Let’s see GW Bush said “Give us Osama Bin Laden and we won’t invade.” The whole point was to catch Bin Laden. If the Taliban had surrendered him we wouldn’t have invaded and Afghanistan would be just another oppressive government.
So why are we there? Bin Laden is thought to be in Pakistan or dead. We cannot invade Pakistan so there is no reason to stay in Afghanistan. The original objective is lost and the new objectives aren’t worth it.
The people of Afghanistan know how oppressive the Taliban is and they don’t care enough to support anyone from keeping the Taliban out. Since they don’t care, let the Taliban take over again, and let’s be done with it.
I do think it’s interesting that all the protesters of the Iraq and Afghanistan war disappeared from Chicago the day after Mr Obama was elected. Have the death’s stopped? Has Mr Obama kept his word to leave? No, but I guess the protesters didn’t care about the Americans dying they were just out to cause trouble for GW Bush.
Now I hated GW Bush, but I think it’s pretty tacky the protesters used American troops as a blind to promote their agenda. But I guess that ain’t nothing new, ain’t nothing that hasn’t happened before and ain’t nothing that will happen again.
Your ability to see the future so clearly is remarkable, or perhaps delusional. Just because you stamp your Mary Janes and proclaim what the future will certainly be does not make it so.
Of course we are in a position to dictate terms. They are unable to dislodge us, and we can continue to wage a war at this low level forever. They cannot.
What do you think a successful war in Afghanistan looks like? It looks just like this. We are winning. Even a war that is going well looks like a disaster.
Yes, we’re into year nine now and the Taliban are winning, according to our own generals :
**Taliban Now Winning **
U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Warns of Rising Casualties
The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas like the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the insurgency’s spiritual home.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that means U.S. casualties, already running at record levels, will remain high for months to come.
Meanwhile the guy who stole the recent election who we’re backing because he’s the least worst crook we can deal with says he’s going to join the Taliban :
KABUL — Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened over the weekend to quit the political process and join the Taliban if he continued to come under outside pressure to reform, several members of parliament said Monday.
Karzai made the unusual statement at a closed-door meeting Saturday with selected lawmakers – just days after kicking up a diplomatic controversy with remarks alleging foreigners were behind fraud in last year’s disputed elections.
The Afghans have kicked every single imperial power out of their country over the years, it’s known as the graveyard of empires. They’re not going anywhere but we’ll pull out and leave as soon as it’s politically safe for a president to do it.
I have been involved in public demonstrations against the war. We have had several marches in the Dearborn Hgts area. All came after Bush lost. They did not get news coverage either.
Saudi Arabia, Hamburg Germany, Miami Florida and Montreal. You guys have been seduced by file footage of Muslem on monkey bars. That must mean the leadership is there? Only it does not. There was some loose permission for Al Qeada to practice in Afghanistan. that was long ago. Our own generals say there are 50 to 100 Al Qeada in Agfhanistan. We have 200 thousand troops and contractors fighting them.
The number of Saudis in 911 is irrelevant. The overwhelming support for Al Qeada is Saudi. That is financially and with leadership. Who are we attacking next, Pakistan? That will teach the Saudis, won’t it?
Response to what? You posted a video interview with a “journalist” who said that one of his main sources for the information that US bases in Afghanistan were being established for the “inevitable war against Russia” was the Russian government. So let me get this straight, even though the US has NATO allies that actually border Russia (the Baltic countries and Poland), the US needs Afghan bases to, presumably one day soon, invade Russia even though it would mean war with all of the rest of the Central Asian countries the US would have to invade through to get to Russia? Afghanistan does not border Russia.
If the US could not “control” Russia even when it was at its most disorganized and chaotic state in the early-to-mid 1990s, it certainly cannot do so now. Nor would the US try some suicidal invasion of a massively nuclear-armed nation, that likely also still has some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. This is tin-foil hat territory.
Having been stationed in a very similar situation, I can attest that this is true. All US bases, whether foreign-based or domestic are the springboard for many, many businesses that cater to Americans. And the protests I’ve personally witnessed at the gates of the Kaserne I was stationed at were directed at the noise the battalion of Apache helicopters generated there when training.
I’ll make it simple. Afghanistan was not our enemy. In a loosely governed country with local warlords running their own fiefdoms, a few Al Qaeda practiced fighting a long time ago. They did not plan 911 there. There are few or no Al Qeada there now. We have no reason to be there.
We are now fighting the Taliban. They will be there when we leave. No good can come from this mess. We can not even define what a victory would be. It is a total waste.
The Taliban has not attacked us. They are not interested in American politics. people fight hard to expel invaders . They will fight until we leave.
How on Earth do you know that? We have documented evidence from satellite photos and intel that shows that there were active terrorist training camps there. Was the late 1990’s and early 2000’s “oh so long ago”?
Same factual errors that have been pointed out to you numerous times (eg. no, it was not ‘local warlords’ running their fiefdoms but the Taliban that granted AQ its position within their nation and government). Plus a novel attempt at a switcheroo. Most folks will notice that you started with the fiction that Afghanistan was not our enemy and then moved on to the fact that now there are few AQ there.
Yet again, of course they did. They became the state sponsors of a terrorist organization which proudly and publicly stated that their goals included the targeted and deliberate murder of American civilians.
It’s nothing to do with me getting my way, it’s what will happen the minute an American president can pull out without suffering any political consequences. We have no way to meaningfully affect the cultural or human rights situation in Afghanistan at all. We can dicker about politically after we pull out and supply weapons and limited military support to our warlords to keep the Taliban from taking over again (to the extent they did last time, there was still a civil war going on and our guys in the north were fighting them up until we turned up in 2001) but that’s about it.
Except for you and people like you deciding to ensure an American president would suffer political consequences for pulling out. Other than that, your right, we are just leaves being blown about by winds we cannot control. Nothing in the world is your fault.
Right again, except for a huge military, a giant economy a great educational system, an overwhelming population and a dominate media we have no means to change Afghani society. We are helpless, as you point out.
It will not be your doing when the little boys keep getting raped, the women tortured, the gays murdered. You can go back to claiming you had nothing to do with supporting the Taliban. You are completely innocent.
You will note of course that after 911 Bush asked the Taliban to get Osama and turn him over to us. The Taliban said they would turn him over to Pakistan for trial if we had proof he was responsible for 911. There are people now he say the proof is lacking. But Oct. 7th ,less than a month after 911, they said if we gave a formal request and offered evidence, they would get Pakistan to try him under Muslim Law… We bombed them instead.
You are delusional. They could keep it up forever, and we can not afford to. You repeat the mistake of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their crew who did not give the enemy credit for being as smart and determined as we are.
Crush their culture? You mean like the white men did with the Native Americans?
Let them clean up their own country if they have it so bad. If they don’t change their own country they deserve what they get.
Not long ago I thought it would be a mistake to let the Taliban have Afghanistan. I thought they would become a serious threat to the western and European nations. Then I read this: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1050.php
The primary reason 9/11 happened was because Bush and Cheney screwed the pooch. It isn’t likely to happen again. Al Qaeda’s last several attempts at striking the US have seemed positively clownish. A Taliban-controlled Afghanistan will not be a significant threat to us.
I am sure you are right. Please provide a cite. Unless of course you are making stuff up.
You are half right. They are much smarter and more determined than you are. They are not as determined as I am. You simply do not have want it takes to win a war.
Well there you have it, America! Either you spend $1+ trillion to murder more armed Muslim teenagers and destroy their culture, or little boys will get raped, which will then be all. your. fault.