human rights rather than just killing dissidents and their families on the spot - but the courts and various administrations had more than a little to do with it as well. MLK was an impressive human being, but he hardly won the civil rights battle all by himself as you prefer to interpret your view of history.

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If the people of a country get behind a respected leader amazing things can happen, even in Afganistan or Iraq.

Perhaps they just lack inspirational folks like you who could show them how to survive being hung, or shot, or beheaded out of hand long enough to accomplish that. In other words, managing to have a life span longer than a day or a week so they can actually inspire and lead people. I suppose the Jews in Nazi Germany could have found a way to get the Nazis to give them their basic human rights as well - they simply lacked a respected leader who could make Hitler see the error of his ways.

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BTW: The neo-conservatives are probably neither "bad" or "good"; simply unable to believe the lessons of recent history.

You mean like Afghanistan actually being an invasion and occupation? And how Gandi and Mandala show freedom in Afghanistan should be a cakewalk? Those lessons?

I'm still confused as to who these neo-conservatives you're talking about actually are, other than a boogeyman we should think is leading us over the brink. What reformed liberals are you talking about? I can't think of a single influential political figure in North America who is an enlightened liberal and new conservative. You used the term, and while many simply use it as a dismissive prejoritive to signal people we shouldn't like, I assume you actually have a few names in mind. So I still remain hopeful you can identify who these new conservatives are.

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Carry on. When you have the entire GDP where will you turn for more?

Right now I'll settle for the identity of these New Conservatives. And maybe you sharing even a rudimentary plan for how somebody like a Mandala or Gandi or MLK - or Jesus Christ himself - could live long enough to win freedom for their people in a country ruled by a Hitler, a Taliban, or a Pol Pot. Rather than ending up as rotting meat in an unmarked grave within a few days of coming out. Strategy and tactics always interest military guys.

Humour me on that and I'll try and work on the GDP for you.

This is like trying to call Microsoft or Adobe for support... LOL... all you get is a pre-programmed recording telling the caller to select from the following options... none of which offer any help what-so-ever...so I usually just hang up and find a better way to address the issues at hand.

outa here.

taoshum wrote:

This is like trying to call Microsoft or Adobe for support... LOL... all you get is a pre-programmed recording telling the caller to select from the following options... none of which offer any help what-so-ever...so I usually just hang up and find a better way to address the issues at hand.

Huh? Say what? You can't clarify what you're saying by providing explanations to some simple, basic questions, and yet somebody else is not offering any help whatsoever simply because they dared to ask those questions?

That post was like it was... I dunno... read off a malfunctioning teleprompter or something. Did the Anointed One lend you one of the old cast offs?

Y'know, somehow or other I had a pretty certain feeling that while you could post a rambling rant, you weren't quite up to answering a few very basic, simple questions regarding what you posted. Why is that so difficult, anyways? It's like trying to get a coherent answer out of my teenybopper nieces (does anyone still use the word "teenybopper"????).

So we'll never know who these enlightened Liberals/Neo Conservatives are you're so worried about. Their identities must remain a secret.

You won't share with the rest of the world your knowledge of how a Gandhi or Mandala or Jesus could survive long enough in a nation ruled by a Pol Pot, or a Hitler, or a Mullah Omar to bring freedom to the subjects of that country. Apparently it should be a cakewalk, and yet you are going to withhold that valuable knowledge from the rest of the world. Think of all the lives you could save by revealing that knowledge. You really should share stuff like that - because none of the rest of us have ever been able to figure it out.

I have this really crazy idea that if you are going to post something, you should have at least a basic ability and willingness to answer simple questions relating to what you posted to defend - or at least explain - those opinions. Not just throw something out there and then run for the hills, throwing further unrelated comments out as a smokescreen to mask the getaway. A course of action which, to be perfectly open, I find highly annoying.

But that's just me, and maybe those are old fashioned ideas.

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Mr. J
"I'm not sure anyone here suggested devoting the entire US GDP to the "military industrial dynasty" (whatever that is, but presumably it is the thing that produced spinoff technologies like lasers, LIDAR, GPS, MRI, the Internet, OK, let's keep DARPA and drop the rest.... even after well known dummies like GW Bush repeatedly warned of the consequences of staying on the course several times throughout his presidency. Why would you think "W" is a dummie? Seems like a smart FOX.

to calculate how much of that spending... Borrowing is a better description!!! we intend to eliminate includes jobs,

how much money we would actually save at the end of the day, in your opinion. We don't have spend the savings, BTW... we could just borrow less from the Chinese... would that be OK?"

taoshum wrote:

Quote :

Mr. J
"I'm not sure anyone here suggested devoting the entire US GDP to the "military industrial dynasty" (whatever that is, but presumably it is the thing that produced spinoff technologies like lasers, LIDAR, GPS, MRI, the Internet, OK, let's keep DARPA and drop the rest.... even after well known dummies like GW Bush repeatedly warned of the consequences of staying on the course several times throughout his presidency. Why would you think "W" is a dummie? Seems like a smart FOX.

to calculate how much of that spending... Borrowing is a better description!!! we intend to eliminate includes jobs,

how much money we would actually save at the end of the day, in your opinion. We don't have spend the savings, BTW... we could just borrow less from the Chinese... would that be OK?"

Why don't we just first stick with trying to understand what you threw on the floor earlier, before moving on to your latest?

Who are these enlightened Liberals/New Conservatives you were referring to when you threw the "Neo Con" thing out there? You don't have to name all of them; just a few would help.

Favour us with an explanation of how long Jesus or Martin Luther King would have lived more than one day after becoming public activists in an Afghanistan under Mullah Omar. After all, you can't make freedom, religious or otherwise, in Afghanistan a "cakewalk" if you can't live longer than 24 hours. Seeing as how you confidently pronounced that Afghans winning their freedom should just be "a cakewalk" with a half decent leader, it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask the strategy you would give this leader to help them avoid being hung or having their heads chopped off in the first week, never mind the first 24 hours.

That can't be too hard, can it?

taoshum wrote:

If you are half as intelligent as you think you are you can do the research yourself and stop bothering me about it, huh?

In the absence of an intelligent reply, I'll take that to mean you just suddenly discovered what a neo-conservative is, and basically to you it's just been a word you've been slinging around for some time now as a pejorative without having a clue what it means or being able to name anybody who is indeed a neo conservative.

I think the last powerful neo conservative in the US was probably John F Kennedy. I do know that Bush, Rumfield, Cheney, Harper, etc have never been, at any time in their lives, anything remotely resembling liberal in their views.

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There are books on this, lots of 'em. Here's how you do it: go to Google, type in "US Defense Policy Makers from 9/11/01 to 9/11/13"; then read. It's really easy.

Ahhh... here we go: www.TinFoilHats.com... oh... and www.ConspiracyTheories.com

Says here that Dick Cheney is a neo-conservative, although, like you, they refuse to say when he was a liberal prior to becoming a new conservative.

They also say I should invest in Alcan stocks because there's a huge demand for hat making materials right now...

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This is a senseless, hypothetical question that has no answers and you know it!!!

Ummmm... okay...

You said that winning freedom in Afghanistan should be a cakewalk, and put forward Gandhi and Mandala as examples of how this could be done. That apparently was a sage statement on your part, and something we should embrace.

Then I asked you a very simple question: just how long would a man like Mullah Omar or a Hitler or a Pol Pot allow a Gandhi or Mandala or Martin Luther King to engage in public disobedience without killing them? I said they wouldn't live long enough to have to change their underwear, much less win freedom for their people. And I asked you how long you think they would live in those circumstances instead of fighting generally Christian governments generally following Christian principles.

Well, not only do you refuse to stick your neck out and tell us how long YOU think they'd survive, but you dismiss that rather logical question as being senseless and hypothetical. It isn't hypothetical to talk about these leaders bringing freedom to Afghanistan, but it is hypothetical to ask you just how they'd survive long enough to do that.

Want a little syrup with your waffles?

What's so hard about simply saying "I'd rather avoid answering that question about what I posted"????

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There's a significant probability that Afganistan will be a FAILURE, just like Iraq and Vietnam.

Whether you agree with Iraq or not, it is amusing for you to suggest that Iraq today is remotely like it was since the US went there, either in terms of daily violence or relative freedom.

But you might be right on Vietnam.

Vietnam. The Tet Uprising was a monstrous failure. The Viet Cong and NVA were slaughtered and ceased to exist as a fighting force. The US and South Vietnam could have put their soldiers on school buses and drove to Hanoi if they so chose. General Giap was on the verge of being shot for the terrible failure of his plan and the fact his predicted General Uprising never happened.

But a newsman named Walter Cronkite went to Hue, saw a few dead sappers on the Embassy lawn who never even made it to the buildings before being cut down and pronounced to the American public that the war could not be won. President Johnson watched and is quoted as saying that if Cronkite was telling the public the war could not be won, the result would be it could not be won. And indeed, with the enormous change in public opinion, the US managed to snatch defeat (of their objectives, although not their military efforts) from the jaws of victory.

Of course, the Treaty that allowed the US to get out of Vietnam to assuage public opinion was followed shortly thereafter by the NVA doing exactly what they had promised not to do and why the US had gone there in the first place to prevent. The invasion and conquering of South Vietnam. Accompanied by the genocide of hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese, "reeducation" camps, the Boat People, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, etc. Yep, thank God we did the right thing and abandoned the South Vietnamese and Cambodians in the name of being just and righteous.

Fast forward to Afghanistan. Headlines that the Taliban are gathering strength, that we're losing, etc. With every one of our brothers in arms that are killed, we hear the demand to cease our invasion of Afghanistan and get out of a war we can't win in a land that can't be conquered.

Those of us who have actually been there and/or even know a tiny bit about Afghanistan scratch our heads and go "huh" - probably much like US, Australian, etc forces in Vietnam did after watching Cronkite declare they'd just been beaten after Tet.

The reality is we're there by invitation - an invitation renewed yearly by Afghanistan - not an "invader" nor an "occupier" as many uninformed goofs and illiterates scream. And although we are serving beside Afghans, not fighting against them, it is also a matter of historical fact that "the graveyard of empires" has never been able to stop or drive out an invader. The Persians did it. Alexander the Great rolled over Afghanistan without hardly breaking a sweat. The Mongols did it and stayed for 300 years. The Brits won three successive wars there, exclusively writing the terms of the peace treaty for each without any input from the Afghans - and the last war in 1920 took them all of four weeks to win. The Russians weren't driven out - even with US assistance, it took the crumbling of the entire Soviet Union and the impending fall of the Berlin Wall to make the Russians decide they better pay attention to matters closer to home.

There are 34 provinces in Afghanistan. Only two of them make the news with any regularity concerning Taliban and Al Queda activity - Helmund and Kandahar. They make up a small minority of both the area of Afghanistan and the population. The other 32 are relatively peaceful and the ISAF mission goes on largely unopposed.

Nowhere have NATO UN forces been driven from ground they chose to be on. Nowhere have Taliban thugs been able to prevent NATO forces from going wherever they decide to go. Nowhere have Taliban thugs been able to stop any of our projects, initiatives, infrastructure building, Afghan government scheduled elections, etc. So the Taliban are pushed out wherever we choose to occupy the ground, they can't drive us from anywhere we choose to be, and they can't stop us from any projects we choose to carry out. All they can do is rely on terrorist bombs that in the vast majority of instances kill Afghans and not UN troops.

And yet, despite their inability to succeed in any area where military success or failure is normally evaluated, there are those who Lenin termed "useful idiots" running around announcing the war cannot be won and we are losing.

And, in a self fulfilling prophecy much like Vietnam, they just might be right.

The Taliban/Al Queda are not stupid. Every time they confront us in direct warfare, they get slaughtered. It is much tougher killing people on the two way rifle range than it is killing women and elders who disobey you. So they needed another plan.

They tried videotaping themselves murdering Western journalists and workers by cutting off their heads. That was supposed to scare us into leaving, but rather than making us tuck tail and run, it simply solidified opposition to them as the animals they are. And not being stupid, they realized it was having the opposite effect and quit doing that.

Instead, they turned to IEDs and firing up NATO troops from among groups of civilians, hoping return fire would kill innocent people. Voila! Success! Every dead civilian became a sign of our depravity - not that of the Taliban who deliberately cause Afghans civilians to be killed in many ways. Every soldier killed by an IED was proof that Afghans (yeah, the ones that most of the IEDs kill instead of Westerners) don't want us there and we're fighting a people who have never been defeated.

So where the Taliban/Al Queda cannot beat us by any measure of military success in combat in Afghanistan, they have taken a lesson from Vietnam and turned instead to beating us at home. They rely on their force multipliers - the useful idiots who keep telling their fellow citizens that we're invaders, we're occupiers, we're waging an illegal war, that Afghans have never been defeated, etc. They understand that, as Goebbels pointed out, if you can get a lie repeated often enough, it will become accepted as the truth. Anyone who has been to Afghanistan or taken the time to understand our presence there on the ISAF mission knows this is all blatant nonsense, of course. But the Taliban also know that most people are too damned lazy to apply critical thinking to anything outside of their employment, particularly if what they're being served fits their biases.

So yes, it is quite possible that people like you in sufficient numbers can help the Taliban bring about the failure of our objectives in Afghanistan. In fact, every IED planted in Afghanistan is motivated by people just like you. Take a bow!

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Yea, and you could .

Oh, I'm beating on your irrationality like you're a red headed stepchild. But I don't think you're quite dead yet.

SheWolf wrote:

Oh dear...

I certainly agree.

I guess this illustrates the massive and growing divide in the US (and beyond?) as well as anything I've ever seen and although I tried, I couldn't finish reading the last one.

I wonder if "Dr. J", or whoever he/she might be, will write to Newsweek. He/she might find the issue that came today really interesting. Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, has the cover story,"RETHINING AFGANISTAN" and the article starts on page 30, "WE'RE NOT WINING. IT'S NOT WORTH IT."


Oh well. It's been interesting but I think I'll go riding for a few months.


Thanks, G.

Maybe we need a new thread because this one was about religion.

Taoshum do ya really think that the world should leave Afganistan in the hands of Taliban ? Think about human rights think about girls not be able to go to school and so on. Talibans do export terror ( 9/11) and there nature is violence. I am a peace full man but i do support bombing them to stoneage. There will allways be a collateral damage. I think that is the price afgans have to pay. Naiv maybe

I think that worlds comunity needs to push back Talibans and eventually leave when there forces are strong. Give them the support they need. Whole world will benefit from destruction of Talibans.

After 9/11 USA hade the whole world's support but som where this was lost, even if we europeans still are really god friends of USA. The war on Irak started as a war against vapens of massdestruction but they where never found. The people that started this war on false grounds was perhaps the neo's that som one wrote about. It was all about frustration, and Irak was a old enemy that Bush wanted to destroy and took the chance after 9/11.


As usual my spelling is bad, but i am really strugeling to learn. Hope you get my point.

rokka wrote:

Taoshum do ya really think that the world should leave Afganistan in the hands of Taliban ? Think about human rights think about girls not be able to go to school and so on. Talibans do export terror ( 9/11) and there nature is violence. I am a peace full man but i do support bombing them to stoneage. There will allways be a collateral damage. I think that is the price afgans have to pay. Naiv maybe

Yup, naive - which is no different than the majority of the population. And indicative of the reason Afghanistan is so hard to come to grips with.

First, the UN's ISAF mission in Afghanistan has been running since December of 2001, and I suspect a large number of people don't even realize that our efforts there are a UN mission, nor that we have been there since Day One at the request of the Afghan government, nor that our presence there is dependant on the annual renewal of ISAF at the request of the Afghan government.

Second, the ISAF objectives are not about human rights and humanitarian aid. Indirectly yes, because that is part of asymetrical three block war. But in the most general terms, we are there to provide sufficient security and stability and aid to allow the Afghan people to get back on their feet, regain self-determination of their choosing, and get to a point where we can leave and they can deal with the Taliban on their own with limited help. Doing that also serves our strategic objectives of Afghanistan not becoming a Wahabbist state that can house and support groups like Al Queda.

Third, why would we bomb Afghanistan - and Afghans - back into the stone age? Does that include the families of the ANA and ANP fighting and dying alongside us? How does that honour either the ISAF objectives or deal with the Taliban? The Taliban fighters are largely not from Afghanistan anyways - the last time we managed any sort of survey of prisoners and those killed in battle, only 23% were Afghans. The remainder are Syrians, Chechnians, Jordanians, Saudis, Yemenese, etc. About 49 other countries at last count. Earlier this year it was noted that about 50% of Taliban fighters right now are Yemenese. How would a policy of indiscriminately killing Afghans - assuming you could find soldiers willing to do that and I certainly wouldn't - deal with a group that is largely a bunch of International terrorists and thugs?

Many people continue to think of places and missions like Afghanistan as something like WWII, where there is a victory parade at the end. There isn't, at least not in the forseeable future. Radical Wahabbism has been around for over a hundred years now and been a real problem for the "mainstream" Muslims of the world - who Wahabbists believe are no better than infidels. Wahabbists have been killing other Muslims for over a century now. It has suddenly come to the attention of the Western world due to immigration making it much easier to spread, the dark side of the ease of communication the Internet provides, global travel being within the reach of almost everybody, etc. The madrassas spread throughout the world, raising little boys from day one to be hajjis who can do nothing better than die for Allah are not going to go away by us bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen etc.

What we can do is make the Afghan nation strong enough to stand up to the Taliban and other Wahabbist thugs. There is a reason they don't try their crap in other Muslim countries like Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc. Those countries have strong infrastructure and governments along with an effective (if not particularly concerned with human rights) military and police, and the response to anything the Taliban pull would be both certain and final. That's why all these Wahabbist dirtbags gravitate to a country in shambles like Afghanistan, whose military and police have been nonexistent for over a decade.

Ultimately, the world - Christian, Muslim, Jew, whatever - has just three defenses against Wahabbist terrorism. The first is working to advance education in those countries susceptible to this. The second is strategies to ensure these countries have strong governments and infrastructure so they can deal with this. The third is working to be perceived, if not as a friend, at least not as an enemy. Hearts and minds, if you will.

We are achieving our goals there, despite the opinions of the Starbucks generation who don't understand you don't always get what you want in 30 seconds. We just left Yugoslavia this year, a not so very different situation, and it took 18 years to get to that point. But you can holiday now where we fought pitched battles in 1993, in a country where mass rape was being used as a weapon of war, and where we arrived to find concentration camps and mass graves that could have been taken straight out of WWII. We were told when we went into Yugoslavia that was an impossible mission as well because of hatreds and former genocides going back into the late 1800's - but we stayed the course and that has eventually turned out quite well.

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After 9/11 USA hade the whole world's support but som where this was lost, even if we europeans still are really god friends of USA. The war on Irak started as a war against vapens of massdestruction but they where never found. The people that started this war on false grounds was perhaps the neo's that som one wrote about. It was all about frustration, and Irak was a old enemy that Bush wanted to destroy and took the chance after 9/11.

I haven't paid much attention to Iraq. However, it is worth considering that after 9/11, when considering weapons of mass destruction in the hands of an enemy that was also sponsoring terrorism, the precautionary principle when considering that threat would have been pretty strong in the US government. Do you take the chance or what? There are voices saying yes they are there, others saying they could be there, and a few saying they aren't there. After 9/11, who do you listen to? Do you take the chance? What would YOU do with the responsibility for 300 million citizens in your hands? Say "Nah, probably won't happen"? I don't know what my decision would have been because like everyone else I certainly didn't hear all the advisors that the Bush administration did, but I know it wouldn't have been an easy one.

I also seem to recall that there were an awful lot of Democrats supporting the move against Iraq, and yet this has become known as "Bush's war". Curious how that works. If the end result for Iraq is a thriving country somewhat like Egypt or some of the other more prosperous Muslim countries, I wonder if Bush will get credit at that point for making that possible?

And I'm still waiting for somebody to name these Neo Cons people keep babbling about. The point is, the term is simply part of the dialogue that, deliberately or otherwise, stereotypes both politicians and political decisions. We're not supposed to like "neo cons" - when have you ever heard the term associated with something positive - and yet nobody can name one reformed liberal who is a new conservative. Lots of people have associated "neo con" with "bad", so twits run around throwing the term at people who have never been liberals a day in their life. Hardly the basis of intelligent debate.

I am always somewhat aghast at how so many people who are the beneficiaries of America can't wait to line up and express how much they hate and dislike the US. There is absolutely no doubt that American governments have done some very bad things over the years - not unlike many churches. But where did the money - and security - for Europe to rebuild come primarily from? NATO generally, but overwhelmingly the US. Many Europeans, and not a few Americans, like to run out the "guns or butter" argument. They conveniently turn a blind eye to the fact that if that military power hadn't been in place to provide them with security, they might have been making butter, but it would have been for the Soviet Union.

In the recent earthquake in Haiti, who was there first with the most ships, the most aid, the most money? How about the tsunami of a few years ago? The US. Yet the bitching in Canada about the US never skipped a beat, and from what I saw, not in Europe either. As a country, the US is the first to be criticized and the last to be recognized for what they do.

It is not impossible that within my lifetime, whether due to political strategy or economic necessity, the US will remove itself from many things outside it's borders and become much like Switzerland in what it spends and does for the outside world i.e. very little. If that happens, I suspect a lot of countries are going to suddenly be wishing for the old US to be back.

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As usual my spelling is bad, but i am really strugeling to learn. Hope you get my point.

You're doing pretty good; most here probably don't speak two languages to begin with. I know I would have a hell of a time doing more than just getting through the day if I had to rely on my French.

rokka wrote:

Maybe we need a new thread because this one was about religion.

Taoshum do ya really think that the world should leave Afganistan in the hands of Taliban ? Think about human rights think about girls not be able to go to school and so on. Talibans do export terror ( 9/11) and there nature is violence. I am a peace full man but i do support bombing them to stoneage. There will allways be a collateral damage. I think that is the price afgans have to pay.

I don't know... the proposal in the current issue of Newsweek suggests a partition in Afganistan, one part for the Taliban and it's followers and another part for the others. Kinda sounds like Korea, de ja vue. In ten years the world would know if this is a workable solution...? S. Korea is thriving and N. Korea is usually in trouble. If a partition would stop the war, it sounds like it is worth a try to me.

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Yup, naive - which is no different than the majority of the population. And indicative of the reason Afghanistan is so hard to come to grips with.

Actually it is a fact that Afghanistan today compared to 2001 is more free of Taliban forces due to military action. Talibans ruled 90% of Afghanistan before bombs where dropped on them.

2001/2002 Kabul was ruled by Talibans. Today only terrorised by Talibans witch is an improvement. That is why i used the phrase bomb to stonage, witch is a bad choice of words. A guerilla is very hard if impossible to bomb to peace. Ask the soviets they know for sure. But military methods are unquestioned when it comes to results with Talibans.
When it comes to ISAF i have friends i the Swedish ISAF force. ISAF is there to support the "elected President Karzai. Who came to power by elections that not can be considered as fare"

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And I'm still waiting for somebody to name these Neo Cons people keep babbling about.

I can not answer that question but i think Bush admin when i here that. I think that people in the world think of Obama admin as a very civilised compared to Bush admin.

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Third, why would we bomb Afghanistan - and Afghans - back into the stone age?

You answer your own question. Afgans are not the ones that need Military force. Talibans are the ones that need to be fought. I do know the difference between Taliban and Afgan. Actually Afgan is not the correct word ether. Pasthun, Tadzjik, Hazar, Uzbek.The peoples lojality goes with ethnic group and not the Afgan nation.

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Many people continue to think of places and missions like Afghanistan as something like WWII, where there is a victory parade at the end.

The only victory that one can hope for is that these people's can decide them self's what rule they want to have, maybe that is impossible to achieve. But everything is better than a Taliban rule.

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What we can do is make the Afghan nation strong enough to stand up to the Taliban and other Wahabbist thugs.

I agree.

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haven't paid much attention to Iraq. However, it is worth considering that after 9/11, when considering weapons of mass destruction in the hands of an enemy that was also sponsoring terrorism, the precautionary principle when considering that threat would have been pretty strong in the US government. Do you take the chance or what?

IRAN would have been a better target when it comes to exporting terror, (ask Israel) but that would not have beeen the same walk in the park. To overthrow Saddam Hussein who clearly was no god guy coasted 1,2 miljon people there live's. I would like to here the same concern from you to the IRAK people that you have to the Afgans. (Source IRAK body count ). 1.2 million man women child's life where lost for the war against vapens of mass destruction that never existed. The war was orchestrated by Bush admin. It is a true loss for humanity and what US did was to unlash a pandora's box of terror, a terror that is worse than Saddam Hussein did.

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Haiti

I have never heard of any critics against US in Haiti. I would never agree to that any way.

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Switzerland

Sweden has always had a very generous politic against 3world countries. Even as ve are a very small nation. I Bosnia Herzegovina our troops where very succesfull,We won hearts and minds very successfully and did our jobb very well. and called the lycky batallion because no one where killed. Swedish and Swiss is a very big difference. I want the old US back that only claimed ground for the soldiers graves that fell in the fight for a just cause. I dont want a US that starts war on a false ground.

taoshum wrote:

I don't know... the proposal in the current issue of Newsweek suggests a partition in Afganistan, one part for the Taliban and it's followers and another part for the others. Kinda sounds like Korea, de ja vue.

Haass' article in Newsweek does not, not even once, make mention of the fact that the NATO presence is a UN mission, under UN auspices. In fact, going from memory, while command of ISAF rotated through multiple nations starting with the British, I don't think it came under US command until 2007.

That is probably small change to Haass and those with tunnel vision who see Afghanistan as Bush's War or Obama's War, or America's war, or whatever. But it is not, for any number of reasons.

Let's just focus on the fact that ISAF is a UN mission, dependent upon not only the annual requests from the Afghan government that it be renewed, but the UN Security Council continuing to unanimously approve that mission. Without that request and UN authorization, the claims that the West is involved in an illegitimate war and illegitimate occupation would suddenly become true - and you could pretty much forget about the ANA/ANP continuing to grow, support, and fight beside us.

That means the UN and Afghanistan, not the US, dictate the terms of ISAF and what will and won't be done in Afghanistan, no matter what the pundits like Haass, Dwyer, etc want to write. Like any other country, the US can negotiate for what they want to see happen - or alternatively simply refuse to play. But short of saying "Screw you" to the UN as a whole and trying to force their own policy in Afghanistan regardless of what the rest of the UN and their allies think, what is done by Western forces in Afghanistan will be in accordance with the decisions of the UN and Afghanistan, not what the US wants.

Interestingly enough, the topic of what "we" want and will do in Afghanistan only seems to be a talking point in the US. In the major partner's countries - Britain, Canada, the Netherlands - the political debate has been about how far they are prepared to participate in this UN mandated mission, not about goals and aims that form no part of the ISAF mandate.

Haass does cover the alternatives fairly well, even though he seems irredeemably stuck in the idea that the US (not the UN and Afghanistan) cannot win in Afghanistan. That may be true of whatever the US decides its objectives are, but it is certainly not true of the objectives as laid out by ISAF. For too many people lose sight of the fact that there are 34 provinces in Afghanistan, and with the exception of Helmand and Kandahar provinces (a small minority both in terms of land area and population), the other 32 are largely peaceful with only sporadic Taliban activity. How those two provinces are used by the doomsday cult and their acolytes to define the entire Afghan mission is kind of mind boggling.

Haass also describes this partitioning as a "new idea". What exactly is new about it? We've tried partitioning in the Middle East, with India and Pakistan, and with Korea. Hardly a new idea. And it was kicked around in the UN as early as late 2002/early 2003.

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In ten years the world would know if this is a workable solution...? S. Korea is thriving and N. Korea is usually in trouble. If a partition would stop the war, it sounds like it is worth a try to me.

Given the ongoing wars in the Middle East, the wars between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and borders, and the still ongoing war in Korea, partitioning does not seem to have a particularly successful track record. I'm not sure of the exact number of troops, aircraft, ships, etc that the US devotes to Korea each year to make S. Korea a thriving success, but devoting the same assets to make that work for the non-Taliban side of Afghanistan would have a considerably bigger price tag.

There are other issues that Haass does touch on.

Ignoring the fact that the ISAF mandate does not give us any authority to arbitrarily partition Afghanistan, where is the moral authority for the UN, NATO, the US, Canada, Britain, whoever to tell some Afghans they must live under Taliban rule - a rule that does not resemble historical Afghan culture or values? If we say "Well, it's worth it to me to try it", when do the people who would actually live under the Taliban get any say in the matter?

Further to the point, where is our moral authority to hand over part of a country to a largely foreign group that is multinational in nature, not Afghans? What claim do Yemenese, Chechnian, Syrian, Saudi, etc hajjis have to authoritarian rule over a people and a country they were never born in, a country that doesn't even share a border with their native lands? I see none whatsoever.

If Afghans, in their desire for peace, think giving part of their country to the Taliban and their adherents will succeed, then that is very much their decision to make and the UN and ISAF have to respect that.

If THEY do it, it might possibly succeed - I imagine accompanied by a large migration both to and from whatever area is given to the Taliban. I can't imagine Afghan farmers within the area to be handed over are going to want to go along with that, unless they are offered equivalent tracts of land elsewhere in the non-Taliban areas as compensation. The Afghan government - and the UN - then need to ask themselves what the Taliban are likely going to do if they end up ruling in an area with very few farmers to hit up for food and the other necessities of their existence. Are the Chechnians and Yemenese going to lose their interest in jihad to settle down and spend all day toiling in Afghan fields? Don't think so.

Pragmatically, given the Taliban's Wahabbist views, I suspect any kind of partition or appeasement is doomed to failure and will do little more than encourage their activities. Much as it did with Hitler and the Sudetenland. These are not people wanting a homeland. Their vision is that this is an ongoing struggle to bring the world under their view of Islam - which is why they have been attacking and making war on other Muslims who don't share their view of Islam for over a hundred years. They are hajjis in a holy war, and they'll decide what the objectives are and when the war is over. Those views don't include a few acres to eke a living out of and leaving the infidels and corrupted Muslims in peace.

What is largely missing in this debate is the disportionate load of this mission being carried by the countries who have least benefitted from the NATO alliance over the last 60 years. The brunt of the heavy lifting in Afghanistan has been borne by the US, Britain, Canada, and to a much lesser degree the Netherlands. Where have the NATO countries been who faced the greatest threat from the Soviet Union during the Cold War and most benefitted from military expenditures of other nations to provide them with the NATO shield? The vast majority have only token forces in Afghanistan, and most of those forces are tucked away where they can be as safe as possible from ever being involved in combat.

Given the kind of attacks being made on the governments of the major players in ISAF for their participation, it is understandable why these countries only want to have token participation in ISAF. Casualties affect votes, so if you can have participation without
losses, then your political karma is not so bad. However, did they expect only token participation from Canada, the US, Britain, etc back in the worst days of the Cold War, if the Soviet Union had ever attacked so the casualty lists back home in those nations wouldn't look too bad in those countries? I suspect not.

This is a situation of most NATO countries wanting to have their cake and eat it too. So far, Canada, the US, and Britain have allowed them to do that. There may well be a good reason for that, but if there is I can't see it.

More importantly, while we are spending money and lives in what I believe is a just, noble, and strategically pragmatic mission, I'd like to know why we don't demand that all our NATO partners who have benefited so tremendously all these years start to ante up and get some real skin in the game. If they just want the bennies and none of the unpleasant parts, perhaps we need to consider a new coalition made up of only those who choose to contribute equally, rather than just having a "what's in it for me" philosophy.

rokka wrote:

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Yup, naive - which is no different than the majority of the population. And indicative of the reason Afghanistan is so hard to come to grips with.

Actually it is a fact that Afghanistan today compared to 2001 is more free of Taliban forces due to military action. Talibans ruled 90% of Afghanistan before bombs where dropped on them.

Bombs no more drove the Taliban out than bombs defeated Germany. Boots on the ground is what holds and takes ground, and that is exactly what was done in Afghanistan.

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2001/2002 Kabul was ruled by Talibans. Today only terrorised by Talibans witch is an improvement.

Kabul fell to government forces in 2001. Kabul today has only sporadic violence, most of which seems primarily designed to attract the media of the world.

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But military methods are unquestioned when it comes to results with Talibans.

Yes. But without the accompanying parts of three block war that are essential in asymetrical warfare, all you're getting into is an eternal conflict.

You need to also have nation building and humanitarian aid. But those can't exist without military action to protect them and allow them to survive long enough to bring about results. There is no point in simply engaging in a war of attrition with a multinational gang of thugs. But there is also no point in building schools and training teachers and then allowing the Taliban the security to destroy those schools and murder those teachers.

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When it comes to ISAF i have friends i the Swedish ISAF force. ISAF is there to support the "elected President Karzai. Who came to power by elections that not can be considered as fare"

You can find the terms of ISAF on the UN's website. If you or anyone else can find the sections of the ISAF mandate that say we are there to support any politician, I'd sure like you to point them out to me. They say nothing about that - or the Taliban or Al Queda directly, as far as that goes.

Was their corruption in the Afghan elections? Yup.

Was there corruption on the part of all parties? Yup. Does the press ever mention that? Nope.

Has corruption always been part of Afghan politics - and for many other countries? Yup.

Here's the big issues:
Did the Taliban ever allow elections, much less women to vote and hold office? Nope.

And should we abandon Afghanistan just because a country rebuilding itself cannot hold elections as clean as we see in our home countries? Countries such as Canada, incidentally, who only began allowing natives and orientals to vote a few decades ago, even though they had never had wars devastate them as an excuse? My opinion on that is: nope, we do not. It is unrealistic in the extreme to expect Afghan elections to be at the same level as ours after nine years, when it took us over a century to get to where we are today.

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And I'm still waiting for somebody to name these Neo Cons people keep babbling about.

I can not answer that question but i think Bush admin when i here that. I think that people in the world think of Obama admin as a very civilised compared to Bush admin.

Well that's the whole point isn't it - the term "neo con" is supposed to start you off with nice, negative thoughts. The fact that it is an utterly inaccurate description is totally irrelevant.

When was Bush or ANY of his administration ever politically liberal? He sure didn't govern by conservative principles, but at no time in any of their lives were anyone in the Bush administration liberals. So ask yourself why the word "neo con" gets slung around to describe them, except for the fact it has value in broadcasting negative connotations and skewing the opinion of those whose political thought is about as deep as spilled coffee on a counter.

By the way, if corruption in elections disturbs you, did you notice that the civilized Obama administration just quashed charges that were pending against the Black Panthers who were outside voting booths, armed with weapons, intimidating voters and warning them to vote for Obama? That's in the US - a nice safe country compared to Afghanistan, and a tactic employed by the Taliban in Afghan elections. If intimidating voters is corruption in Afghanistan, why isn't it corruption in the US? When ACORN in the US is involved in voter fraud in support of Obama's presidential bid, why is the same thing in Afghanistan election corruption but not in the US? I would call that corruption, even if Obama had nothing directly to do with it, but when his administration quashes charges against those who threatened and used violence in support of his election, that sure as hell is corruption in my books.

Your mileage may vary on that point of course, but the issue is we can't even have squeaky clean elections in relatively peaceful north american countries, it took us nearly a hundred years to give Orientals and natives the right to vote in Canada, and yet everybody drops their guts when a rebuilding nation cannot hold elections clean enough to suit us in five short years of rebuilding. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

I might leave you on this subject to consider this: do you really believe that the media covers and presents the Obama administration in exactly the same manner and with the same standards that they applied to the Bush administration? Given the power of the media to influence opinion, it is small wonder that people have two very different views. Imagine - winning a Nobel Prize for peace two whole weeks after being elected - and before having done anything at all. And the newsman of one of the large news media outlets saying he "gets a thrill up his leg" every time the man speaks. That kind of says it all, didn't it?

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Third, why would we bomb Afghanistan - and Afghans - back into the stone age?

You answer your own question. Afgans are not the ones that need Military force. Talibans are the ones that need to be fought. I do know the difference between Taliban and Afgan. Actually Afgan is not the correct word ether. Pasthun, Tadzjik, Hazar, Uzbek.The peoples lojality goes with ethnic group and not the Afgan nation.

I don't think that answers my question at all, or else we have a language problem here. I fail to see either the usefulness or the morality in shelling and bombing Afghans because of the activities of Taliban fighters from Yemen, Chechyia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc. If your belief is that the Taliban come from Afghanistan - from whatever ethnic background - that is simply not true. They are a multinational force, of which Afghans as best we know do not even form a majority.

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IRAN would have been a better target when it comes to exporting terror, (ask Israel) but that would not have beeen the same walk in the park. To overthrow Saddam Hussein who clearly was no god guy coasted 1,2 miljon people there live's. I would like to here the same concern from you to the IRAK people that you have to the Afgans. (Source IRAK body count ). 1.2 million man women child's life where lost for the war against vapens of mass destruction that never existed. The war was orchestrated by Bush admin. It is a true loss for humanity and what US did was to unlash a pandora's box of terror, a terror that is worse than Saddam Hussein did.

You might ask a Kurd whether life is better or worse in Iraq today. I suspect they might disagree with you. And I can't help but notice that news coverage of violence in Iraq has really dried up over the last year. You figure the media just got bored with reporting Bad Stuff out of Iraq?

Iran was not the issue it is today at the time the US went into Iraq; nobody was suggesting back then they were a threat to the US that Iraq potentially posed. However, you might have noticed that when the Iranian people were in the streets protesting the last election and being slaughtered by that government, the civilized Obama administration... basically turned their back. I believe Obama apologized and asked for a dialogue. And was basically told to piss off.

And, of course, we have the Iraq Body Count you mention, brought to us by Prof Marc Herold, the Professor Who Can't Count, and self admitted activist. This is supposed to be unbiased? Trying to follow that guy is like Alice chasing the rabbit down the hole. This is the same guy who overcounted civilian deaths in Afghanistan by a factor of four, and apparently he suddenly got it right in Iraq? Well, perhaps.

Any study that attributes all civilian deaths to one side or the other in a conflict seems just a teensy-weensy bit biased. But then, that's just me.

And while you might believe the war was orchestrated by the Bush administration, and that faced with contradictory information he should have gambled the lives of 300 million people, that sure seems to suggest that all those Democrats who had the right and ability to query the people giving evidence must all be really, really dumb people. They voted in support of "Bush's war" - and now a whole bunch of them really dumb people are part of the Obama administration.

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I have never heard of any critics against US in Haiti. I would never agree to that any way.

I'm glad for that, but if you look back in the blogs to that time in Canada for example, there was LOTS of criticism of the US. "How dare they take over the airfield"! Ummm... so we can effectively start cycling aircraft through here, perhaps? For some people, the US could slip a gold brick in their pocket and they'd complain about the weight.

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I Bosnia Herzegovina our troops where very succesfull,We won hearts and minds very successfully and did our jobb very well. and called the lycky batallion because no one where killed.

I'll tell you what. I fought in Yugo in 1993. Not peacekeeping - fighting. France was involved in the fighting. As was Britain. The Nepalese. The Poles. The Argentinians. Not an armed force in a relatively quiet area - fighting. As a result, every one of those nations lost members over there, and I lost friends. I don't recall Sweden being involved in actual battles, but I could be wrong.

That isn't to slander either Sweden or Swedish troops. But where was everyone else when Sector South in Yugoslavia was so hot? Where are all the rest of these countries when Helmund and Kandahar provinces are the worst areas? Logistics and policing forces are very important, but it is the pointy combat edge of operations where you put metal on metal and where the issue is decided and lives are most likely lost. Swedish troops are currently deployed in low risk taskings and areas, as are most other NATO countries. And for a government, it is a lot easier to be involved when your troops aren't coming home in aluminum boxes, and you don't have to face the inevitable civilian casualties that result from intense fighting in built up areas.

How about trading Balkh province where Finland and Sweden currently are with the US or Canada in Helmand and Kandahar provinces? I suspect the Canadian and US governments would find considerably less opposition if all their troops were in Balkh and it was the Nordic countries doing the fighting and dying in Helmand and Kandahar. But of course, that would mean it would be the Swedish and Finnish governments having to deal with the political fallout of hundreds of killed and wounded troops, and the inevitable civilian casualties.

That isn't going to happen, and everybody knows it. And that is a problem not just for the governments of the forces doing the majority of the fighting and dying, but for the overall success of the Afghan mission. When contributing nations will only be part of the mission as long as their troops are in relatively safe areas, meaning their governments face a much lower risk of public criticism at home, you don't really have an all out and equal effort from all concerned.

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I want the old US back that only claimed ground for the soldiers graves that fell in the fight for a just cause. I dont want a US that starts war on a false ground.

It is generous of you to want a US that wants nothing more than just enough ground to bury their dead who were killed fighting in your defense, on a foreign continent far from their home. Perhaps the US will eventually decide they don't want to partner with countries that aren't willing to equally share the danger, losses, and expense. Which would leave an awful lot of the current NATO countries on the outside looking in - and over their shoulders at Russia and China.

I think it will become increasingly easy for US politicians to run on a platform that says the rest of the world is ungrateful and doesn't want the US anyways. Therefore, the US should just leave the rest of the world to fend for itself, concentrate it's spending and military forces close to home, and deal with threats outside their border not with the full spectrum of military and humanitarian aid such as in Afghanistan and Iraq, but instead through armed UAVs, air strikes, and special forces operations focused on nothing other than destroying specific people, groups, and threats. It's not like anyone can stop them, and it would be considerably cheaper both in terms of the Defense budget and in manpower.

I wonder how the rest of the world would respond to filling the hole the US left - both in their defense and to their advantage?

Wow
You wrote a book brotha
The US will always be the whipping boy, they will always be the ones who get the finger pointed to and no one will ever thank them publicly
Also if they walked from Afghanistan today the world would say they crushed the country and left the Afghan people for the dogs,
The media is largely to blame I think, no one seems to want to see the good, they just report the body count
I can't figure out why a suicide bomber is never treated as a coward lunatic like they should be, somehow news reports are indifferent to them and it gets a brief mention and we are on to Lyndsay Lohan news

It's real easy to say "leave that country alone" but these radical terrorists think we are better off dead anyway, at some point if they get enough money they will be on our doorstep regardless
hitler had nothin on some of these monsters that have the ability to obtain power over there

0007onWR wrote:

Wow
You wrote a book brotha

Well, doesn't hurt when you can type over 100 wpm... doesn't take long.

I have somewhat of a vested interest in Afghanistan. Aside from the fact I've lost friends over there, I'll be making one more trip overseas soon as a Psy Ops operator if everything I'm asking for goes my way. Staying on top of the issues and what is going on there only makes a lot of sense, and I work every day with guys who have just come back, are just leaving, etc. When you have 50 or 60 years of accumulated experience going back over the last nine years working around you each day, if you don't learn from that experience you're a bit of an idiot.

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The US will always be the whipping boy, they will always be the ones who get the finger pointed to and no one will ever thank them publicly

Yup, pretty much. Until people suddenly have a need, of course. If Russia were to suddenly start doing hard sabre rattling and sounding like the old Breznev days, I'll wager everything I have in the bank that Europe would suddenly have a deep love affair with the US again. That probably won't happen... but never say never.

Kind of reminds you of Kipling's Tommy Atkins, doesn't it? To paraphrase:
O it's America this, an' America that, an' "America, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Uncle Sam", when the band begins to play,
...
For it's America this, an' America that, an' "America, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Uncle Sam" when the troop ships on the tide,
...
For it's America this, an' America that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of our country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's America this, an' America that, an' anything you please;
An' Uncle Sam ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that America sees!

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Also if they walked from Afghanistan today the world would say they crushed the country and left the Afghan people for the dogs,

Yup, pretty much. And it would be the same people demanding that we leave Afghanistan although the job is not yet done.

Self fulfilling prophecy.

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The media is largely to blame I think, no one seems to want to see the good, they just report the body count

I don't think there is much question that the mainstream media is pretty openly biased to the left. On the other hand, I don't think the indifference of many people to getting a full and unbiased view of an issue should be blamed on the media. They just serve up the pablum most people want and which aligns with their biases.

We have the same view on many things and i really dont have the strength/time to write long articles in a foregin language. You missunderstand me sometimes but never mind..

But a few things is that your country has a population of 300 milion and my country has a population of 9 million. This is the biggest reason for a very big difference in foreign policys and contribution to wars. I think that gouvement spending messured in gnp for healping other countries is att least equal for my country as for the US and probably more.

When it comes to IRAK i note that democrates was in favor for the war, and there where reasons to it, i do recal when Collin Powells satt in UN and precented falls evidence for vapens of mass disstruction. I think that it is a fact even i USA that CIA did things to turn opinion before the war. The congress would never wouted for a war if not for false evidence and strong emotions after 9/11( I do understand that very well). Source John Rockefeller


I can understand the feeling that 007 and Jager gives about US doing a hell of a jobb around the world. I think us does a hell of a jobb i conflicts. That said does not mean that we should not critisise US when things go wrong like they do in IRAK.

The worst crimes on earth are called geneside, the last geneside that i know of was i Rawanda with about 1,8 million deaths Killing fields in Kambodja 800 000 dead. Invasion of IRAK is in the same division.

http://www.stwr.org/middle-east/iraq-death-toll-rivals-rwanda-genocide-cambodian-killing-fields.html

rokka wrote:

We have the same view on many things and i really dont have the strength/time to write long articles in a foregin language. You missunderstand me sometimes but never mind..

I hope I am not misunderstanding you, but if I do I apologize. You do a pretty good job as it is.

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But a few things is that your country has a population of 300 milion and my country has a population of 9 million. This is the biggest reason for a very big difference in foreign policys and contribution to wars.

Fully meeting your NATO commitments when it's game on and we're playing by big boy rules is not a matter of "foreign policy" in my opinion. You either do or you don't. If any NATO member nations in Europe find themselves attacked, would they be satisfied with the North American members saying "Well, that's kind of far away from us, and won't be very popular here, but we will help out a little bit". You're either in or you're out when it comes to a fight, and that's not happening right now.

And while you might think Sweden is contributing on an equal footing, you're very wrong:

ISAF troops per 100k population
US 25.1
Canada 8.5
Sweden 5.4

Per 1 billion GDP:
US 5.4
Canada 1.9
Sweden 1.0

Sweden is considerably behind both the US and Canada (and Britain, and Australia...) in contributing to ISAF forces in Afghanistan, by GDP, by 100k population, spending, or any other measure I'm aware of. There are also more than a few ISAF contributing countries that are far smaller than Sweden in population but are contributing more by any measure you would like to use. Georgia, Denmark, etc.

But most of all, the biggest cost in war is the losses: lives lost, soldiers wounded, and equipment destroyed that has to be replaced. The cost of care for the thousands of wounded soldiers for the major countries in this conflict will continue for decades - how many wounded has Sweden suffered so far? Never mind the suffering of those soldiers which Swedes - fortunately - will also not experience. Equipment: Canada's entire fleet of LAVs has basically been reduced to worn out pieces of junk after nine years of 24/7 operations in Afghanistan. The cost of that is not yet factored into how much Canada has spent in meeting its commitment. Countries like Sweden are not experiencing any material losses because their tempo of operations is nowhere near the same.

And Sweden and many, many other NATO countries will not put their troops into the provinces where the war is actually being fought: Kandahar and Helmand provinces. I suggest that even if the US picked up the entire financial costs of a Swedish or Nordic battlegroup trading places with them in Afghanistan, there is no way that would happen. Would you tell me I'm wrong, that Swedes would embrace taking over the US, British, or Canadian part of the war as long as somebody else picked up the tab?

This is not a specific criticism of Sweden; this applies to a large chunk of the NATO countries in Afghanistan. How about all those who have been taking all the losses to date get rotated out into the logistics support positions, security in the quiet provinces, etc, and the countries who have been sitting in safe areas for the last eight years step up to the plate on the two way rifle range?

That isn't going to happen, because the governments and people of those countries won't tolerate the kind of casualties the US, Canada, Britain, etc have been taking over while taking the fight to the Taliban and holding ground so that humanitarian and nation building efforts can go forward. So if ISAF is going to continue, it will only do so as long as the real players in the mission continue to participate. If Obama decides to simply withdraw the US, are the Nordic countries going to take the US areas and missions? Not a chance.

So in that respect, it is somewhat truthful to say Afghanistan is an American war - or more accurately an Anglo war - because it is only the US, Britain, and Canada that are actually doing the day to day fighting and security operations in the war zones.

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I think that gouvement spending messured in gnp for healping other countries is att least equal for my country as for the US and probably more.

You may well be right. On the other hand, that's kind of a "guns or butter" economic argument, isn't it. So, as the subject is Afghanistan, how much aid butter was being served in Afghanistan before NATO guns arrived? The Taliban had run out all aid agencies, you might remember.

For perspective: let's say the US adopts an isolationist policy regarding military action outside it's border and devotes sufficient money saved from reduced military spending to equal Sweden's foreign aid spending by GDP. When the next Afghanistan mission gets served out by the UN that is going to require not just urban warfare, but the dying that goes with it, is Sweden going to leap into the breach and go into a war where they are losing troops every week?

I don't think so. Is any other country going to do it? Historically, maybe Britain, Canada, or Australia, although with the mood in Canada these days I wouldn't count on that either. But I don't see any other contenders on the horizon, and particularly from the Nordic countries.

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When it comes to IRAK i note that democrates was in favor for the war, and there where reasons to it, i do recal when Collin Powells satt in UN and precented falls evidence for vapens of mass disstruction.

You just said the biggest difference between Sweden's minimal contribution to ISAF was the differences in size and population. That is not true. Now did you just present false evidence or did you just have an intelligence failure?

Is it just vaguely possible that Powell/the US also had an intelligence failure rather than a flat out lie, no different than what you just did?

Both Bush and Powell describe the Iraq issue as what they see as the low point of their time in government. Powell's aids have described him getting a Chinese menu of intelligence reports concerning Iraq and spending four days scrambling to bring a coherent picture out of it. For example, the International Institute for Strategic Studies had just released an estimate that said Iraq could build an atomic device in weeks or months if they had fissionable material. Other strategic think tanks said they didn't agree. Hans Blix says Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance of the disarmament and and their isn't immediate cooperation with long standing disarmament initiatives, although there is cooperation in most areas.

Now imagine for a moment that you're a president that has just suffered the 9/11 attacks. Americans are a target all over the world. Your responsibility, first and foremost, is the safety of your country and your people. You have people telling you that Iraq can very quickly have a nuclear device, and other people telling you they can't. Other people telling you then can have biological/chemical weapons, other people telling you they can't. And you have a UN arms inspector telling you that Iraq has mostly cooperated, but not totally. This is in the age where a suitcase nuke or biological/chemical weapon is quite possible, and suicide bombers are proving a single person can deliver a weapon with devastating effect. And how many subject matter experts are sending you documents to consider, for and against the existence of a threat? 10? 20? 30?

So, do you say "Nah, probably not a threat, better not do anything"? Or do you say "On the balance of probabilities there is a threat of another terrorist attack on my countries that I am not willing to accept"? Do you as president apply the precautionary principle, or do you gamble the lives of the 300 million people you are supposed to protect?

You can't even get your country's participation in ISAF right, so isn't it just vaguely possible that what happened with Iraq was an administration making a bad decision based on an intelligence failure? Normal people like you can make a mistake but not a president? Even if he errs on the side of protecting his country?

I've sat in intelligence briefing on mundane daily ops that are child's play compared to what that administration was dealing with, and watched as everyone in the room from a colonel all the way down to the senior NCOs were overwhelmed with contradictory reports, evidence, intelligence, etc. The officers compile that intelligence as best they can and go with it - but we didn't have the whole world sitting there playing armchair quarterback yelling "liar" when we goofed up and got it wrong.

Anyway, if you want to discuss Iraq - which Sweden never got involved in anyway other than selling us a lot of the arms we used over there - you can start that topic.

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I think that it is a fact even i USA that CIA did things to turn opinion before the war. The congress would never wouted for a war if not for false evidence and strong emotions after 9/11( I do understand that very well). Source John Rockefeller

Ya gotta admire all the folks who scramble to avoid responsibility for what they did after the fact when things go sour, don't ya?

If you looked a little further, you'd find that Rockefeller already had his mind made up on Iraq, long before Powell and the Bush administration made their submissions. He made his mind up after he took a personal tour to the middle east and spoke to heads of state there, before coming home and saying the following:
"There has been some debate over how 'imminent' a threat Iraq poses. I
do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that
after September 11,that question is increasingly outdated. It is in the
nature of these weapons, and the way they are targeted against civilian
populations, that documented capability and demonstrated intent may be
the only warning we get. To insist on further evidence could put some of
our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? We cannot!"

And yet... it is all Bush's and Powell's fault.

Things are not always so black and white, eh? The elected members of the senate and house aren't exactly stupid nor without their own resources to do their own investigating and fact finding, so blaming the entire Iraq war on Bush while pretending the senate and house don't exist is pretty shallow and narrow minded to say the least.

BTW, you mentioned genocide. When has Sweden ever put combat troops in the field, in combat to stop genocide? While it was occurring, not as security after the fact?

Canada has. Britain has. Australia has. The US has. So... if you consider US actions in Iraq a crime of genocide, can I consider Swedish refusal to act during genocide a crime of omission? Or is there some excuse for that as well?

The world is not a black and white place, my friend.