@hamburgboy,
hamburgboy wrote:
since afghanistan is on the other side of the world , i suppose i'll better realize that this topic is no longer of much interest .
there is no other side of the world. the game has no resolution, the game is infinite, finite games have rules of termination.
@dyslexia,
dys wrote :
Quote: finite games have rules of termination
you gonna tell general mccrystal that ? he'll appreciate your help , i'm sure - even when he is on the other side of the world - well , let's say a few KILOMETERS away from where i'm sitting right now .
( and here i told myself to stay away from the topic - dummkopf is my name )
@hamburgboy,
a good thing our "esteemed leaders " have plenty of different opinions about afghanistan - let's hope that at least one of them will be right :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/south_asia/10297508.stm
Quote: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has insisted the Nato-led force in Afghanistan is regaining the initiative from insurgents.
He was speaking after Nato talks in Brussels amid growing unease over the mission's prospects.
Nato head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said it was still realistic to aim to start handing over security responsibilities to Afghan forces this year.
But he warned the coalition would have to work hard.
Nato officials concede there is likely to be increased violence over a long hot summer in Afghanistan as the coalition pursues a key operation in and around the southern city and province of Kandahar, BBC defence and security correspondent Nick Childs reports.
Gen Stanley McChrystal, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, said on Thursday that the Kandahar operation would move at a slower pace than planned in order to ensure local support.
----------------------------------------------------------
what's this doing here ?
A roadside bomb killed nine civilians in the province on Friday while attacks by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan this month have killed at least 30 Nato soldiers, 20 of them Americans.
take your pick !
NOVEMBER 15, 2010
LOS ANGELES — I had to pull over to the side of La Cienega Boulevard last Tuesday evening as I drove home from work. I was crying.
It was nothing, or it was the same old thing. I was listening to the news on National Public Radio when there was another story about another death in Afghanistan. Pfc. Andrew Meari, age 21. A village called Senjaray. An Afghan on a moped pulled up next to an American truck and blew himself up, killing Meari and another guy. The Americans, my countrymen, were there, near Kandahar, working to win the trust and cooperation of the locals.
They were paying the locals, sipping tea with them, giving them weapons and advice. The locals killed them. What hit me was listening to Spc. Robert Criss, who said Meari was his best friend: "I don't trust anyone out there. They just seem shady all the time. ... They duck around corners and peak out at us."
"We were making inroads," said Capt. Nick Stout, Meari's company commander.
No we weren't. We were occupying their country — and they hate us. I was not crying for Meari, though God knows, he and his family deserve our tears. I was crying for my country, for the cowardice of our leaders who continue to send the same brave young men out again and again to die rather than admit they have no chance as strangers in a strange land.
They, the cowards in Washington, know what they are doing. If they don't, they can read the reports of the University of Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, which analyzed each of more than 2,200 suicide attacks around the world since 1980. Their conclusion, obvious if you read history, is that extremist religion is not the motivation for such terrorism. The reason, above all, is military occupation of other countries.
What would we do if foreign troops occupied the United States? What did we do when we considered British troops occupiers in 1776?
An extraordinarily brave American, Spc. Salvatore Giunta of Hiawatha, Iowa, the first live American to win the Medal of Honor since the war in Vietnam, said this after his heroism was recognized in a battle far from Kandahar, in the Korengal Valley three years ago:
"These people won't leave this valley," he said of the Afghans, as reported by Elizabeth Rubin of The New York Times. "They have been here far before I could fathom an Afghanistan."
Then he said: "All my feelings are with my friends and they are getting smaller. I have sweat more, cried more and bled more in this country than my own."
Our soldiers fight for each other, for their friends, as soldiers have fought and died for each other through the centuries. They are certainly not fighting, this small band of volunteer brothers, for the ideas or ambitions of George Bush or Barack Obama, or Donald Rumsfeld or David Petraeus.
They are not even fighting for the rest of us, the American people. We just had a national election for the Congress, that half-dead body which is supposed to declare wars, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were barely mentioned by candidates. And why should they be? Except for the fact that it is draining our treasury, the wars are barely affecting the overwhelming majority of Americans. We have a volunteer army, the National Football League with guns, and we are spectators. Did we even notice when the troops abandoned the Korengal Valley in defeat three months ago? Are we noticing that Congress, the White House and the Pentagon are now planning to hold off on major troop withdrawal from Afghanistan until 2014, four years from now?
So, cry the beloved country. Shed tears for the brave. And for the cowards, too, the men and women in Washington who refuse to admit we cannot impose our will on the world — and certainly never will unless we are in a struggle where we are all engaged and all at risk. The band of brothers out there are alone. We have already abandoned them in a bloody fog of empty words about national security.
Richard Reeves
Clearly, Reeves believes we should withdraw all of our troops from Afghanistan.
As it so happens, this is not soley the opinion of overwrought liberal journalists or committed pacifists. There are conservative isolationists who believe the same thing.
The question that I think has to be answered when debating this issue is:
"What should the US do after it pulls out of Afghanistan, the Taliban retakes power, and the country becomes a launching pad for terrorist attacks against the West?"
Of course it is not written in stone that an complete American withdrawal will lead to a Taliban theocratic dictatorship, or that even if it does, the Taliban will once again allow Islamist terrorists to train in and stage attacks from their country. However, it is a damned good bet that this is what will happen and so needs to be considered.
Maybe we can't or shouldn't give a damn about the lives of the average Afghan man or woman under a restored Taliban regime, but if we don't, please spare me the moral outrage and humanitarian anguish of Richard Reeves. I suppose he thinks that repeat Taliban crimes against the Afghan people can effectively be addressed by UN chastisement.
Somehow Reeves knows all Afghans want us out of there so the Taliban can return to power. OK, let's say he's right. Let them have their religious overlords.
Now, when another or additional Islamist attacks against the West or America are launched from Afghanistan, what should we do?
Look to the UN for help?
Drop bombs everywhere our intelligence tells us there are terrorists and the hell with the innocents who will surely die?
Accept them as deserved punishment?
I know we are crazy to occupy country after country and fight these wars of attrition. It weakens us financially, gets lots of good people killed and in the end we have no more friends than before it all started. I sort of favor attack squads of varying strengths, to hit them hard and fast and get back out of these countries. And would at least study the idea to allow no sanctuary nation to stop a strike. Some of the squads might be geared to grab suspects and take them prisoner. I am not educated to know how all of this would play out, but I would prefer something like that over what we have had, beginning with Vietnam and moving on down most of our armed conflicts.
@edgarblythe,
if vietnam serves us as a guide , a withdrawal of nato/u.s. troops might lead to another vietnam - namely a country enjoying good relations with the u.s. and other western nations .
i seem to recall that withdrawal from vietnam was at that time thought to lead to wide-spread communism . instead , a relately safe country seems to have developed - if we are to believe the u.s. government and press - or am i reading it wrong ?
@hamburgboy,
just a little comment from good , old henry - remember him?
http://english.vovnews.vn/Home/USVietnam-relations-to-flourish-in-next-15-years/201010/120066.vov
Quote: Former US State of Secretary Henry Kissinger, widely known as a close adviser to the US President during the war in Vietnam, acknowledged that the US failed in the war in Vietnam but said he was delighted at the fine current relationship between the two countries.
@hamburgboy,
I agree. The Vietnamese are a remarkable people, all things considered.
@edgarblythe,
So are all other peoples in their own way. Pygmies are remarkable.
@spendius,
You are more remarkable than a dung beetle, in your own way.
@edgarblythe,
You know how to spot em, ed. You have good eye.
Posted a short while ago.
(Sorry about the Oz emphasis. This is from an Australian news source.)
Quote:NATO leaders meet to plan Afghan withdrawal
By Middle-East correspondent Anne Barker
Updated 4 hours 48 minutes ago
Ms Gillard has already committed Australian forces to stay in Afghanistan well after 2014 in a capacity building role. (Defence Department)
Leaders at a NATO summit in Portugal are likely to draw up plans to reduce troop numbers in Afghanistan from next year and end all combat operations by 2014.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard is among heads of state attending the NATO summit in Lisbon.
Australia is the biggest non-NATO contributor to the military effort in Afghanistan.
Heading the agenda in Lisbon is a plan to pass full security control to Afghan forces by 2014.
Beginning next year, the 130,000-strong NATO force in Afghanistan will start winding down, albeit slowly at first.
Ms Gillard has already committed Australian forces to stay in Afghanistan well after 2014 in a capacity building role.
Defence Minister Stephen Smith, also attending the summit, says it is unlikely Australia will be asked to send more troops to Afghanistan. ..<cont>
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/20/3071874.htm
@msolga,
Good! President Obama is talking about extending that war. Somebody in this world at least knows its history and what the future holds, and aren't scared to put a deadline on it.
God bless the NATO leaders.
They just introduced the first tanks there. I hope the president hasn't gotten a notion to pursue it to clear victory, or we will never get out of there.
@cicerone imposter,
Quote:Good! President Obama is talking about extending that war.
So many confusing messages .. one minute we're working toward ending the conflict, the next we're escalating.
It is really confusing, trying to figure out what's actually planned.
@msolga,
Never thought Obama made the right decision to expand that war in the first place. One of my criticisms of Obama was on that very topic. I used to think he was a smart man, but he's failed in so many ways that just isn't helping our country or our politics. He's a failed communicator; one of his worst weakness.
@Finn dAbuzz,
Finn dAbuzz wrote:
"What should the US do after it pulls out of Afghanistan, the Taliban retakes power, and the country becomes a launching pad for terrorist attacks against the West?"
Listen carefully Finn: Terrorists and people who wish to harm the west will always exist. Staying in a perpetual war fighting an infinite enemy is not just madness, it's pure stupidity.
Saudi Arabia, our
buddies, is more of a launch pad for terrorist attacks to the west than Afghanistan will ever be. Israel, our other buddies, is more of a launch pad for terrorist attacks to the middle-east than Afghanistan will ever be.
You want to fight the mob, you don't waste your time with the street hoods, you follow the money. The reason this isn't happening is because whose hands are dirty, and who is profiting.
There is always the potential for attack, and if mass killing of Afghans and Iraqis is the price we are paying thinking we are getting a more secure west, it is most definitely NOT worth the cost. If you think that these wars are making us safer, you most definitely are stupid.
A
R
T
