Afghanastan - Obama's war of choosing

@plainoldme,

There is no way that I would ever have interpreted Candidate Obama as saying we were going to end the war in Afghanistan. His campaign speeches clearly and unequivocally were about what I could only call escalation in Afghanistan.

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@xris,

Afghanistan is just like every other illegal invasion the USA has been involved in since WWII. The "war on terror", what a crock of sour owl manure, need never have happened. The terror came from the US and other western powers sticking their noses into other countries' business. The result, the blowback, predicted fully by the CIA, was a given.

The Taliban aren't terrorists. What possible reason would they have for wanting to go to America? The Taliban, you must remember, were largely the creation of the US government. When they didn't follow the guidelines for installed governments, then they had to go, to find another more pliant soul.

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The two elephants in the room are Pakistan and India. As long as the Kashmir problem festers the Taliban is an essential ingredient to Pakistan's fight for Kashmir. With the US showing partiality towards India only aggravates Pakistan. I thinks the British deliberately left Kashmir unmarked when they left the way they left Protestant Scots in Northern Ireland.

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@JTT,

So what do you think will happen if we leave now? I'm not commenting on the invasion but what the result would be for the average Afghan who wants a country without the horrors, the Taliban would inflict. This objection you display appears not be concerned for the consequences of a withdrawal.

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@xris,

how many of "us" need to die re concern for the future of average afghani citizens?

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@xris,

Quote:

So what do you think will happen if we leave now?... the result would be for the average Afghan ....

Pretty much the same as Iraq, I'd say.
They had a mess on their hands before the US & allies invaded & they'll have a different kind of mess to recover from & try to manage after the withdrawal.
I think the "average" Afghan simply wants a reasonable, quiet life, minus the endless invasions of foreigners who insist on conducting their wars there ... they are probably sick & tired of being the meat in the sandwich in endless wars.

I often wonder how much the US economy these days depends on endless war.

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@xris,

I think that there is a bright future for the Afghans after centuries of being brutalized by foreigners. Afghanistan will be the new Saudi Arabia with respect to mineral wealth.

I wonder, if the Taliban are so bad, how does Greg Mortenson, an American, get all his schools built, all by his lonesome, and none are destroyed or damaged, nor are the students, females included, terrorized.

http://gregmortenson.blogspot.com/

Quote:

By Trudy Rubin
Philadelphia Inquirer
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Worldview: A surge in schools

A best seller describes a compelling way to build ties with Afghanistan.

Readers often ask me if I've read Three Cups of Tea, the best seller by a self-styled "crazy American" named Greg Mortenson. The book describes how he came to build girls' schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Often the questioners are quite passionate. This is no surprise, since Three Cups of Tea has topped the charts for three years, Mortenson's lectures pack huge halls, and America's top military brass frequently cite the book. Nearly four million copies have been sold, in 41 countries, and of the 131 schools that Greg's Central Asia Institute has built, none has been shut down by the Taliban
(read on at)

www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/trudy_rubin/20100117_Worldview__A_surge_in_schools.html

Quote:

Rep. Mary Bono (R - Calif.) says:
"I've learned more from Greg Mortenson about the causes of terrorism than I did during all our briefings on Capital Hill. He represents the best of America. “Greg’s work brings people into the fold. He has real love for these people. That’s something bureaucracy will never have: genuine love and caring for these people.”

Quote:

Bill Clinton says:
He (Greg Mortenson) is the ultimate social entrepreneur ... a guy with a good idea, prepared to start small and stay with it as long as it takes to have a big impact and commit a lifetime to it. ... he is effective in an area where Americans are not popular, because he relates to people as human beings.

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@dyslexia,

As the invaders of a sovereign nation, that really isn't of much consequence, is it, Dys? Your concern should be for those innocents who have been the subject of such terrorism.

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@dyslexia,

The Taliban would return and we would see the abuse of women and all the other horrors we witnessed. We chose to enter the country and gave the Afghans an opportunity to hope for better government. We have lost many good men in that choice , should we ignore their sacrifice and turn and run. The troops stationed there dont think so. We should have the grit to finish what we started. Its total self imposed ignorance to say the Taliban are not that bad and the Afghans can find there own way. They are a tribe of bandits, the Taliban, who are not the majority and need educating on the rights of the majority. Every where democracy is denied it eventually effects us all. Finish what we started.

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@xris,

Quote:

need educating on the rights of the majority.

yeah, for sure our mission in afghanistan is educate the taliban on the rights of the majority.

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We seem to be doing what weve done in most countries we called allies. We support a corrupt government and drop billions for the war lords to take for their own benefit just as we did in south america for 120 years. Make the military complex richer and the cost is only a few thousand young lives. Politicians are all bastards!

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@xris,

It doesn't take much to get some folk to swallow the propaganda.

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@JTT,

I wish you would expand your post to give us some understanding of your view.

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@msolga,

msolga wrote:

Yes, I fully appreciate that Obama was handed a poisoned chalice by the Republicans.
But ... I just wish it still didn't feel like business as usual in Afghanistan, that's all ...
Sigh.

We are currently in the end game of Western civilisation All of the pieces are being put in place. Next stop global war.

It's all about direct control of the energy, or control of strategic points on the globe that enable indirect control of the energy.

There is an old journalistic maxim that states that if you want to understand the heart of a story, then you should follow the money. However, since money is merely an abstract representation of all of the resources used by man (in particular energy) then this maxim should be really viewed as derivitive rather than axiomatic.

If you want to know why it's "business as usual", follow the energy....

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http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/07/mccain_slams_steeles_remarks_o.html

Quote:

On The Week this morning, Arizona Senator John McCain called Steele's statements "wildly inaccurate," saying "there is no excuse for them," and "Mr. Steele is going to have to assess as to whether he can still lead the Republican Party."

Over on Face The Nation, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (who, by the way, 'aint gay) called the war in Afghanistan "America's war," and called Steele's comments "uninformed, unnecessary, unwise."

Finally, on Fox News Sunday, Republican Senator Jim DeMint said Steele "needs to apologize to our military."

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@ehBeth,

I guess Okie didn't get the memo.

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@stevecook172001,

Ah.

Interesting post, steve. You might well be right.

(A pleasure to meet you, by the way.)

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@xris,

Quote:

The Taliban would return and we would:

1) see the abuse of women and

You see the abuse of women and children frequently in the US and other western nations. Get over yourselves!

Quote:

2) all the other horrors we witnessed.

This is the effect of that propaganda. Whatever was happening was happening when the Taliban were the USA's boys.

More realistically
We chose to [enter] invade a sovereign country on the bullshit pretext to give the Afghans an opportunity to hope for better government.

Quote:

We have lost many good men in that choice , should we ignore their sacrifice and turn and run. The troops stationed there dont think so[/i]. We should have the grit to finish what we started.

Not at all pertinent. The issue is the Afghans, not foreign invaders. Y'all should have the balls to admit you made another bad error and way too many innocent Afghans have died and had their lives turned upside down, as is always the case when the USA sets out to save people for democracy.

Just who the **** do you think you are? [not you specifically, Xris] No really, think about it. Would you tolerate it for half a second if someone invaded the USA and told you how to run your lives and government.

Remember, the plan was to go to Afghanistan to get Osama binLaden. Pretending that the Taliban were terrorists was a good ploy to dupe the citizenry. The US government does not give a flying **** about the Afghan people. The US does care a great deal about all the mineral wealth there and this was another invasion to position the US to exploit Afghanistan's wealth.

You want terrorists. The USA is full of them and they are walking around the streets as free men and women. These people are still mounting terrorist attacks, with the help of the US government on countries around the world. If they were brought to justice the world would plainly see how complicit the US government/CIA/FBI are in supporting terrorism.

Quote:

Its total self imposed ignorance to say the Taliban are not that bad and the Afghans can find there [sic] own way. They are a tribe of bandits, the Taliban, who are not the majority and need educating on the rights of the majority. where democracy is denied it eventually effects us all. Finish what we started.

As I said, Greg Mortenson, one man, has done more for the Afghans, for the education of their children than the US and other western countries could do in centuries. How many schools has he built, over 130, with the full assistance of the Taliban, the warlords, the citizenry.

If a gang of invaders came into the US and built schools, those schools and the students who attended them would be attacked vociferously.

Quote:

Every where democracy is denied it eventually effects us all. Finish what we started.

More propaganda. This stuff is insidious. That's pure BS. The US is now reaping what it has sown over the last century. Right after 9-11 there were a number of professors, realistic individuals all, who said they could count 10 or 15 countries without too much thinking that might have initiated the attacks.

Stick your nose in others' business, expect to get your nose bitten.

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@xris,

Quote:

The Taliban would return and we would see the abuse of women and all the other horrors we witnessed.

The abuse of women has hardly been curtailed during this latest war in Afghanistan. Going by the writings of activist women from Afghanistan.Which I make a point of reading.

Between the war lords, the religious fanatics & the (forever) invading foreigners, their lot in life has not exactly improved.

Interestingly, they appear to have had the best deal (so far) under Russian occupation.

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@parados,

As has already been pointed out in this thread, Republican leaders rebuked Steele on his idiotic comments shortly after they were reported. Some have called for him to resign.

Obama need not worry about Republicans when it comes to Afghanistan, it's a large number of the members of his own party that are giving him a hard time. And it's only going to get worse.

Obama campaigned in 2008 (along with a lot of other Democrats) that Afghanistan was the Good War, that Bush (with McCain's support) took the nation's eye off of the righteous war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and sunk American lives and treasure in a "war of choice" in Iraq. He could not have been clearer.

(Hillary Clinton was right there with him by the way.)

Surprisingly, he stuck to his guns when the time came earlier this year and decided to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan.

During that speech, I believe he felt it a political necessity to emphasize the draw down date in July 2011. He knew the Left would not welcome his decision and so threw them a rhetorical bone.

Now he's been forced to distance himself from that promise for a number of reasons and while he won't come right out and say it, he's not going to make good on it next year unless the situation in Afghanistan dramatically improves---something virtually no one expects to happen.

Clearly the war in Afghanistan is not one of Obama's choosing, and not even Michael Steele believes that to be the case. What he was doing, in an utterly inept way, was to suggest to Republican candidates that they could and should take political advantage of the war's poor progress and the growing disapproval of the American people. Pretty much what one time Democrat supporters did with the war in Iraq.

His attempt to politicize the war, not any perceived criticisim of it, is what angered Republicans.

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Afghanastan - Obama's war of choosing

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