Taliban on CNN

[Hayabusa Rider]

No, they're not. We're pushing them out of Afghan. Sure its a slow process, but its happening. Who knows what will happen when they leave though.

First things first. There is no military solution for Afghanistan and there never was and never will be. The military is good for precisely one thing. Smashing stuff and people. Think of it as a sledgehammer. Well, that should do it, right? Trudge down to the local pond in summer and break the water.

It's been said that war is an extension of diplomacy and it's largely true. You cannot go into an area and demonstrate military superiority and expect people to say "Whoa, impressive. We'll be good and do whatever you want." That's plain dumb, but that's what we expected in Iraq and pretty much wherever wage war. We don't prepare for productive peace. When the Taliban "leave" it will return or another like group will take it's place because to Afghan culture our concept of a centralized federal government makes no sense. So we install the government of Kabul (which people from Afghanistan have laughingly called it) and promptly dismiss it for their preferred way of rule, which is mostly tribal in nature.

For all our military might, the Afghans don't care about us. We are irrelevant. We might have been when we went into the region initially, but when we virtually abandoned them for Iraq, it demonstrated that there wasn't any reason to bother listening to us. Threaten them? Like that's anything new. Kill them? They know their existence is tenuous at best in any case. No threat.

The best we can do right now is bribery. We haven't any credibility, and the moment we leave things will return to the way they've always been with the exception of a fledgling government based entirely on corruption. Our legacy to them.

 

[Narmer]

No, they're not. We're pushing them out of Afghan. Sure its a slow process, but its happening. Who knows what will happen when they leave though.

It's a slow process alright. So slow that it's working in reverse.

 

[WelshBloke]

Islam is no more medieval than any other mainstream religion...

Bollocks, Scientologists have got spaceships and shit...:hmm:

 

[HAL9000]

Bollocks, Scientologists have got spaceships and shit...:hmm:

True, but I did say "mainstream"...

 

[WelshBloke]

True, but I did say "mainstream"...

Hey, one flavour of hocus pocus is pretty much as valid as any other.

 

[HAL9000]

Hey, one flavour of hocus pocus is pretty much as valid as any other.

I agree, but it's hardly medieval. Like most non-mainstream religions. Mormonism etc.

 

[Baasha]

I saw the special on CNN and found it a bit drab. The journalist who lived with them for a few weeks was predictably reserved in his commentary, although he was a Norwegian.

The issue of the Taliban is much more complex than most have mentioned in this thread. Most Americans couldn't spell Taliban before 2001 and thought terrorism didn't exist till then.

The sad truth is that Afghanistan has been a battleground for more than 2000 years. Alexander of Macedonia fought the chieftains of Gandhara (now Kandahar in Afghanistan) and many intermittent skirmishes and battles have taken place there.

Why, even the famed Kurukshetra War in the Mahabharata is supposed to have taken place in what is now Afghanistan. As Turkic-Mongol and Arab invaders rode into the valleys of Afghanistan in the latter part of the first millenium CE, constant battles were taking place.

As a Taliban leader recently stated, all they know is fighting; generation after generation that was their occupation. No matter how small their forces are or how weak their weaponry is, they keep fighting. That is why the US is finding it so difficult to rout them, apart from the obvious fact that China, Pakistan, and Russia keep supplying the Taliban with arms, albeit surreptitiously.

The Taliban are most definitely medieval in their outlook and tendencies and have wrought havoc on the local Afghans. Most Muslims I've spoken to despise the Taliban. Islam gives them a reason to continue fighting. If that wasn't there, they'd simply find another excuse.

Osama bin Laden said, "We love death as you love life" and so they keep fighting even though they are almost certainly doomed. The only way the Taliban can be replaced is if Pakistan stops supporting them covertly and overtly and the Afghan population wrests control from them using whatever means necessary. They will never accept a foreign power in their land and so the US, along with other democratic nations like India, can only help the local Afghans help themselves.

This is all, IMO of course.

 

[Lemon law]

As Baasha joins the party as yet another person to attempt to describe the internal appeal of being a Taliban member. But still, don't push, don't shove, everyone has a right to float their own theory of why some Afghans decide to join the Taliban.

But as soon as we realize the Taliban is an idea and an optional choice, we nominally on the Nato side have somewhat failed to ask, why has Nato forgotten to provide better than Taliban choices to both Taliban members and non-members. Nor do we seem to have any understanding that the Afghan people cannot have any honest debates of what parts of Taliban ideals should be retained, what parts of Taliban ideals are unacceptable, when its Nato itself that instituted a policy of shooting any Taliban member on sight. Do we use armed violence in the USA with dimocrats and republitats?
We seem to be getting closer and closer every year to the Afghan solution finding its way to the USA. Don't like your elected representatives, shoot em and the voters who voted for em. The highest form of democracy yet to evolve.

Or we can also ask, given that it was Al-Quida and not the Taliban who attacked the USA on 911, why are we spinning our wheels in Afghanistan futilely trying to beat the Taliban, while we ignore Al-Quida? After all, the Taliban and Al-Quida are two totally separate and different ideals. Al-Quida is a international terrorist organization, tied to no given country, and dedicated to over throwing the existing world economic order. While the Taliban is simply a nationalistic isolationist movement tied to Afghanistan itself.

But in MHO, its not hard to understand the rise of the Taliban, which was simply based on on a idealized history of a strife free Afghanistan that never was. And all modern problems are to be blamed on external influences that came from foreign sources.

Such movements are a dime a dozen in history, but always seem to be based on all kinds of past myth's and a somewhat universal cry of give me that old time religion.

We saw much of the same thing during the US civil war, and we still have echo's of that today. But during the shooting phase of the "war", very little can be done to even discuss the myths. But the other thing to point out is that the "old line Taliban" is rapidly being replaced in leadership by the older line mujaheddin who are increasingly willing to apply the Russian solution and bite the hand of their previous US sponsors.

 

[zephyrprime]

The only way the Taliban can be replaced is if Pakistan stops supporting them covertly and overtly and the Afghan population wrests control from them using whatever means necessary. They will never accept a foreign power in their land and so the US, along with other democratic nations like India, can only help the local Afghans help themselves.

I think even though this faith in the local Afghans is misplaced. Yes, most of them hate the Taliban but when it comes down to it, they will grudgingly accept them. I don't think the Afghans have any sort of national level idealism about Afghanistan. The concept of a "nation" of Afghanistan is not strong in their minds at all. Without any national level idealism, they don't feel like it's any sort of affront to justice when a tyrannical power like the Taliban arises. In fact, I think they implicitly believe that tyrannical powers are natural and the only way any populace can be governed. American's take for granted their political liberal ideals beqeuthed to them by 18th century enlightenment thinkers is universal but I do not think this is the case. Especially in Afghanistan.

 

[Lemon law]

I think even though this faith in the local Afghans is misplaced. Yes, most of them hate the Taliban but when it comes down to it, they will grudgingly accept them. I don't think the Afghans have any sort of national level idealism about Afghanistan. The concept of a "nation" of Afghanistan is not strong in their minds at all. Without any national level idealism, they don't feel like it's any sort of affront to justice when a tyrannical power like the Taliban arises. In fact, I think they implicitly believe that tyrannical powers are natural and the only way any populace can be governed. American's take for granted their political liberal ideals beqeuthed to them by 18th century enlightenment thinkers is universal but I do not think this is the case. Especially in Afghanistan.

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Sadly, I can't agree that American foreign policy is based on our enlightened 18'th century thinkers. Its a good propaganda line for internal US consumption but it fails in practice.

And to a large extent, no where more than Afghanistan where the Judge, jury, and executioner is the Afghan people themselves.

We have to ask what was the US goal in invading Afghanistan? In 2001 many of the Afghan people welcomed the USA and Nato as the entity that would end Taliban wacki primitive ideas and brutality with a more enlightened and tolerant social order.

And instead the net immediate Nato result was to restore the rule of thugs, drug profiteers, and military war lords. Maybe in some charity we could say because Nato had such a small force that was incompetently run, it had to find other Afghan entities to ally to, but it was still the automatic games loser. But still, that alliance with the very corrupt Northern alliance allowed the US to chase the Taliban out of Afghanistan and into the basic no mans land of the Pakistani tribal areas. And it maybe bought two Taliban free years to Afghanistan. But while Nato did basically nothing to build a better Afghanistan, the corrupt, the thuggish, the drug runners, and the military war lords rushed right back to set up their Afghan style corruption at near the speed of light. And there it sits to this day. The Afghan government doesn't even work near Kabul, as for the rest of Afghanistan, its as bad as its ever been. No government institutions work, and to a certain extent the Taliban is the only entity that can provide some modicum of Justice for the common person. Worse yet, Nato never has tried to set up parts of Afghanistan that work, and instead hop from place to place, setting up various offensives that drive Afghan civilians off their land, as Nato turns all of Afghanistan into a giant shooting gallery, and at the end of these offensives, Nato goes somewhere else to spread violence and anarchy. And then don't notice that the Taliban is back even before the civilians return to the area Nato left.

Meanwhile the Pakistani army is having no better luck in its tribal areas, as the war has widened.

All Nato has imported is anarchy and corruption, and if that is all Nato stands for, where is our enlightened founders ideals anywhere in this mess. Our Nato occupation would not even do credit to a collection of imbeciles.

 

[Ackmed]

It's a slow process alright. So slow that it's working in reverse.

Again, no. They're not kicking our asses as you said. But feel free to prove your statement.

 

[zephyrprime]

But still, that alliance with the very corrupt Northern alliance allowed the US to chase the Taliban out of Afghanistan and into the basic no mans land of the Pakistani tribal areas.

But if we hadn't allied with the Norther Alliance, we would have looked like foreign invaders. Allying with the norther alliance was for political reasons not because of a need for additional military might.

The Afghan government doesn't even work near Kabul, as for the rest of Afghanistan, its as bad as its ever been. No government institutions work, and to a certain extent the Taliban is the only entity that can provide some modicum of Justice for the common person.

It's my opinion that no matter what we did Afghanistan would have turned out to be a corrupt failed state. Kabul is a good example of this. It's pretty much the only place we spent more effort setting up institutions and despite this it is still only a tenuous outpost of civilization and the leaders we installed are corrupt. If we had spent a lot of effort building up other places in Afghanistan, I think the results would be no better than what is shown in Kabul. I think the thugs and warlords are not bad apples but rather representative of Afghanistan in general.

 

[werepossum]

But if we hadn't allied with the Norther Alliance, we would have looked like foreign invaders. Allying with the norther alliance was for political reasons not because of a need for additional military might.


It's my opinion that no matter what we did Afghanistan would have turned out to be a corrupt failed state. Kabul is a good example of this. It's pretty much the only place we spent more effort setting up institutions and despite this it is still only a tenuous outpost of civilization and the leaders we installed are corrupt. If we had spent a lot of effort building up other places in Afghanistan, I think the results would be no better than what is shown in Kabul. I think the thugs and warlords are not bad apples but rather representative of Afghanistan in general.

Quite true. Any halfway serious student of Afghanistan knows that if we swept in like Iraq, we'd be fighting the whole country, just like the Soviets and the Brits before them. I agree that there is probably no way to make Afghanistan something other than a brutal, corrupt parody of a civilization; people like Lemon Law forget that our primary intent was not to make Afghanistan a nice place, but merely to remove the existing status quo that allowed the Taliban to give al-Qaeda a safe haven to base and train for attacks on us. Replacing one group of corrupt fascist Islamic extremists with another group of corrupt fascist Islamic extremists is probably the best that can be done.