Fine. I read it. I’m none the wiser, but somewhat better informed. Now make with the Bosnia, Basilan, Kosovo and Somalia.
I think we took a number of actions after 9/11 that were poorly conceived because we, as a nation, were in a state of emotional turmoil. As you said, we wanted to kick somebody’s ass, even if it wasn’t the right someone.
Going into Afghanistan was marginally reasonable in that the Taliban was known to support terrorists. But had cooler heads prevailed, we might have recalled the experiences of the USSR in the same region, and perhaps our own in Vietnam. Even with a reason to invade, being pissed off doesn’t assure a victory.
And here were are today.
Oh?. What did you learn?
Back to the OP. My point was originally that the mess we’re in in Afghanistan is the result of our Cold War support of Bin Laden and our '94 intervention in Haiti was ultimately necessitated by our historically rude treatment of the people there.
What do *you *make with this?
The problems in Basilan no doubt stem from our supporting folks like Marcos and of course Bin Laden. Our hands are relatively clean in Somalia. European colonialism and Soviet domination did the job there. WTF, we can’t be everywhere.
I’m going to take a 24 hour break from this thread to give you some time to absorb all this. I’m not optimistic in view of your study habits but I haven’t entirely given up,
I think this is similar to what the guest on NPR was saying.
I see. I think the mistake is to believe we should or even can establish some sort of democracy there. From a coldly calculating point of view we could kick ass and split leaving them with the message that if you try that again it will be far worse. Then we can save the resources we’re spending now and still watch them carefully.
One thing I really agreed with Bush about was his message “If you support and/or harbor terrorists in your country you’re guilty” we need to let people know that we prefer peace but will not be attacked with impunity.
However, spouting words about liberty, justice, democracy, and human rights, we need to back that up by allowing sovereign nations to not give a shit about our economic interests and actually take a stand for justice and human rights by not completely excusing our allies when they share the guilt. {I’m looking at you Israel}
We didn’t support Bin Laden during the Cold War. We supported some of the mujaheddin groups in Afghanistan that went on to become the Northern Alliance, and Pakistan’s ISI was one of the major supporters of the Taliban. Bin Laden’s group was supported mostly by Bin Laden and by donations from Muslims around the world.
So? The only reason why we were in the Cold War is the result of our WWII support of the USSR. You support your enemy’s enemy in time of war. Otherwise you lose.
And we didn’t directly support Bin Laden, either.
That’s not the message he sent. He conquered Afghanistan, which did harbor Al Qaeda; he conquered Iraq, which not only didn’t but was Al Qaeda’s enemy. In fact we went to a lot more effort against Iraq, and did a lot more damage to them. If anything Bush sent the message that we go easier on you if you have terrorists.
- Saddam was hardly an enemy.:dubious: True, there was no direct link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. 9wiki)While some contacts between agents of Saddam’s government and members of al-Qaeda have been alleged, the consensus of experts and analysts has held that those contacts never led to an “operational” relationship. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that there was only one actual encounter between representatives of the Baathist regime and representatives of al-Qaeda. This single meeting took place in the Sudan in 1995, and the Iraqi representative, who is in custody and has been cooperating with investigators, said that after the meeting he “received word from his IIS chain-of-command that he should not see bin Laden again.” The Panel found evidence of only two other instances in which there was any communication between Saddam’s regime and al-Qaeda members. On the other two occasions, the Committee concluded, Saddam Hussein rebuffed meeting requests from an al-Qaeda operative. The Intelligence Community has not found any other evidence of meetings between al-Qaeda and Iraq."
So, hardly buddies and they had points of disagreement, but not enemies either.
- Saddam did support terrorism, just not so much against the USA- mostly vs Israel, and of course vs the Kurds. However see this
(wiki)Legitimacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq - Wikipedia "Hussein attempted to use terrorism against the United States during the Gulf War and against the first President Bush in 1993.[14] He had a long history of supporting terrorists in Palestine by giving money to families of suicide bombers[15] and gave refuge to other terrorist groups against neighboring states in the region.[16]
and "*Other terrorist organizations
In making its case for the invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration also made mention of Saddam Hussein’s relationships with terrorist organizations other than al Qaeda. It is reported that Hussein provided financial assistance to the families of Palestinians – be they murdered under, or killed actively opposing, Israeli occupation – including as much as $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers, some of whom were working with militant organizations in the Middle East such as Hamas.[78]*"
*"Based on the information the CIA made available to the Senate Committee, the committee published a series of conclusions in the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq. These included the following:
Conclusion 91. The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) assessment that Iraq had maintained ties to several secular Palestinian terrorist groups and with the Mujahidin e-Khalq was supported by the intelligence. The CIA was also reasonable in judging that Iraq appeared to have been reaching out to more effective terrorist groups, such as Hizballah and Hamas, and might have intended to employ such surrogates in the event of war. (Page 345)
Conclusion 92. The CIA's examination of contacts, training, safehaven and operational cooperation as indicators of a possible Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship was a reasonable and objective approach to the question. (Page 345)
Conclusion 93. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship. (Page 346)
Conclusion 94. The CIA reasonably and objectively assessed in Iraqi Support for Terrorism that the most problematic area of contact between Iraq and al-Qaeda were the reports of training in the use of non-conventional weapons, specifically chemical and biological weapons. (Page 346)
Conclusion 95. The CIA’s assessment on safehaven — that al-Qaeda or associated operatives were present in Baghdad and in northeastern Iraq in an area under Kurdish control — was reasonable. (Page 347)
Conclusion 96. The CIA's assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaeda attack was reasonable and objective. No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise. (Page 347)
Conclusion 97. The CIA's judgment that Saddam Hussein, if sufficiently desperate, might employ terrorists with a global reach — al-Qaeda — to conduct terrorist attacks in the event of war, was reasonable. No information has emerged thus far to suggest that Saddam did try to employ al-Qaida in conducting terrorist attacks. (Page 348)
Conclusion 99. Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysts determine the Iraqi regime's possible links to al-Qaeda. (Page 355)"
So- very little if any actual support for al-Qaeda, but plenty of support for Palestinian terrorists.
Saudi Arabia have always been and will continue to be the biggest supporters of Palestinian freedom fighting groups. They’re by far the biggest foreign donor to Hamas and regularly hold telethons for Palestinian organisations that you’d go to prison if you sent them money, and there’s a famous photograph of Bush 43 hand in hand with the Saudi king. Syria host the offices of a lot of groups of the PLO and also the Hamas leader and they actually do have WMD, or at least chemical and biological weapons, but we didn’t invade Syria. The gulf states are just behind Saudi in how much money they give to Palestinian freedom groups but we prop those regimes up like we do the Saudis. Saddam made a big show of supporting Palestinian groups when it suited his own peopaganda purposes but historically Iraqi money was a drop in the bucket compared to Arab regimes we actively prop up or choose to ignore their terrorism support/WMD. And Saddam and AQ hated each other.
Large-scale Saudi Arabian support for AQ from the royal family on down is well-known. But the Bush DOJ actually blocked evidence showing Saudi royal family support for AQ reaching court. How do you square Bush’s bold with us or against us/harboring/supporting terrorists rhetoric with the facts in this article and with this photo?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/middleeast/24saudi.html
I don’t. Did someone say I did?
I’d agree that his actions didn’t match his words. I said I agreed with the words, the thought behiond it, not whether he personally followed through.
You misspelled Taliban.
Reagan’s administration explicitly provided more support to the groups that later became the Taliban than they did to all the groups later collected in the Northern Alliance, combined. They were even warned, at the time, that the groups they were supporting were Islamist militants, but responded that the organization those groups had made them more effective opponents of the Soviets and we were never going to have to worry about them being a problem for us in the future.
al Qaida can be traced to ISI and Saudi money, but the U.S. gets the “credit” for the Taliban.
I don’t know where you are getting this from, but the group the CIA and the ISI (Pakistani military intelligence) primarily supported was Gulbuddin Hikmatyar’s which was fundamentalist all right, but did not become the Taliban. The Taliban were formed with the support of the Pakistan government in 1994, long after the US had lost interest in that theatre. In fact the Taliban defeated Hikmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami in 1996.
Pakistan has its own interests in Afghanistan, which include pacification of its own Pukhtoon population (the Sunni ethnic group that the Taliban comes from) and its desire to use these militants in the fight against India in Kashmir.
There were never any good choices to support in Afghanistan. The strongest ethnic group is the Pukhtoons, and they have a thousand year old blood fued with the Shia tribes as well as with the central Asian ethnic groups that made up the Northern Alliance.
I was a Pakistani, living in Pakistan for most of the 1980s, and I followed events very closely for about a decade after I left in 1987. Short of the level of involvement we have had in Afghanistan since 2001 there isn’t a whole lot you can do to influence outcomes in that area. The religious and ethnic rivalries are what they are. Pakistan is always going to be on the side of the Pukhtoon groups and these guys have been religious fanatics long before the name “taliban” became known.
I was holidaying in northern Pakistan in 1987 and in a tea shop there was a group of men casually telling us about how they had massacred the men and “shamed” the women of an Aga Khani village, because they considered the Aga Khanis and in fact all Shias to be infidels. I very nearly wet my pants, because the holiday party I was in had quite a few Shias in it, and three Christians, including me. And these guys had nothing to do with the mujahideen. They were just the men from a sheep-herding village.
The ISI were the CIA’s front shop for its covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The CIA partnered ObL at that time through the ISI, enabling him and his organisation to become more effective and better armed. It was also at that time ObL formed his views on western Imperialism as an entity and in relation to Islam.
The ISI were acting at the behest of the CIA.
You have some kind of cite for this?
I got the impression you might have felt that way, my bad. 
Ravenman,
I feel rested, how about you?
I’d like to lay our little side thread to rest.
Let me summarize, please comment by numbers(not required).
-
In my original posts, I tried to make the point that our little quagmire in Afghanistan has its roots in our brutal and exploitive foreign policy which we have pursued since John Hay called the Spanish-American War, “A splendid little war.” That’s why 5% of the world’s population consumes 35% of the world’s resources. An honest scan of the historical public record concerning our foreign policy/interventions toward emerging nations around the world should make it clear that we have stolen and are stealing a lot of what we consume.
-
My WAG about our reasons for remaining in Afghanistan (oil pipeline, heroin) to me is not so wild given the inability of anyone on this thread to come with something more plausible. How could you pour weapons and ordinance for thirty years into a country run by war lords (at a huge cost of human life) and claim any interest in or hope of establishing a democracy? But if we were to simply to withdraw from this hopeless situation, what about the pipelines and heroin? This was my response to the OP.
-
Others here brought up putative examples of interventions in which we played a benign and humanitarian role. Really off topic, but Haiti seemed a perfect example of how, after many decades of our military imposition of US interests at the cost of violence and grinding poverty to most Haitians, we grudgingly (Bush senior refused) swept things up a bit.
-
As far as the others go, I’ll stipulate that as UN designated thumper, we acted with no self-interest in a few situations for which we were blameless.
just found this article.
says it always only ever, not been anything thing else but, and about only just, forever, control of the Oil, and Oil transit Routes.
as in, all else is excuses, designed to beguile.
forever and always
well, anyway.
I thought it accurate, what say you?
http://www.oilcompanies.net/oil1.htm
excerpt from article, very detailed and very lengthy
Quote.
UNOCAL, the spearhead for Standard Oil interests, has been trying to build the north-south pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean for several decades. In 1998, the California-based UNOCAL, which held 46.5 percent stakes in Central Asia Gas (CentGas), a consortium that planned an ambitious gas pipeline across Afghanistan, withdrew in frustration after several fruitless years. The pipeline was to stretch 1,271 km from Turkmenistan’s Dauletabad fields to Multan in Pakistan at an estimated cost of $1.9 billion. An additional $600 million would have brought the pipeline to energy-hungry India.
In the spring of 2001, Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's company, signed a major contract with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan to develop a 6000-square-meter marine base to support offshore oil construction in the Caspian Sea. The base will be used to assist Halliburton's catamaran crane vessel, the Qurban Abbasov, in upcoming offshore pipe-laying and subsea activities, according to a statement the company released May 15, 2001.
UNOCAL cut off its earlier agreement with the Taliban in 1998 when it became clear that the Taliban could not control all of Afghanistan and provide a stable political environment for a north-south pipeline construction project. It was likely at this juncture that a new "war against terrorism" ploy was conceived by the Standard Oil-influenced U.S. government. The "war against terrorism" in Afghanistan has come to a hiatus, with war-lords once again ruling the country, and the Bush administration has put their own man, Karzai, in power to control Afghanistan.
Karzai was a top adviser to UNOCAL during the negotiations with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan. Karzai is the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe. A member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s, Karzai was a top contact for the CIA, maintaining close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service go-between. After the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, the CIA sponsored the relocation of Karzai and a number of his brothers to the U.S.
The real motives for the Bush administration's war in Afghanistan are clear for all to see. The U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlain, met with Pakistan's oil minister, Usman Aminuddin, in January, 2002 to continue plans for the north-south pipeline, encouraging the construction of Pakistan's Arabian Sea oil terminus for the pipeline.
President Bush says our military will continue its presence in Afghanistan, which means that while the U.N. forces serve as a paramilitary police force, U.S. soldiers will be guarding the construction of the north-south pipeline.
article continues.
The Timeline report of the Wests ‘intervention’ seems accurate, spot on.
Biased? you decide…
Zanthor