The horror of Sept. 11th, 2001

We were attacked, we told the Afghan government (then the Taliban) to turn over the perpetrators (bin Laden and Al Qaeda), and they refused. Most of the world at least understood, even if they didn't support us, when we invaded Afghanistan. There was possibility of extirpating the Taliban, and we went boldly into Waziristan, the tribal area straddling the Afghan-Pakistani border. Pakistan was never a willing ally, and Pervez Mushareff told his people on September 12, 2001, that he was being forced into an alliance by American military threat. The administration down-played that, and the western press didn't pay it any attention. ISI, the Pakistani security agency, supported and advised the Taliban in Waziristan, and may even have fought themselves against the Americans. But we still had a good shot at putting the Taliban out of business, and at the least, driving them from the tribal area of southern Afganistan which was their home.

But we had those PNAC shits in power--Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and many others, and they were just panting to invade Iraq. So we set up a coalition military force in Afghanistan, withdrew from Waziristan, and put the old, bad warlord/druglords back in power who had been driven out by the Taliban. Initially, the Afghans applauded the Taliban because they had put those men out of business--that was before the horror descended on the Afghan people. If they didn't actually applaud our invasion, they certainly didn't care what happened to the Taliban. But then, in our rush to invade Iraq, they saw the hated warlords being put back into power, whose ouster was the one thing about the Taliban they had appreciated. What ever sympathy, whatever political capital we might have had with the Afghans was shot by that. Karzai was a Taliban supporter, until his father was murdered and all the clues pointed to the Taliban. We basically screwed the pooch by that old canard that these were primitive people, not ready for democracy, and we could control them with the strong men who had once ruled Afghanistan in the brief period between the fall of the communist government and the Taliban take-over.

So, just as we have stupidly done for so long over the last 60 years, we attempted a shallow and ill-considered expedient to "settle" Afghanistan before we roared off into Iraq. The result is that the Taliban, once on the ropes, has recovered (not nearly to the point they were at in 2001, but definitely a player again), and the Afghans have no faith in the United States, in NATO or in Karzai's regime.

Other nations have long foreign policy histories from which they can learn, but we don't. All we have is the legacy of the cold war, during which we would support brutal shits like Marcos or Pinochet, so long as they were reliably anti-communist. We've just transferred the principle, and now we are relying on a puppet government in Afghanistan which is ostensibly anti-Taliban, although that is not something of which we can be sure, and a government the people of Afghanistan despair of. Little wonder that it has become a morrass.

The point being, I am perfectly willing to come to the table and consider rational and realistic perceptions. I am not interested in arguing fruitlessly against inaccurate portrayals without any goal in mind.
Robert has made some extremely insightful and intelligent statements which I've learned from.
The link I posted is about as realistic an article on the death tolls in Iraq as I have found, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to what you have posted.

Don't await disagreement from me.
But I'm more obnoxious. I don't think our attempts at advising are other than piffle. I could add at a lot of money per minute, but that's not my point.

I've spoken before, some words from my father about some african country, not sure when, probably mid fifties, that it was all wrong to think countries were not ready for democracy.

Well, I'd raise my brows to talk with him now. Late in life, I'm interested in how corruption works and is challenged. I pretty much get how it works, it's the second part that is the problem.

I'll go so far as to posit that corruption happens in some fairly clear circumstances.

Would that such were to refrain from sullying the pure waters of the well of grief by diverting them to sustain the tares of bellowing nationalism and poisonous propaganda.

With all due respects to both you & JTT, wayne, I think this link he posted is valid & worthy of our attention.
http://middleeast.about.com/od/usmideastpolicy/a/me090424b.htm

Same as the view you posted might be a valid one & worthy of attention.

Maybe the truth is somewhere in between?
How can we really know, with complete certainty, what the exact number of Iraq casualties actually are?
And why are exact numbers so important, anyway?

My own personal view is, whatever the assessment of exact numbers is deamed to be, from whatever sources .... from what we have learned from the Wikileaks, to the Lancet, to the most conservative apologists for the Iraq invasion available ... is that there were far too many unjustified & avoidable civilian deaths.

I can't see that much would be gained in point scoring, or arguing about exact numbers, myself.
Maybe such arguments actually distract us from fully appreciating the enormous injustice that was experienced by Iraqi civilians? And is doing them a disservice?

And one last post before I go ...

Pardon this digression, but I can't really help myself!



Thank you, chai.

It is very interesting that some here can appreciate the "shrill" part of "shrill harpy" .....a woman who has the temerity to express a few political opinions on this site, but yet don't seem to get the "harpy" part of the insult ....

Here's a video that Old Goat posted to another thread yesterday, that I think we can learn a thing or two from!

That whole series of Enfield videos is brilliant! I'd never seen them before.

Corrections ... in the blue bits:

Actually, I should have said:

Yes, wonderful stuff!

Actually, I didn't realize JTT had posted this link before I did, it is valid and worthy of our attention though.
I had seen this http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq which JTT posted. I don't feel it told the whole story of the study.

Maybe the mistake was mine then, wayne, in wrongly attributing the link you provided with JTT's?
I don't know for sure, but it's possible I accidentally did that.
If so, my apologies.

However, as I said before, I think it's pretty irrelevant who posted what & when about exact numbers of Iraqi casualties....I doubt we will ever know exact numbers.
I also can't see much point at all in some sort of competition involving different statistics from different sources about conflicting numbers of casualties & what they might mean.
That doesn't alter anything at all, as far as I'm concerned.
The most important thing, surely, is that we acknowledge the terrible wrong that has been done to the completely innocent civilians of that country & pressure our responsible governments to make reparations for the damage they've done.
And hope that we've actually learned something from this episode of rushing into war/invasion on such a flimsy basis.

I don't disagree with you about Iraq at all, my beef is when people willfully distort numbers and misrepresent basic facts. That kind of business only promotes strife , serving itself and the agenda of such promoters.

I think there's been a bit of that on both sides of the stastics fence, wayne.

I've noticed that.

Corruption is usually a product of two things, the unchecked venality of the upper levels of government, and the relative poverty of lower level officials. In Georgia, it had been so long the case that the police solicited bribes by stopping motorists that it was looked upon simply as one of the costs of driving. However, the new upper levels of government were (at least apparently) corruption free, so they solved that problem rather quickly. Police officers were given salaries in line with middle level skilled workers, and then told they would be prosecuted with the prospect of prison terms as well as fines if they were caught using their positions to attempt to solicit bribes. The practice disappeared almost overnight.

Not all solutions to corruption are so easy or obvious though. I heard a former Mexican justice minister once who had two points to make. The first was the the scale of drug profits were such that even well-paid police officers could be suborned. The second was a little more subtle. He said that Mexico should not cooperate in efforts by the Americans to make their police departments more efficient, precisely because they are corrupt. He pointed out that it would be foolish to make corrupt police officers more efficient.

Which Georgia?

The one which is a country. Contrary to stereotypes, speed traps and corrupt policemen are not common features of the American south.

Oh for the old days when the 2 called each other trolls. Well. no matter, at least they've maintained their pompous behaviors.

The words pot, kettle and black spring to mind.

False. The US committed another of its famous wars of aggression for ulterior motives, using the exceedingly flimsy excuse that you've seconded. When flimsy excuses haven't been available, lies have always worked.



He must have been lying 'cause the US had never threatened anyone militarily before that, right?