With the oil incentive well covered, thank you Zanthor, let’s take a quick look at heroin.
Quite prophetic as a look at the table below will confirm. Can’t do anything with the formatting but you’ll get the idea.
Am I alone in thinking Bin Laden is dead?
Nope. I remember seeing some old pics of him some months ago, and he looked… quite ill. It wouldn’t really surprise me if he’d already croaked.
In the meantime…
U.S. Military says force in Afghanistan isn’t big enough
Looks to me like the official review called for by Obama is going to recommend scaling up the troop presence even more. There are currently 57,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. If the request is on the order of the last buildup, 15,000-20,000 soldiers, Afghanistan will have more than half the number of soldiers that are in Iraq. The casualty rate is currently far higher in Afghanistan - higher than it ever was in Iraq.
Will Obama approve the troop increase? Will the anti-war left wake up again and start marching? Or will their desire to keep a Democrat in the White House override their opposition to war?
This is the point that is demonstrably wrong, and given this all the other points are irrelevant IMO.
The fact is its pretty much impossible to find ANYONE involved in a major Al Qiada attack prior to 2003 who HADN’T spent time in Afghanistan, that goes for Bin Laden, down the guy blowing himself up and everyone in between. Every single Al Qiada figure learned his trade in Afghanistan.
And does anyone serious doubt that it wouldn’t revert back to the state it was in during the 1990s at the drop of the hat if Coalition troops withdrew ?
Given that fact, the fact that the place is an absolute shit storm of the highest order, is neither here nor there. Yes the place is a mess, yes there is absolutely no guarantee of success, but if we fail then it will harm our nation interests (and personal safety) for years to come.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Yes!
I’ll also accept al Qaida, but only because work makes me.
All that article is missing is how Al Fucking Qaeda destroyed 3,000 people from a plot hatched in Afghanistan. Is that an oversight? You decide.
Unless you are trying to advance an argument that UNOCAL was behind the bombing, you’ve demonstrated absolutely nothing other than the fact that the petroleum and gas industry has an interest in every country on the face of the planet. After all, oil and gas is either extracted or sold in every country, and setting aside the fact that we haven’t invaded every country in the world, the mere presence of oil and gas interests in some region doesn’t really go very far in making a compelling conspiracy theory.
Seriously, that whacko website is basically saying that we went to war with Japan because the East Indies rubber industry put Roosevelt up to it.
Even if this is true it doesn’t show that the method being used will yield more positive results compared to the alternatives.
Then the debate is really: “The joint chiefs of staffs are wrong about the best counter-insurgency strategy to use in Afghanistan”.
So what should they do?
Why no it isn’t since Obama is Commander in Chief.
I wonder if it matters who is in the White House now. The feathers have been blown to the wind and the task to get them back is next to impossible because as the first Bush was warned this would happen if he went into Baghdad during the Gulf War. But Junior decided to ask a higher father…hence the hornets nest we are in now.
[emphasis mine]
I couldn’t more agree. Nicely put and the real answer to the OP.
In the 90s, we were fine with the Taliban being the worlds largest poppy grower. In 2000, they changed their policy and in a year effectively eradicated poppy cultivation. The next year we invaded and two years later production was up to pre-invasion levels and by 2006 Afghanistan provided 90% of the world’s heroin.
Obama has inherited our government’s allies and policies in Afghanistan. Note I don’t attribute them to Bush alone. Politically, Obama is in an untenable position much like LBJ’s … damned if he does and if he doesn’t. Does it it matter that Obama is in the White House now? McCain is laughing.
Technically true. But in reality the president (or the defense secretary coughs Rumsfeld) should not be meddling in the tactics the troops on the ground are using.
Whether the US should be Afghanistan is a matter of public policy, and is up to our elected leadership to decide. The exact method they use to take and occupy any given patch of dirt is not, that kind of thing is best left to the people who do that for a living.
You’re mistaken. It is up to the commander in chief to determine whether we should be there **and ** our specific purpose and direction while we are there. That will go a long way in determining if, when and how we occupy any given patch of dirt.
Aren’t the Taliban and Al Qaeda interchangeable?
they are completely seperate.
This is as you say, the straight dope.
20 questions and answers.
here are the 1st 4
excerpt from article.
- Are there any circumstances in which you would work with Hamid Karzai or his administration?
The important issue for us is to end occupation, re-establishing the country’s sovereignty, transferring the political power to an interim non-reconcile government and establishing an Islamic government in a free Afghanistan via a free election to correspond with the will of the people.
We never want to take part in a puppet government under foreign dictators, Kabul’s government consists of looters, corrupt men and criminals. We don’t want to enter this dirty swamp.
- Has anyone from the Karzai administration approached you about taking part in the political process?
Yes, we have been constantly contacted, but you know that the Kabul government doesn’t have power or will, they have not been given power to make any decisions on any main causes relevant to the crisis.
The foreign powers do not even accept the government’s requests not to bombard civilians, to share information about where they will hold operations and to not search houses or terrorise the people.
They have nothing to say and can’t do a thing with regard to ending the war and make foreign forces leave, we sent them our view and conditions in regards to ending the crisis.
- If you decide against taking part in the political process at this time, how will it be possible to bring about peace in Afghanistan?
We are not against political solution, the occupiers does not want a political solution, they are insisting on prolonging occupation and they want Afghan people to accept their imposed government and puppet regime forever.
- Do you think the Taliban are good for the Afghan people and the rest of the world? Why?
Poor people were very pro-Taliban when they were fighting Hezb-e Islami, they were praising them as peace doves and were asking some Islamic countries to practically help the Taliban.
But now when they are fighting against the occupiers they have been named terrorists, we are respecting the Taliban that are fighting for their country’s freedom we consider every mujahid as a brother.
article continues
Funding the Afghan Taliban
Who is financing America’s enemies? You don’t want to know.
KABUL — It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country.
Virtually every major project includes a healthy cut for the insurgents. Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the Taliban themselves prefer to term it, “spoils of war,” the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy.
“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one U.S. Embassy official, speaking privately.
snip
Up until quite recently, most experts thought that drug money accounted for the bulk of Taliban funding. But even here opinion was divided on actual amounts. Some reports gauged the total annual income at about $100 million, while others placed the figure as high as $300 million — still a small fraction of the $4 billion poppy industry.
article continues.
So, some sources say the figure the Taliban derives from drugs is only about
$70 million, but whatever, its a huge difference than the quoted $4 Billion profit income generated by the Afghan Opium poppy.
Any idea where the rest goes?
Give you one clue…
its NOT to the Taliban…
Zan
Perhaps I should have phrased myself better.
In terms of the war in Afghanistan, for all intents and purposes, aren’t the Taliban and Al-Qaeda essentially the same in our (The USA’s) eyes?
One of the few good things President Obama had done in my opinion is continuing the war in Afghanistan. Our armies of liberation have been respected by the Afghan population who think we’re better then the Taliban. And the US recognizes various differences between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. For instance it’s been willing to negotiate with the former.