Minerals. Air bases. Oil pipelines. Strategery.
Basically I agree with xtisme and** Der Trihs**.
This is a complicated situation and there are no easy answers. There are expedient answers but no easy answers.
This situation was almost doomed to failure with the way the Bushies used Afghanistan and took their eye off the ball for the Iraq fiasco.
Expediency say’s “get the hell out because nobody can win there.” On a more practical level there are areas of the country that are somewhat stable and huge progress has been made in education and health especially as it applies to women and girls. I think the policy is to hang in long enough, provide enough education and increase social awareness so that the country can begin to fix itself. That’s a high hope but there is always hope.
The fear is that if we just leave the vacuum will make it easy for the Taliban to take over and the suppression and atrocities will begin again.
Just be prepared for the humanitarian crisis if we suddenly leave. Don’t say, “why didn’t anybody do something.” Of course, it will get no press or public outcry until years later. Just look at Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan and the Congo. (The Congo; 4 million killed and it was hardly a news event.)
My solution: offer asylum to any woman in Afghanistan who wants to get out. if the women can get to American bases, we will fly them out and our troops should go with them.
Not a bad idea but I doubt that there is the logistical capability to get all of the women out of Afghanistan. Also, you have to consider that all of the goats are going to show up at the airbases dressed as women.
I thought of something similar. Followed up with having the Chinese finance the evacuation and provide the destination. God knows women are really appreciated there given the severe shortage.
And possibly vice-versa.
Very few of our troops are Aggies, they can tell the difference.
At the moment you may be right
Consider the result of a “successful” negotiation. Karzai remains head of state or whatever, while the Taliban’s desired policies are implemented. Really, all that is required for the two sides to gey along is to replace Omar (if he’s still alive) with Karzai.
Maybe not. Many will be killed by their family for just walking out their front door without permission.
Still, if we could do it and find a way to get word to all the women, it would be very interesting to see how many women would run for it.
Junkies are as upset about the high price of heroin as most other are upset about the high price of gas.
I hope a lot of them leave. Men who can’t tell the difference between women and cattle should not be allowed to near any females including female livestock.
Hmm. Maybe we could send Rush Limbaugh there? It sounds like his ideal place.
If their own men aren’t enough to make them flee the country, importing Rush would certainly do the trick.
I had a crush on her when I was in middle school.
Not anymore…
Well, they’re bigging up their air-lift capacity, which is being used by the drug lords. Might take a few trips, though. But a lot of women have already left. Before 9/11 75% of the refugees who had fled Afghanistan were women. Mostly because so many men had been killed in the war with the Soviets, then the civil wars. After all, the Taleban wouldn’t conscript women.
The way I see it, we are fighting and dying to allow China to exploit Afghan mineral deposits.
The Chinese are opening what might be the world’s largest copper mine in Afghanistan. All the labor is chinese-the license was aquired via a $30 million bribe to the minister of mines.
The ironic thing-we are borrowing money from China to fund our misadventure.
Just like Vietnam, ca. 1968-but with a worse ending.
And this is ‘our guy’. While we’re still there. The moment we leave it’ll get steadily worse.
For a war that’s lasted so very long we’ve got absolutely nothing to show from it.
The Pentagon and the bloated US military needs wars to justify its existence-so look for more “Afghanistan Style” “wars” in the future-presently, we are scouting out places like:
-Burma
-East Africa
Somalia
-Central Africa
-Yemen
-Syria
The great thing-these conflicts can go on indefinitely-assuring that the makers and sellers of uniforms, humvees, guns, bullets, coffins, can be assured of long and profitable bsiness.As for the human costs-hey, we have a lot of undereducated, unemployed young men-sign up!
So, if the USA coalition pulled out, would the Chinese step in to protect their investment? That could be interesting.
Ask Obama.
The US will never elect a total peace-nik. He sought credibility by blaming Bush for Iraq and claiming the he’d fight the good war in Afghanistan.
Now he wants to be re-elected. Didn’t he say he’d rather be a good one-term President than get re-elected? He could have pulled us out by now if he wanted to.
Do you have the slightest bit of evidence that it was the military pushing involvement in Afghanistan or Iraq? I mean, any at all?
While we’re at it, what evidence do you have for the military “scouting out” any of those locations? Burma has been improving drastically over the last year or two, with the general approval of the US; Somalia hasn’t been an attractive proposition since 1993; Central Africa is basically the same mess it has been for nearly two decades; Yemen was far worse a year ago than it is now, and its then-president was an ally in trouble; and military involvement in Syria simply will not happen unless the UNSC decides to pass a resolution against them. If you have information to the contrary, please do share it with us.