War. In Afghanistan. What do you think?

[babylonsister]

I like that the prez has a timeline in Iraq, but what about Afghanistan? What do you think?

Are we spinning our wheels, or doing the right thing? I don't know. I just hate war. And I think most thinking people do.

[spanone]

1. get. out. as. soon. as. possible.

[babylonsister]

2. No kidding. But should we be involved? Obama has always

said we need to 'get' the taliban who killed so many people. But! There's a lot of get. It's good that Pakistan is working on it, too.

[Liberation Angel]

5. What ifs

What if 9-11 was an inside job and Osama was on the BFEE payroll all along?

What if 9-11 had never happened would we trying to protect these people in Afghanistn from the monsters we created (Obama's friend Brzezinski and Rumsfeld and Cheney too all helped create the Taliba and Al Qaeda and Osama)?

The what ifs are staggering.

and innumerable

We suck up to the Saudis though most of the alleged hijackers were all FROM Saudi Arabia and they are among the most fascist and repressive of regimes anywhere.

But if 9-11 was LIHOP pr MIHOP (my preferred perspective based on the evidence) then this war is all a charade and a fraud.

[Liberation Angel]

3. Out now. I favor a UN presence

but from my perspective this war too is an inane and illegal one.

However, we (the US) created the Taliban by financing them to bog down the Soviets and bring their regime and their economy to its knees.

Now the same is happening to us.

But we do have an obligation with the international community to protect the human rights of its citizens from the monster we created.

So i think we need to pull our troops back and out and get the UN to find a solution to protect the people there (women especially).

The UN should create regional safe zones for those who want out of the violence and war and/or the fundamentalist fascists (on all sides).

This is something that could be applied in any hot zone. Get those civilians out who want out and instead of refugee camps create new peace communities protected by UN forces.

There will be no end to these wars. We can't ever win these wars. We can only try to reduc the suffering of the people there (and here for that matter)

and personally I can't afford health coverage for me and my kids let alone payng for bombs and drones and gas and jets and killing and funerals and the damage to our own citizens from the insanity of thiese wars.

Out now

[babylonsister]

9. fyi, we didn't 'create' the Taliban. They attacked us. From Afhganistan, not

Iraq.

Your whole premise is whacked.

[Liberation Angel]

17. the Taliban were create/financed by the CIA and ISI, the "Hijackers" were Saudis

http://www.rawa.org/cia-talib.htm


'CIA worked with Pak to create Taliban'

India Abroad News Service, March 6, 2001
Sanjay Suri

London March 06, 2001 11:40 Hrs (IST) THE CENTRAL Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the "monster" that is today Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia said here. "I warned them that we were creating a monster," Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars said at the conference here last week on "Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia. Harrison said: "The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan." The US provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison said.


For 17 years, Washington poured $4 billion into the pockets of some of the most brutal men on earth - with the overall aim of exhausting and ultimately destroying the Soviet Union in a futile war.
CIA director William Casey backed a plan by Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. More than 100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan between 1986 and 1992, in camps overseen by the CIA and Britain's MI6, with the British SAS trained future al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in bomb-making and other black arts. Their leaders were trained at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called Operation Cyclone and continued long after the Soviets had withdrawn in 1989.

John Pilger, The Guardian (September 20, 2003)

Harrison, who spoke before the Taliban assault on the Buddha statues was launched, told the gathering of security experts that he had meetings with CIA leaders at the time when Islamic forces were being strengthened in Afghanistan. "They told me these people were fanatical, and the more fierce they were the more fiercely they would fight the Soviets," he said. "I warned them that we were creating a monster." Harrison, who has written five books on Asian affairs and US relations with Asia, has had extensive contact with the CIA and political leaders in South Asia. Harrison was a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace between 1974 and 1996.

Harrison who is now senior fellow with The Century Foundation recalled a conversation he had with the late Gen Zia-ul Haq of Pakistan. "Gen Zia spoke to me about expanding Pakistan's sphere of influence to control Afghanistan, then Uzbekistan and Tajikstan and then Iran and Turkey," Harrison said. That design continues, he said. Gen. Mohammed Aziz who was involved in that Zia plan has been elevated now to a key position by Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Harrison said. The old associations between the intelligence agencies continue, Harrison said. "The CIA still has close links with the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence)." Today that money and those weapons have helped build up the Taliban, Harrison said. "The Taliban are not just recruits from 'madrassas' (Muslim theological schools) but are on the payroll of the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence, the intelligence wing of the Pakistani government)." The Taliban are now "making a living out of terrorism."

[G_j]

19. when did the Taliban attack us?

OBL was not a Taliban.

We did help create some fertile soil for those groups in the days the Mujahideen were fighting the Soviets.

[obliviously]

4. Pull out! N/T

[magellan]

6. We shouldn't do it

Oh -- shit, too late.

Seriously. We are never going to "win" in Afghanistan or Iraq. NEVER. We don't understand them, we have no DESIRE to understand them, some of us are more interested in getting THEM to understand US (money, bibles, etc), we've spent the last 7 years ingratiating ourselves to them by randomly intimidating, torturing and killing them, we really haven't a clue what we're doing but we keep HOPING it's working...And the things we SHOULD be doing (reverse all the above) aren't being done.

Need I go on?

[babylonsister]

7. No, we haven't spent the past 7 years that way, have we?

Link? I know what we've done has sucked, but should we just get out, or try to help?

[magellan]

11. Get out

We can't help. We've sowed too much distrust and hostility. We haven't acted in good faith.

[National Steel 27]

8. Not even the Great Alexander would take on the tribes.

But dumb-ass Boosh/Cheeney/Rummy thought they could pull it off.

Afghanistan, the Graveyard of Empires (just ask the Brits and Russians).

What this says about the Obama Admin, I don't know.

Probably means it is as bought-and-sold as the previous bunch of crooks.

[babylonsister]

10. So who are you rooting for, newbie? Shit or get off the pot. nt

[National Steel 27]

12. I am not rooting for anyone.

Just stating the facts, ma'am.

Afghanistan is a Graveyard.

Google "kyber pass, british"

Afghanistan is un-winnable.

Just as was Vietnam.

Just because I only recently showed up does not mean I was born yesterday.

Do you treat new neighbors in the same way?

I am a total fan of Obama.

But they are all bought-and-sold.

It is a simple Fact of Life.

We just need to get the hell out and let the Afghans be Afghans.

They always have been, they always will be.

Those tribes are simply not going to abide with a pipeline to the Caspian.

It's as simple as that.

Natinal Steel

[babylonsister]

13. Lots of action by the Pakistanis against the Taliban today.

That's good, we're not doing anything for nought.

And I tend to not like my neighbors when they reinforce my opinion.

[National Steel 27]

18. The Pakis are only taking action...

to get US out of their hair.

To think anything good will come out of our adventure in Afghanistan is just dreaming.

I just wonder where all of that heroin is going. I am definitely not seeing it around here.

Probably to the next unfortunate bastards we will invade.

Gotta keep that Street going, don't you know?

[babylonsister]

21. Yes, whoo hoo, I know about the heroin. But I have also heard about the

Pakistanis.

Here, check this out. The Pakistanis aren't doing what the Iraqis did, they are working it. I'm glad.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=pakistan+news&aq=0&oq=Pakistan+&aqi=g1g%3Az1g8&fp=leBsIIJAIN0

[BigBluenoser]

14. Pack up and leave...

For too long America has tried to impose "De-Nazification" strategies that worked post-WWII and have never worked again. The Japanese and the Germans were too crushed after WWII to have any sizable part of the population willing to fight on (see the failure of the Nazi werewolf after VE). They were also very homogeneous cultures that were willing to obey the nation state to which they belonged. But the America and the west found a hammer, and gosh darn it they were gonna use that hammer. Even if the problem wasn't a nail.

We don't have the will to be a Soviet style conqueror, yet we are hyper militant and love interventions. Basically we suck at empire.

[babylonsister]

16. Where were you the past 8 years? Was all well with you? Do tell nt

[BigBluenoser]

20. I'm not sure what you mean...

But Iraq has hardly been "pacified" despite the presence of 100K+ US troops. Afghanistan is definitely not tamed. Therefore we, are not as a nation willing to do the horrible things necessary to conquer another nation with a vastly different culture (this is despite the very terrible, but not terrible "enough"things that have been done), pacify it, and keep it. This is good on us in some ways, but it leads to the muddled situations of occupation without pacification resulting in a slow simmering war.

Therefore we suck at empire and should really just stop half-assed trying it. It is morally bankrupt, not advantageous to our national interests, and is really just a bunch of fucking around in countries we don't need to be fucking around in.

End the wars, bring them home, and figure out a way to shrink the full time military to a size where sizable foreign intervention requires a draft (making it much more difficult).

[babylonsister]

22. You're not sure?

Your concern is touching now. We wouldn't be there if it weren't for that idiot son aka blivet.

[BigBluenoser]

26. Apparently my ESP isn't working...

Could you please write out what you are thinking in plain text so I have some idea wtf you are talking about?

[frog92969]

15. Stop the crime - Stop the terrorist recruitment

Yesterday!

[mtf80123]

23. Get out now while the gettin is good.

Not much left to worry about... except our National pride.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

24. We lost. Get out. Get over it.

We are serving no purpose there but to strengthen the Taliban and further destabilize the whole region. And, oh yes, to cover the politicians' asses who want to be seen as "tough on terror" no matter the cost in lives and treasure.

[babylonsister]

25. We never won.

I thought we are there to strengthen everyone fighting the Taliban, like the Pakistanis, and they are.

So what should we do, dismiss this whole thing? Get tough when we're attacked again? You know it will happen, though it's going to happen regardless.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

27. The Pakistanis are now fighting a civil war with their own people.

At our behest and because of the pressure applied to them by our government. It is doomed to failure because it is, as in Afghanistan, a tribal war that has it's roots in a number of conflicting interests.

Yes. We should admit defeat in a war that we've already lost. There is no hope of "winning" anything in the region. The Taliban didn't attack us. Al Queda did, and by any rational measure the attack was a success beyond Osama's wildest dreams. We are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. We have lost what little moral standing we had in the world. We have wasted countless lives in a totally unnecessary, and unwinnable, war in Iraq. And, now, are shifting the troops into another Vietnam.

What should have been, at best, a police action against Al-Queda has morphed into a "war on terror" without end or even a plausible excuse to continue.

We have killed multitudes of people for no reason other than enriching the corporations and provide politicians with bogeymen so they can wave the flag and cover their sorry asses.

[Cid_B]

30. What is your standard ...

for losing? What source of information are you basing that off of? Personal experience? MSM? google?

[mtf80123]

28. End it Now!!!

Or sweet talk Russia into picking up the slack they started.

[frog92969]

29. You blame Russia...

for us creating the Taliban to defeat Russia??