The only limit is how no-nonsense you are.
Don’t be ridiculous. The simple fact is that they live there and we don’t. Eventually, we’ll leave; in a few years, in a few decades, but eventually we’ll go away. And they’ll still be there.
No, it’ll be yours. You’ll be the one cheering it all on, demanding that money be paid to keep the people who do that in power. Because it’s OK according to you to rape, torture and murder, as long as you do it for America. You just object to people doing the exact same thing who aren’t on our payroll.
When they are defending themselves.
And what makes you assume that we are restricting ourselves to armed people on battlefields?
I’m assuming since **Paul **is all about safeguarding little boys’ rectums, he’d be all for a US invasion of the Vatican?
Probably not, since they bugger kids for Christ and not Allah. And tend to be paler.
Welcome back Der Trihs!, how is the cite for your claim going?
If the Vatican attacked the United States, of course. Wouldn’t you be?
So… you got nothing about the question I asked? How does one murder an armed enemy on a battlefield?
I already answered your distortions.
Thank you, Der Trihs, you made me laugh. But seriously, you got nothing, but will not back down?
At the danger of adding signal to all the noise, I just got back from a nice sushi lunch with some of my Saudi friends. I brought up this thread. They agreed the action against Iraq was a mistake (‘Daddy issues’ was the term that came up.)
They all agreed how embarrassing Afghanis are to their co-religionists. (Not a representative sample of course.) A friend of mine a few years ago about the Taliban, “How would you like it if every time someone mentioned your religion, they mentioned the Klan?”
Good point.
Not really, no. I mean, I wouldn’t be cheering the Jesuit Jumptroops on, or anything, but no, I’m not in favour of violence. Ever.
Seriously, and without trying to personally attack you, how can you justify such a position morally?
I’ll show you my cite if you’ll show me yours.
Thanks, but no. I am a soldier and am unwilling to accept defeat. You obviously do not have the moral compass required to be a soldier.
You are the sort we protect.
Maybe not. I was a Marine for four years though…
Really, PI didn’t take? (Honestly, I would find your story very interesting, we ought to have a chat option.)
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It’s pro-war stay-the-course terrorist-threat-bedwetter people and their media representatives who’d be ensuuring any American prez would suffer consequences for pulling out, not people like me.
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None of those things are any use in changing Afghan society and indeed the military part is counterproductive. The insurgency which emanates from the south of Afghanistan, the Taliban’s heartland, is made up of southern religious conservatives who don’t take kindly to a foreign nation invading them and bombing the crap out of them. The more military force we use, the more it’ll make them cling to their guns and religion, to their traditional values, and resist any kind of move towards a more liberal society that we might want to encourage. I know it’s ridiculous to make the comparison but imagine how kindly the southern states of America would take to a Muslim superpower who invaded their country and tries to change their system of government and culture.
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You make it sound like the Afghan kleptocrats we support are a bunch of democratic human rights activists and the Taliban are a bunch of criminals. Like I already pointed out to you, the Taliban have been greeted as liberators after retaking areas where our guys, the security forces we constructed have been robbing the people and raping their kids. Some more information about how nice our guys are :
The NA was responsible for killing more than 50,000 civilians during their bloody rule in the 1990s. The rulers of today – men such as Karim Khalili, Rabbani, Sayyaf, Fahim, Yunus Qanooni, Mohaqiq and Abdullah – were those who imposed the first anti-women restrictions as soon as they came to power in 1992 and started a reign of terror throughout Afghanistan.
Thousands of women and young girls were raped by armed thugs and many committed suicide to avoid being sexually assaulted by them. For good reason the British Independent newspaper referred to the NA as a ‘symbol of massacre, systematic rape and pillage from 1992-96’.2
But lack of women’s rights is not the only problem faced by Afghanistan today. Neither opium cultivation, warlordism nor terrorism have been uprooted. There is no peace, stability or security in the country. According to the British daily The Guardian, President Karzai ‘is a prisoner within his own government? who nominally heads a government in which former Northern Alliance commanders hold the real power.3
In such a climate the results of the forthcoming June 2004 elections can easily be predicted: the NA will once again hijack the results to give legitimacy to their bloody rule.
In November 2001 Colin Powell said: ‘The rights of women in Afghanistan will not be negotiable.’ But the women of Afghanistan have felt with their whole bodies the dishonesty of such statements from US and British leaders, because it is crystal clear that they have already negotiated women’s rights in Afghanistan by imposing the most treacherous warlords on the Afghan people. Their pretty speeches are made out of political expediency rather than genuine concern.
‘During the Taliban era if a woman went to market and showed an inch of flesh she would have been flogged; now she’s raped’
We cannot forget the silence of the world with regard to the tragic abuse of women’s rights in Afghanistan for the past decade. From 1992 to 2001 Afghan women were treated as cattle by all brands of fundamentalists from Jehadis to Taliban…
Betrayal | New Internationalist
and this is the current government, the guys we’re fighting and dying for to keep in power :
The defeat of the Taliban brought about the collapse of law and order, making life even more dangerous, especially for women. “Under the Taliban,” a woman told me, “I watched rapists being executed. Now I see them in the government.” The Afghan women’s rights group RAWA has repeatedly told anyone willing to listen that there hasn’t been much improvement for women and girls since the U.S. occupation began in 2001. But no one–least of all left-of-center Americans eager to embrace the Afghan war–has wanted to hear what they had to say. “Most women still wear the all-encompassing burqa through fear of attack and social pressure, a third of women in Kabul do not leave the house, forbidden from doing so by the male members of the family, and it is still almost impossible for women to get a divorce,” reported The Sunday Herald in 2005.
Liberal Democrats who cling to Afghanistan as “the good war” the U.S. should be fighting are being forced to confront the ugly truth about their ally. Karzai has signed a law that states that “women cannot leave the house without their husbands’ permission, that they can only seek work, education or visit the doctor with their husbands’ permission, and that they cannot refuse their husband sex,” reported the British newspaper The Guardian on March 31st.
The Shiite Personal Status act applies only to devotees of the Shia branch of Islam, which account for between 10 and 20 percent of the population. How can a secular democratic state have different laws depending on a citizen’s faith? The answer is: It can’t. Afghanistan isn’t secular or democratic. The “new” Afghanistan’s constitution is based on Sharia law–exactly as it was under the Taliban. But the U.S. media has purposefully failed to report the icky truth about our ally.
The new law requires women to have sex with their husbands at least once every four days unless they are sick or menstruating. “Obedience, readiness for intercourse and not leaving the house without the permission of the husband are the duties of the wife,” reads the law of a nation ostensibly invaded by U.S. troops in part to liberate Afghan women. “As long as the husband is not traveling, he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night,” it says.
Afghan Senator Humaira Namati calls the rape bill “worse than during the Taliban” and said it was rammed through parliament without debate.
“Anyone who spoke out was accused of being against Islam,” she said. Several hundred women protesting the law on the streets of Kabul were viciously assaulted by men as police stood back and watched. In fairness to the responsible male legislators, they did add a provision to protect Shiite women from “dead bed”: Afghan men have to put out “at least once every four months.”
Karzai signed legalized rape into law in order to appease right-wing legislators in an election year. After international criticism, however, he began backpedaling with the lamest of all possible reasons: he didn’t read the bill before he was for it.
Yeah, we are allied with nasty people. Like always. But allying ourselves with nasty people will allow us to influence them too.
I suspect we have about talked this one out.
I wish everyone would realize that this isn’t solely a US mission. From Wikipedia here is a list of the number of troops deployed in Afghanistan, by country.
* United States - 78,430
* United Kingdom - 9,500
* Germany - 4,350
* France - 3,750
* Italy - 3,300
* Canada - 2,830
* Poland - 2,500
* Netherlands - 1,705
* Turkey - 1,710
* Australia - 1,550
* Spain - 1,415
* Romania - 1,140
* Georgia - 925
* Denmark - 750
* Belgium - 590
* Bulgaria - 525
* Czech Republic - 525
* Norway - 500
* Sweden - 500
* Hungary - 340
* Slovakia - 290
* Croatia - 280
* Portugal - 265
* Albania - 250
* Lithuania - 245
* Republic of Macedonia - 210
* Latvia - 170
* Estonia - 160
This is clearly a mission of great interest globally. And, as I’ve repeatedly stated, the majority of Afghans actually appreciate the effort. From the same Wiki article: (Cites within the article itself.)
Did they show pictures of the so called 'bad guys; learning how to march in time, left right, left right, left right, etc, do push ups, how to point and shoot a rifle? really bad things like that? and if so, this is relevant how just how exactly to learning how to fly American airplanes into American skyscrapers?, trained to do so in American flight training schools, … ?
Bottom like, the planning was conducted in Europe, America trained the pilots…
the ‘bad guys’ came mostly from Saudi…
so, just what was your gripe again? against Afghanistan?>
Most say there was only about a hundred or so bad guys there, virtually none now?
so why are we still there?
They have moved on, we don’t have the faintest clue how to…
Zan
this is excellent,
ICH. todays.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25906.htm
Transparent Lies
By Paul Craig Roberts
July 08, 2010 “Information Clearing House” – The BBC reported on July 4 that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the US ballistic missile base in Poland was not directed at Russia. The purpose of the base, she said, is to protect Poland from the Iranian threat.
Why would Iran be a threat to Poland? What happens to US credibility when the Secretary of State makes such a stupid statement? Does Hillary think she is fooling the Russians? Does anyone on earth believe her? What is the point of such a transparent lie? To cover up an act of American aggression against Russia?
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So, We screw mostly ourselves, over and over.
must be cos we like getting screwed over, by ourselves?