America ! WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU STILL IN AFGHANISTAN ?

In the News today.

-bolding mine

Never mind that America is supporting the sick treatment of women endorsed by “our side” which pretty well returns Afghan society back to the days of Taliban control, but I thought that the reason America is still fighting there and supporting Karzai was to ensure no safe haven for terrorists.

Explain to me how a sought after peace between Karzai and Mohammed Omar will accomplish that ?

I just don’t see an outcome worth the life of one American soldier any longer.

“Let’s declare ourselves winners…and get the hell out.” It was true in 1985, when Bill Mauldin said it of the Red Army…and it’s true today for us.

The place is a cesspool, and that’s the way the majority of them seem to want it.

I feel the gravest sympathy for the women we would be condemning to slavery, but we simply cannot civilize that sewer of a country.

This one, we lose.

We are there to save that woman with the green eyes from the National Geographic cover. Having done that, we should bring the troops home.

Much of it is the sunk cost fallacy. If we leave now and things are no better than before we invaded, then we spent all that time and resources and lives for nothing. So we keep trying to “win” an unwinnable situation. Plus we’ve never even really defined what “winning” would mean there, which makes it hard to achieve.

America ! WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU STILL IN AFGHANISTAN ?

Because that’s what superpowers in their declining years do?

1709-1713 Persians try (they lose, Afgans take the persian throne)
1748 Afgans declare independency from greater Afganistan (LOL)

I dont understand what happens next, it seems like an entire generation of afganis just sat around and lived their lives (this wasn’t hereditary)

1839 the British empire takes its first turn (1st Afgan war)
1842 16000 brits die
1857 Persia gets their second turn
1879 Brits take their 2nd turn (2nd Afgan war)
1919 Brits take their 3rd turn (3rd Afgan war)
1978 Russia starts its attempt
1992 Russia had enough
2001 Brits (persevering lot) and Yanks try (4th Afgan war??)

And still…
Fighting guerilla wars against superior firepower is what Afgans DO.
(they’ve been at it longer than the US exists)

I don’t know, maybe there are things that military intelligence sees that you don’t see and they don’t feel any obligation to tell you about.

As I said, I don’t know.

About the presence of a democratic state in a war? Then it ought to be released. I’m not talking operational stuff, but about the reasons for being in a war, yes.

Although, we have achieved some things by being there. The heroin trade is back up and running after those nasty talebanis tried to stamp it out. And the “bacha bazi”, I believe they all it, the practice of warlords and other powerful people kidnapping young boys into sexual slavery, that industry is back on its feet too.

One reason, admittedly not a grand, sweeping, strategic one, is to save the Roya Shams of that “sewer of a country”.

And Karzai has just helped put women back in their box. All Afghanistan is ever about is what bunch of vile back-stabbing, corrupt male savages gets to control, loot and rape what. With our allies - the Northern League - historically being the most vile.

The instant our back is turned it’ll be business as usual. Every cent of our treasure and every drop of our blood has been totally wasted.

And why is Australia still there? Bring the guys home.

(And as for that mob of arseholes desecrating graves of WW 2 servicemen in Libya- they needed western help to get rid of their dictator- great way to repay it boys. Those involved are neanderthal trash).

Personally, I don’t know why every soldier, tank, airplane, helicopter, and truck wasn’t right behind the Seals that ganked bin Laden as they headed back to the states. I thought that was the objective. Get bin Laden.

And by the way …

… that strategy didn’t work too well for Timothy Hutton in *Taps *is all I’m saying.

Dear Citizenry,

We’re seeing some real gains in critical areas. Nobody said it was going to be easy. Now more than ever, we have to stay the course. The next six months will be crucial.

Love,
Your Leaders

It is International Women’s Day today. I wonder how that is going over in Afghanistan.

Sharbat Gula is in her 40s now She is married with three daughters.

Once we set up shop…we never* really* leave.

Warm smell of Papaver rising up through the air?

Hmm, so what color are her daughters’ eyes?

The truth is, we dropped our car keys somewhere in the mountains while we were chasing a terrorist. As soon as we find them or someone turns them into the Afgan lost-and-found we will be out of there.

Consider…if ‘our side’ is this bad, what was it like when the other side had supreme power in the country? We are talking lesser of two evils here, and I doubt anyone is pretending that ‘our side’ is all that great…but the other side is pretty freaking vile. And not just concerning women’s rights.

You are reading more into the statement than is there. The US and the Afghan government is hoping to engage the Taliban in negotiations, not put Omar back into power and give the keys of the country back to the Taliban. It beats the alternative, which seems to be to continue the killing until either they are all dead or until we finally get tired enough to just bolt and let the country fall back to where it was before. Folks might THINK that it was better before the US and our allies intervened, but recall that among other things, the environment in Afghanistan is what allowed a group like AQ the freedom to plan and train stuff like 9/11 and the other stuff they were doing in the 90’s. Us bolting now would only accomplish more civil war, more death and destruction, with the end result being something like the environment that existed before we ever went there. And women will still be oppressed. The ONLY way things MIGHT change is if we stay and try and straighten out the mess…or, at least make things less horrible.

Is it worth the price we are paying? Gods know. I sure don’t. My inclination would be to bolt and let them go back to killing each other as they obviously want to do. But while that might be our best course in the short term, it might not be the wisest or even more humane thing we can do in the long term.

Do you know the future? It’s hard to judge what is the best course at this point. We are there, though, and it’s hard to see how just tucking tail and bolting would have a good outcome either. I think it was the right thing to do in Iraq, but I’m not convinced it’s the optimal course in Afghanistan. Simply because they have been killing each other in job lots for centuries, and that other ‘empires’ have failed, doesn’t mean that past actions or outcomes predict future events.

-XT

You mean the way that Bush had evidence of Iraqi WMDs that we weren’t privy to? :rolleyes:

No, bin Laden was never anything but an excuse Bush used to get us into Iraq, and the Bush Administration never looked at Afghanistan as much more than a stepping stone to Iraq. Which is why the takeover of Afghanistan was done in as quick-and-dirty a way as possible, bin Laden was allowed to escape out of indifference, and any chance we ever had to actually win the Afghans over (not much, admittedly) was thrown away by our neglect.