Turn off the lights, the parties over in the Afghanistan region

[ky54]

Nice to see BDS never goes away from the inflicted.

 

[BoomerD]

Nice to see BDS never goes away from the inflicted.

Well...CDS has lasted almost 12 years...

 

[blackangst1]

Why should we assume the Afghan people will not join the modern world too like countless other peoples? Or that the USA is not rapidly flushing itself down the toilet.

Why do you assume the Afghans have any interest in your world? If anything has been shown that is they prefer their culture and way of life over Walmart. Who's to tell them they are wrong? At the same time we aren't compelled to hang around for them to change their minds.

I agree with HR. We shouldnt assume the people WANT to move forward.

 

[Jhhnn]

Nice to see BDS never goes away from the inflicted.

Straight to denial. Your boy Dubya screwed the pooch, plain & simple. If the Soviets couldn't subdue Afghanistan with 100K+ troops & no qualms about brutality, WTF other than arrogance & stupidity led the Neocons to think they could do it with fewer than 40K?

They were either blind stupid or they never had any intention of achieving what anybody in this country would recognize as "success".

Goa ahead- take your pick.

 

[Lemon law]

Why debate why we lost in Afghanistan, its clearly the fault of the Afghan people. Only one job remains, as we in Nato must invent a cover story to explains how we won peace with HONOR.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Why debate why we lost in Afghanistan, its clearly the fault of the Afghan people. Only one job remains, as we in Nato must invent a cover story to explains how we won peace with HONOR.

lol

You pronounce that we've lost in Afghanistan while you refuse to acknowledge that we won in Iraq because 'it's not all said and done.'

By your own standards it cannot be known that we have lost in Afghanistan because it's not over and who knows what might happen in a month, a year, or more. That applies per your own P&N reasoning and logic LL, unless you want to be a flaming hypocrite, which wouldn't surprise me in the least.

 

[Lemon law]

lol

You pronounce that we've lost in Afghanistan while you refuse to acknowledge that we won in Iraq because 'it's not all said and done.'

By your own standards it cannot be known that we have lost in Afghanistan because it's not over and who knows what might happen in a month, a year, or more. That applies per your own P&N reasoning and logic LL, unless you want to be a flaming hypocrite, which wouldn't surprise me in the least.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TLC, please do not attempt to put words in my mouth I don't agree with.

In terms of Iraq, IMHO, the verdict and the jury is still out. Iraq may stay stable for the present time, or any random event may send Iraq into a regional or civil war. Now that US troops are largely out of Iraq, the USA can no longer act as a stabilizing force.

 

[cybrsage]

We never intended to subdue Afghanistan, which is why the Soviets failed. We intended to replace their government with one the people support. So far, we have success in that. The last election saw over 75% of the eligable people vote - even though they knew it could mean death to do it. I call that success.

Will it last? Cannot say...it took a decade or more after the US won its revolution before we had a stable government...then a scant 100 years later close to a million of us were dead in our civil war.

 

[cirrrocco]

Even though I do not agree with LL on how to solve the Afghan issue, he has been consistent from the beginning that the Afghan dreams were gonna be a bust and that's what is happening now.

I have also been saying for a long time, that the snake is being fed from neighboring Pakistan and a few B-52's over Rawalpindi would have made sure the 'bad' taliban did not get any support from TSP [terrorist state of Pakistan]

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TLC, please do not attempt to put words in my mouth I don't agree with.

In terms of Iraq, IMHO, the verdict and the jury is still out. Iraq may stay stable for the present time, or any random event may send Iraq into a regional or civil war. Now that US troops are largely out of Iraq, the USA can no longer act as a stabilizing force.

I'm not putting any words in your mouth LL. Claiming "the jury is still out" doesn't significantly differ with what I said.

iow, you want to claim that "the jury is still out" with regards to Iraq yet you pronounce Afghanistan to be already lost when, in fact, the jury IS still out there.

 

[Jhhnn]

We never intended to subdue Afghanistan, which is why the Soviets failed. We intended to replace their government with one the people support. So far, we have success in that. The last election saw over 75% of the eligable people vote - even though they knew it could mean death to do it. I call that success.

Hogwash.

The total turnout of voters was estimated to be almost 3.6 million out of a total of more than 10 million eligible voters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_parliamentary_election,_2010

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Is you stupid? O-Bammah didn't send our troops there in the first place. O'Bammah didn't lose site of the original mission there and focus instead on Iraq...a country that, while it wasn't complying 100% with the UN mandates, was still in 1000% better shape than it is now...

Nope, If GWB would have stayed focused on Afghanistan...gone in, gotten Osama Bin Forgotten, mopped up the Taliban resistance that was fairly minor at the time...and left without trying to rebuild the country into a democratic nation, (something that doesn't seem to work well in that region) then none of the bullshit that's gone on in the past several years would have happened.

While O'Bammah is to blame for us remaining in Afghanistan, the REAL blame for our failure there rests solely and firmly on the shoulders of George W. Bush...the president who fucked that mission in the ass.

Completely agree. Afghanistan was out of the news for YEARS after Iraq started. Many people even forgot all about Osama bin Laden up until he was killed. I remember hearing stories about how after we shifted to Iraq and basically left most of our allies to fight in Afghanistan, the Taliban started moving back in and taking back what we took.

 

[Zebo]

I wonder if 3 million will get slaughtered like after we left Vietnam. It's payback time.

 

[Zebo]

Is you stupid? O-Bammah didn't send our troops there in the first place. O'Bammah didn't lose site of the original mission there and focus instead on Iraq...a country that, while it wasn't complying 100% with the UN mandates, was still in 1000% better shape than it is now...

Nope, If GWB would have stayed focused on Afghanistan...gone in, gotten Osama Bin Forgotten, mopped up the Taliban resistance that was fairly minor at the time...and left without trying to rebuild the country into a democratic nation, (something that doesn't seem to work well in that region) then none of the bullshit that's gone on in the past several years would have happened.

While O'Bammah is to blame for us remaining in Afghanistan, the REAL blame for our failure there rests solely and firmly on the shoulders of George W. Bush...the president who fucked that mission in the ass.

Yeah but he made lots of his buddies rich beyond belief. Obama can't say that.

 

[gotsmack]

Here is the reason we are not making progress in the ME: we are NOT nation building, we are occupying. Ask yourself: what does nation building look like?

To me, nation building is: figuring out the major population centers that can be linked up to a supply line and sending in people to build hospitals and school. Then educate the children and train people to work in trades and irrigate their farm land.

The troops should only be there to protect the civilians you send over there, not to go on patrols. If you talk to the tribal leaders, pay them an offering, and explain what you are going to do, they won't attack you. If they feel that you are doing honest work, they will take care of problems from other factions that are trying to interfere.

 

[disappoint]

Almost sounds perfect to me. Being strongly opposed to nation building, I like the idea of merely having some soldiers on a remote base in Afghanistan that can deploy as needed to blow up Taliban etc. (Assuming the military thinks that's d-able. Otherwise, time to leave.)

The one thing I do NOT want to see is us having to fight our out of Afghanistan.

Fern

I agree with this. I also think it's a bad idea for our troops to be training afghan troops as we were doing before in case they become our enemy again. Look at Bin Laden, he was trained by us then he turned against us and used his training to recruit and train terrorists.

Let them be. If they attack us again bomb them to the stone age....oh wait they already are in the stone age...wtf are we doing there again?

 

[cybrsage]

Look at Bin Laden, he was trained by us then he turned against us and used his training to recruit and train terrorists.

This is an Internet myth which refuses to die.

U.S. government officials and a number of other parties maintain that the U.S. supported only the indigenous Afghan mujahideen. They deny that the CIA or other American officials had contact with the Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) or Bin Laden, let alone armed, trained, coached or indoctrinated them. Scholars and reporters have called the idea of CIA-backed Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) "nonsense",[16] "sheer fantasy",[17] and "simply a folk myth."[18]

They argue that:

• with a quarter of a million local Afghans willing to fight there was no need to recruit foreigners unfamiliar with the local language, customs or lay of the land
• that with several hundred million dollars a year in funding from non-American, Muslim sources, Arab Afghans themselves would have no need for American funds
• that Americans could not train mujahideen because Pakistani officials would not allow more than a handful of U.S. agents to operate in Pakistan and none in Afghanistan;[19]
• that the Afghan Arabs were militant Islamists, reflexively hostile to Westerners, and prone to threaten or attack Westerners even though they knew the Westerners were helping the mujahideen.

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri says much the same thing in his book Knights Under the Prophet's Banner.[20]
Bin Laden himself has said "the collapse of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role," but "collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant." [21]
According to CNN journalist Peter Bergen, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997,

The story about bin Laden and the CIA — that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden — is simply a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn't have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn't have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. The real story here is the CIA did not understand who Osama was until 1996, when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.[18]
​

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_–_Osama_bin_Laden_controversy

The US says we never funded/trained him, AQ says the US never funded/trained him, and OBL himself says the US never funded/trained him. It would have been a big deal to be able to say AQ used the devil's own money to fight the devil...but they did not say that because it would have been a lie.

​

 

[cybrsage]

Hogwash.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_parliamentary_election,_2010

I did not know you loved to wash pigs. Is it a fetish of yours, or a side business?

An election to the office of President of Afghanistan was held on October 9, 2004. Hamid Karzai won the election with 55.4% of the votes and three times more votes than any other candidate. Twelve candidates received less than 1% of the vote. It is estimated that more than three-quarters of Afghanistan's nearly 12 million registered voters cast ballots. The election was overseen by the Joint Electoral Management Body, vice-chaired by Zakim Shah and American diplomat Ray Kennedy.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_presidential_election,_2004


This is the violence I was speaking about, if you can take time away from your pigs to read it:

Violence
Rebels loyal to the former Taliban leadership had vowed to disrupt the election, accusing the United States moving to dominate the region. During the election process, five Afghan National Army soldiers died in skirmishes and due to landmines. 15 staff of the Joint Electoral Management Body were killed and a further 46 injured in various attacks.[citation needed] 2 International sub-contractors working in Nuristan in support of the electoral process were also killed.

 

[Lemon law]

I'm not putting any words in your mouth LL. Claiming "the jury is still out" doesn't significantly differ with what I said.

iow, you want to claim that "the jury is still out" with regards to Iraq yet you pronounce Afghanistan to be already lost when, in fact, the jury IS still out there.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total hogwash TLC, IMHO, as it seems to me that your have gone down on records as saying Iraq is already in the bag as a US victory. Or your most famous prediction, IMHO, that Al-Sadr was finished as a political force by 2006. And than an Iraqi strong man type named Maliki would never fail to alienate everyone.

Or you do what I do, and look at current Iraqi events on the ground. As Al-Sadr, the head of the largest political block in the Iraqi Parliment, has mobilized close to a million Iraqi supporters on the street demanding do a better job fixing Iraqi electrical and plumbing resources.Al-Quida is having a seeming field week in terrorists attacks, while Maliki things Iraq can host an upcoming Arab summit.

A position that radically differed with what you said TLC, as you said, "You pronounce that we've lost in Afghanistan while you refuse to acknowledge that we won in Iraq because 'it's not all said and done.'

By your own standards it cannot be known that we have lost in Afghanistan because it's not over and who knows what might happen in a month, a year, or more. That applies per your own P&N reasoning and logic LL, unless you want to be a flaming hypocrite, which wouldn't surprise me in the least."

As you seem to be saying, if we have not lost yet, victory is more likely than not. Which is radically different than me saying the jury is still simply out. And I also pay attention to ongoing and likely future events on the ground, while you, IMHO, you have a track records as a poster child for the hypocrisy of unfounded optimism.

I don't know what color the sky is in your world TLC, but in the world I live in, we don't gain political stability by kicking political problems down the road.

 

[cybrsage]

As Al-Sadr, the head of the largest political block in the Iraqi Parliment, has mobilized close to a million Iraqi supporters on the street demanding do a better job fixing Iraqi electrical and plumbing resources.

When he moved from being a fighting force to being a political force, I applauded the move. I still do. I have no problem with mobilizing people to demand basic things like water and electricity be fixed. That is a good thing.

I know you were not saying it is a bad thing, just wanted to say I have no problem with former foes turning into political parties. Same with the Taliban. If they give up their guns and turn into a large political party in the current government, I will support it. Government should represent everyone, even the former fighters.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total hogwash TLC, IMHO, as it seems to me that your have gone down on records as saying Iraq is already in the bag as a US victory. Or your most famous prediction, IMHO, that Al-Sadr was finished as a political force by 2006. And than an Iraqi strong man type named Maliki would never fail to alienate everyone.

Please link and quote a post where I claimed al Sadr was finished as a political force. I dare you. Because I guarantee you it doesn't exist anywhere except in your fertile imagination, LL.

Since you won't be able to find any such claim by me, please retract the accusation and apologize once you are done desparately finished searching for such a statement.

Or you do what I do, and look at current Iraqi events on the ground. As Al-Sadr, the head of the largest political block in the Iraqi Parliment, has mobilized close to a million Iraqi supporters on the street demanding do a better job fixing Iraqi electrical and plumbing resources.Al-Quida is having a seeming field week in terrorists attacks, while Maliki things Iraq can host an upcoming Arab summit.

Speaking of hogwash. al Sadr is in no way or form head of the largest political block in Iraq. How can you claim to look at the current Iraqi events on the ground when you don't have the first clue about its Parliamentary makeup?

Try again, LL. You have two mighty swings and misses by a mile so far.

A position that radically differed with what you said TLC, as you said, "You pronounce that we've lost in Afghanistan while you refuse to acknowledge that we won in Iraq because 'it's not all said and done.'

By your own standards it cannot be known that we have lost in Afghanistan because it's not over and who knows what might happen in a month, a year, or more. That applies per your own P&N reasoning and logic LL, unless you want to be a flaming hypocrite, which wouldn't surprise me in the least."

As you seem to be saying, if we have not lost yet, victory is more likely than not. Which is radically different than me saying the jury is still simply out. And I also pay attention to ongoing and likely future events on the ground, while you, IMHO, you have a track records as a poster child for the hypocrisy of unfounded optimism.

No, moron. What I am saying is that you avoid in every possible way claiming Iraq was any sort of victory while pronouncing Afghanistan to be lost prematurely. Are you so daft you cannot figure that out for yourself? Or is it due to the fantasy world you seem to live in, the one that has no real grasp on reality?

I don't know what color the sky is in your world TLC, but in the world I live in, we don't gain political stability by kicking political problems down the road.

Wow. Start by answering my questions before YOU question what color anyone elses sky is, LL.

 

[EagleKeeper]

I don't need you or anyone else to tell me who is dying in this war, and you know full well my comments were directed at the loyal Bushies who have been doing all they can to revise Afghanistan into "Obama's War" I'm sure if Obama were able to facilitate some miracle over night pullout, the same crowd would be crowing about how "Cut and run Obama" left the place wide open for an Iranian puppet government or something... Were AQ to move back in after our exit who do you think will get the blame for that?

Obama and his generals don't have the luxury of ignoring the results of Cheney's 7 years of Dithering (unlike so many Bush supporters). Extricating yourself from the briar patch is usually a little more painful and time consuming than performing the stupid jump that got you there in the first place.

To us it's just about getting the guys home, but the Pentagon has to figure Iran into everything now too, which represents a situation that has gotten a bit more tense since 2003.

We got out of Iraq inside 6-9 months once the decision was made.

The same can be done in Afghanistan.

Anything more is political CYA.

 

[Lemon law]

More revisionist history from EK IMHO. The UN basically gave Uncle Sammy a blank check in Afghanistan. GWB&co may have done a good snow job in selling the Iraq war to the American and British people, but the Iraqi military occupation never received a UN stamp of approval. And when the Iraqi military occupation of Iraq devolved into an orgy of ethnic cleansing, GWB&co faced a doubled barreled shotgun of world disapproval. Not only was no WMD found proving GWB&co lied, it also showed that the USA was unwilling and incompetent to stop an Iraqi bloodbath.

Which is why GWB&co was really caught up shit creek without a paddle when the US installed puppet government of Iraq under Maliki told GWB, set a withdrawal date certain to get the hell out of Iraq, and gained approval from the UN. As that withdrawal date plan was set as 12/31/2008. At least GWB was responsible enough in MHO, to set a gradual withdrawal plan that kept the USA and whatever elements of Nato in Iraq until 2012.

Since then the USA has tried and tried to get the Iraqi government to extend their presence in Iraq, but the Iraqi government has never relented.

As for Karzai in Afghanistan, he. IMHO, has fallen far short of having the guts and backbone to standup for any principle. But I suspect, pressure will start really building for the USA to get out of Afghanistan long before 2014. Obama had his chance to improve the Afghan public image of the USA, and instead Obama managed to do slightly worse.

 

[Blackjack200]

Pretty good opinion piece from Maureen Dowd from the NY Times. I know some dont trust them, but I thought it was non-partisan and interesting.

...Jones was once so gung ho about W.’s attempts to impose democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan that, after the French opposed invading Iraq in 2003, he helped lead the effort to rename French fries “freedom fries” and French toast “freedom toast” in the House cafeteria.

But now he thinks that both wars are sucking away lives and money, reaping only futility, and that he was silly about the fries. He said he’s fed up with having military commanders and Pentagon officials come to Capitol Hill year after year for a decade and say about Afghanistan: “Our gains are sustainable, but there will be setbacks” and “We are making progress, but it’s fragile and reversible.”

...

The epitaph of our Sisyphean decade of two agonizing wars was written last year by then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates: “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to send a big American land army into Asia, or into the Middle East or Africa, should have his head examined.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/o...l=1&adxnnlx=1332342084-EKkzfDSzRiRcdwszFJBAHA

I took part in the first protests against the war in Iraq, and I was never quite sure how I felt about the war in Afghanistan. I thought the apparatus used to attack the United States should have be disabled, but I was never sure that war was the best way to accomplish that.

I'm beyond the anger I felt at the hawks who pushed us to war a decade ago, beyond the desire for investigations, indictments, and trials. I believe we went to war because we, as a people, tolerated it, rightly or wrongly. And I think its time to heal. We cannot force our Western values onto the people of the middle east. The best thing for us to do, IMO, is to take what steps we can to secure our nation, and learn from the pain of the last 10 years.

 

[kage69]

We got out of Iraq inside 6-9 months once the decision was made.

The same can be done in Afghanistan.

Anything more is political CYA.

John McCain, is that you? I ask because that senile old guy has used Iraq and Afghanistan interchangeably too, like the only relevant bit of info is that both countries had American forces deployed there. To hell with all those pesky real word differences! "Blowback" what?

Economy's getting better all the time, gotta find something else Obama isn't doing according to our timetable or beliefs! Political CYA indeed.


Question: have ISAF forces experienced anything akin to what happened in Iraq when we got lucky with AQ pissing off the local groups, which was then reinforced with The Surge?
Anyone?