Fix what, exactly?
Fixing the budget is possible, with some political will. Part of that will is writing off unproductive military adventures such as Afghanistan. Certainly, there is no realistic prospect of throwing even more resources into it – it’ll be all we can do to raise taxes and cut spending sufficiently to dig our way out of the fiscal pit without inflicting severe damage on an already weakened economy as it is.
Oh, well if you want victory without pain, we are fresh out of stock. In fact we never had that in stock at all. Victory will require the will to win. I propose we develop it.
(I also propose to hit the sack (with another dose of NyQuil I’m afraid. This crud in my throat is hanging around like Grant hung around Richmond.)
Maybe. What are your practical recommendations for fixing it? I don’t mean wishful thinking about what we ought to do. What is your specific plan to raise taxes for money to spend in Afghanistan while being told we have to cut domestic spending and even implement more tax cuts for the wealthy and business?
Yep, victory over the fiscal pit we’ve fallen into will require the will to set aside utopian pipe dreams and cut our losses on losing battles. Glad we’re on the same page.
The last part is a bit of a straw man; every serious economist knows that taxes will have to go up, not down. However, the tax increases will have to go toward paying off existing debts, leaving no excess revenue (and no headroom for even further tax increases without severe economic damage) for PiQ’s pet project.
Did you twirl your moustache after typing that?
Maybe you could start with the closest prison to your neck of the woods? You know - self-help kinda thing? :rolleyes:
:rolleyes: This has nothing to do with any “will to win”. We aren’t fighting for your messianic scheme in the first place, and even if we were, no amount of “will” would make it work.
As for “victory”; victory is already achieved in a military sense. And in a larger sense, it’s impossible because we never bothered to come up with any goals in the first place. Again; we are there simply because it was a stepping stone in our conquest of Iraq; there was no grand scheme to improve the place like you want so badly to believe. We are just flailing about semi-randomly because we have no reason to be there but don’t want to admit it.
Like I already pointed out in the thread, you posting stuff like this may make you feel better but it has no basis in reality. We’ve either actively propped up or passively OK’d dictatorships in these countries for decades, apart from Syria where we organised a coup but the guy didn’t last long. In the country you’re in now, Quatar, we’ve OK’d them sending troops into Bahrain where they’re currently using force to suppress pro-democracy protestors. So you making these claims about US democracy promotion in the Middle East is just utter nonsense. And you’ll ignore this post too because you’ve got no answer to it, have you?
So why won’t soft power work in Afghanistan?
Paul, you’re conflating two issues.
One, is that fuckheads in failed and/or hostile states can set up orgs that run terrorist operations in western countries. This is true.
The other is that Afghanistan is a humanitarian basket case. This is also true.
And so what? We didn’t invade Afghanistan because it was a humanitarian basket case. We invaded because the Afghan government allowed terrorist orgs to operate openly, the results of which are well known.
The humanitarian case for continued occupation of Afghanistan is insufficient. We cannot and will not militarily occupy a country for 50 years just because the country is poor and war-torn and backward. You know that this cannot and will not happen. The American people won’t do it. It is politically impossible. It’s not that Americans are particularly selfish people, it’s because no country would do this.
So the only real-world possible reason to extend the occupation another 50 years is if we are convinced that the minute we leave, Afghanistan will again become a training camp for terrorists. Well, we don’t need an occupation to prevent that. We can hold the Talib government of Afghanistan responsible, we still have plenty of bombs we can drop on them.
As for why the Talibs will take over once we leave, the reason is obvious–they have more support among the Afghans than the current government. Or who knows, maybe they don’t. Either way, the fact that Afghanistan will be a corrupt and backwards and violent country after we leave is irrelevant. Because it ain’t like it’s getting better the longer we stay, is it?
Thing is, your plan on building (not rebuilding) Afghanistan would have to start today, because we’ve made fuck-all progress in the last 10 years, and there’s no reason to think (absent major chance) we’ll make much better progress in the next 10 years. Good luck on your plan to convince the American people we have to stay for another 50 years. Maybe you should be talking to the Canadians, I hear they’re public spirited.
If we knew how to reconstruct Afghanistan into a modern society, we’d be doing it already, or at least making a start after 10 years. We haven’t made a start, which is scientific proof that we can’t. Maybe some other country with some other citizenry and other political leaders and political environment could. But we’ve fucked around for 10 years and your answer is maybe the next 10 years of doing the exact same thing will work.
Or maybe just your local kink emporium. The equipment they use to hold people in bondage there often has some kind of quick-release switch.
Why must you self-asserting fact spreaders spew this garbage based yourr misinformed opinions?
So what if it is, which I’m not exactly agreeing with because since the Taliban’s departure they have actually seen schools with *females *attending for the first time ever:
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=92312
Basket case or not, it one basket worth my time and effort, as an American taxpayer.
Uh, guess again - getting alot better:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/opinion/21nagl.html?_r=1
Do you simply not read or have a TV or radio? Is your Interet connection filtered with some type of anti-war proxy or do you just disregard all media reality on this subject as a matter of willful ignorance? Or is it that you have your mind made up about this based on pre-concieved notions of what you feel about the general idea of U.S. foreign policy in this area? What other possible explanation can there be for your post above?
Asserting opinions about not liking the idea of what’s going on over there without cite or reference is really disingeuous and utterly ignorant.
No, we should start with Guantanamo Bay. If there’s a Canadian equivalent it can be next, but I don’t think there is such a thing. And speaking of self-help, why not take your own advice instead of arguing for saving Afghanistan through burning it?
Save your shite for somewhere else, women have been attending school in Afghanistan since the 1940s (in in fact as this document makes clear after foreigners started fucking around - Sovs first with their remarkably similar social goals if not economic structure goals - the situation utterly collapsed.
Nice strawman. What are my notions about race and where have I tried to drag them into this? But please, go ahead and dismiss me as a racist, it must be easier than admitting you had no basis to start calling people racist for disagreeing with you in the first place.
I know that and you know that, but actual politicians are working to achieve that actual result - ie. including further tax cuts in the budget proposal - so I don’t think “strawman” is the correct term here. “Moronic”, perhaps. But it’s a real obstacle that Paul would have to account for in his practical list of Things To Do to Fix [Our Attitude Toward Winning in Afghanistan}.
In theory, is there any war that is truly unwinnable for us? I support keeping the Taliban out of power indefinitely but we are spending 120 BILLION dollars a year on a country with a GDP of less than 20 BILLION dollars a year (if you back out all the money we are spending there). The average household income is about $1/day. We could literally double everyone’s income and save $100 billion dollars a year.
The question isn’t whether we can win the war, the question is whether it is worth spending so much money on a country that has less than half the GDP of Rhode Island.
I’m not saying we get out, I just saying we start looking at other methods of achieving our goals and perhaps re-examine which goals we really care about.
Even if you utterly hate America please note the Eastern Front of World War II between Stalin’s USSR and Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Most Russians hated Stalin but Hitler wanted to kill all of them so they supported the latter-same thing here.
[/QUOTE]
That’s why South Korea, Taiwan, Japan (all of which started out this way) are horrible crapholes. :rolleyes:
Nonsense. Our side is no less murderous and tyrannical than the other side.
No, they started better off, and America was less corrupt.
I don’t know whether continuing the war is a good idea or not, but here’s a fact to consider: as of December 2010, 60% of Afghans approved of the US presence in Afghanistan, and oppose the Taliban. I’m not saying that should decide the matter, just countering the notion some seem to have that we are deeply unpopular in Afghanistan. We aren’t. Heck, a US president with a 60% approval rating would be at the top of his game. (Of course, in the US, the unhappy 40% wouldn’t be waging guerrilla war, so there’s that…)