My question: Afghanistan is said to possess vast mineral wealth-the Chinese are set to open a huge copper mine soon. How much of this wealth will flow down to the people? Or will most of it wind up in Swiss bank accounts 9of crooks)?
Yeah, perhaps lying. Exaggerating or not telling the whole truth. I’m more suspicious of whoever wrote the report than the man who is supposed to have said this stuff.
What other explanations could there be?
As for the mockery, yeah I’m mocking the report slightly, but to take that as mocking 4 million Afghan girls is a bit of a leap.
OK I accept your explanation but I don’t believe it matters one iota to the subject to this thread, whether that Afghan man talking about his aunts was an exaggeration or just made up with, specifically the way translations to English affect the point he may have been trying to convey. My point remains however that the number of girls educated now compared to if we had left the Taliban in power or retake power after the 911 attacks is a fundamentally crucial statistic in forecasting the potential for ISAF and Afghan Army and Police success in holding off the Taliban from enforcing their cruel and uncivilized doctrine of no girls being educated ever again.
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Learn how to nest quotes.
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If “The tribal elders and Loya Jirga represents ALL OF AFGHANISTAN” then who, exactly have we been fighting over there? If ALL OF AFGHANISTAN wants us to stay, we must not have been fighting anybody for over a decade in Afghanistan, right? So why do we want to leave so badly if there’s no fighting going on over there? Or more importantly, why do they so desperately want us to stay? After all, they represent all of Afghanistan, so there must not be any opposition that they are still fighting. I’m confused though - if the Afghans are fighting in place of our troops as they should, who are they fighting if all of Afghanistan is united in wanting us to stay?
Again, learn some sense of history. We are leaving. The war is not winding down. They are not the same thing. We have not ‘won’. Afghanistan is going to remain a divided mess of a country when we leave. This is the same one trick pony you’ve been on for your entire posting time here: W can do no good, Obama can do no wrong. You’ve alienated even those who support Obama and despise W with how absurdly extreme you go. I’m sure you’d love to lump me in with W supporters and those fooled by W, but you’d be wrong. I’m on record here referring to Donald Rumsfeld as the antichrist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
They represent a pretty good portion of Afghanistan, actually. The idea that most Afghans want us to leave is patently false. The Loya Jirga by a large majority voting for us to stay, when their own President was trying to manipulate the council’s vote for his own political purposes says a lot, actually.
Obviously there are anti-American and anti-Kabul forces in Afghanistan.
Well, if the SOFA is signed we’ll have a 40,000 soldier presence for 10 years–which presumably could/would be extended again afterward. It isn’t in fact all that clear cut that we’re leaving. There’s a lot of pressure on Karzai to sign the SOFA.
Is there some weird conflation of al Qaeda and the Taliban ? How many children were being educated in Peru when the Americans invaded Mexico in 1846 ?
Nothing says goodbye like staying on.
My bad, I kept switching numbers in my head here–40,000 is our current deployment in Afghanistan expected to be reduced to a 10,000 strong more permanent force if the SOFA / BSA is signed by Karzai.
Thanks for your most informative summary on the topic and issues I believe ought to be discussed more effectively in the news and by the Administration. You have mentioned 40,000 troops staying beyond 2014. Has that become a more established number? I’ve always taken the number to be around ten thousand.
But here’s a question for you if you have a chance to answer it? Assuming US casualties remain significantly lower than this year’s in 2014 & '15, do you think an anti-war presidential candidate favoring complete witdrawal of troops and funding from Afghanistan would win the nomination of the Republican or Democratic Party and give the voters a choice to leave.
I doubt it and the key being the continuance of the Afghans taking the brunt of the fight and the brunt of combat fatalities so that our troops are not figuring and facing the dangers and fatalities that occurred from 2009 through 2012.
That will mean we are not leaving as we did in Vietnam but the war itself has wound down for us and a new generation of young Afghans will have something to build on. not Sweden but I think somewhat better than Bangladesh. The Afghans have shown a propensity for progress when living under Soviet influence in the Fifties and early Sixties and into the Seventies when the Mujahdeen and Tribal fighters rose from rural Afghanistan to expel the Soviet Army and Russian modernity in engineering and medicine etc for what they ended up with in the Eighties.
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The Taliban and those willing to kill and die for the Taliban’s archaic and cruel religious ideals. Plus those who would fight foreign armies no matter what the reason. The CIA or DIA has never put the Taliban fighter’s strength above 50,000 that I have heard. But 50,000 fighters can fight a tough anti-government insurgency when they can blend in with neutral or intimidated members of the population. So what we have been fighting is called COIN against a shadowy non-uniformed militia that became well organized in IED planting and small raids or attacks on foreign outposts and convoys and suicude attacks etc. They also have home field advantage.
One principle if a COIN operation is winning the trust of the population that they will be protected for the long haul if they take a pro-government stand against the insurgents. That is what is prevailing in Afghanistan now as the Taliban have been weakened. The Taliban must also now recruit new fighters not to fight so much against a foreign invader but to fight against their fellow brothers and sisters in Islam and fellow Afgans. That recruiting is not going well.
So there is another answer to your question. Does that satisfy your curiosity or does it not?
There is no need to cite the rest of your personal complaint against me since you are once again confronted with various problems with your argument that you must not be able to overcome with ordinary debate. We are not leaving as we did in Vietnam. And it is not only me that is telling you that critical FACT. John Mace told you that critical FACT last March and you still won’t accept it:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16083283&postcount=5
Here is an excerpt from the link that John Mace wrote last March (Bolding is Mine):
“… the difference is that Congress explicitly forbade a return of troops to Vietnam after we exited in 1973, ***whereas we’ll be leaving some troops in Afghanistan indefinitely and it’s quite possible we could “re-engage” if the Taliban and other opposition forces threaten Kabul.” *** -John Mace #005 03-10-2013 11:28 AM 069a1128
Yes
Both the PBS Newshour and NPR give occasional updates.
Reminds me of that old Arundhati Roy quote.
Kinda gives me a nostalgic feeling.
Thanks for that. Do you believe the major networks should cover it more? Fox News is normally pretty gung-ho with announcing supportive news about our men and women in combat. You’d think reporting about success in the war would be in the wheelhouse. I don’t watch Fox much but I don’t believe Fox reports much but negative news about the war because we don’t hear conservatives chattering about such things as four million girls being educated due in part to the fighting and sacrifice of our troops to help Afghans develop the infrastructure and security needed for such a major number to be possible.
Arundhati Roy has it wrong.
The whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban for harboring al Qaeda which is justified in our inherent right of self defense to respond to the 911 attacks which according to polls at the time over 90% of Americans supported. There is no real toppling of a regime if you topple it and walk away and then let them return or something worse comes in to replace it. That is why we stayed.
Liberating women from Burkas is a secondary effect of the primary mission described above for US Marines and the rest of the military and National Guard and all ISAF forces. It would not have mattered for the military mission if Afghan women wanted to live their lives in Burkas without the Taliban in power. Our Marines did what they set out to do and our overall military and diplomatic personnel are nearing the completion of the objective that was set from the beginning. Help to create a government in Afghanistan that can prevent the Taliban from ever taking control of Afghanistan again and not becoming a sanctuary for terrorists ever again as well.
Our Special Forces have done a tremendous job in Afghanistan from day one. I have absolutely no problem with several thousand of them staying behind to seal the deal that all our troops have accomplished with hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have been trained and are ready to take the fight to the Taliban for as long as it takes.
I know its two days since Christmas but I just discovered this uplifting Christmas in Afghanistan story:
I have no opinion … not sure if girls in school in Afghanistan would sell much Dunateria, today’s new treatment for Rickets. Now a ten-part major news series on the epidemic of Rickets brutally scavaging the US certainly would.
It’s best to get your news and information from a variety of sources, to give you a better idea of what’s really happening. I actually get a lot of my news from CNBC. It’s more than just quotes and graphs, it’s the news about the corporations. For me it shines a different light on the news-of-the-day, gives me some more clarity.
PBS Newshour has given every fallen American soldier ten seconds of on-air silence … just saying …
Your non-opinion may be on to something. The major News Corporations being true to journalism as a profession are expected to report news objectively. If decisions on what makes headline news is based subjectively upon whether something can be sold with the story then there are deep rooted problems that need to be weeded out. If we are content to let the weeds take over then we deserve what we get.
What is the appropriate amount of time such a news story should be covered by the “major networks” and how do you determine that? How much has it been reported so far? Do you have any way of knowing?
About the sane amount of time that Sixty Minutes spent on the fraudulent Benghazi
Witness. Or how about when a Green on Blue incident occurs and is reported just objectively enough to mention in an extra minute or two that there have been a million Afgan recruits partnering over the past nine years and three hundred thousand of them are in the lead in all combat missions taking out insurgents 24/7 and that is why US troops are less and less being killed. The Afghans themselves are in the lead now on security operations and that is how there is going to be fewer foreign troops required to remain.
There were 4 questions, and you answered only 1. Most importantly, you haven’t established that this hasn’t been reported-- you only claim that it’s so. Have you watched every newscast of every major network in the last 2 or so years? Do you have documentation of what was covered and what was not covered in those newscasts? If so let’s see it.
But the fact remains that our goal in Afghanistan was not to get more girls in school. It’s great that it’s happening, and I think most people know that getting rid of the Taliban means a lot of secondary benefits, one of which is more kids (and girls) in school.
We’re leaving, and whatever happens in the future happens. If it turns out that school attendance again plummets, don’t expect Obama to request a troop re-surge to reverse that trend.