Would this help our cause or hurt it?
I think that at the same time we’re tearing down the Taliban government and terrorist groups that we should do what we can to help the general population. In the short term I’m interested in killing a lot of people but in the long term I’m interested in setting up a lasting a peaceful government.
Marc
I think something very similar to what happened in Somalia would occur.It would be incredibly hard for the general populace to actually RECIEVE the aid. The government would snatch it up and/or threaten with execution anyone who might try to use it. then you’d have a signifigant portion of the population that would refuse any help from the USA.
I think it is something that we can try but I don’t think it will help.
If only it were that simple. Green Fool laid it out for you pretty succintly.
I’d like to add that the U.S. had similar problems aiding starving Ethiopians in the 1980s becasue of Ethiopian military interference. The reasons behind that had to do with competing political factions within Ethiopia that eventually led to the creation of Eritrea in 1993 (year?).
In short, if a government – like the Taliban – wants to refuse humanitarian aid, they can readily do so.
Okay it won’t let me edit my post so I have to do this, I just realized you menat Afghan refugees… I thought you meant the Afghani people in Afghanistan.
I did just wake up you know…
… hand out the food and supplies. That way we know they are getting it and we don’t have to fear U.N. people getting shot. Because if they did we would have even more backing from the other nations of a strike.
That won’t work either. Because the Taliban will announce that anyone seen taking aid from the UN will be executed.
Really? Seems to me it would be much smarter to say something like: “Look what we have scared the infidels into giving you.”
Or something like that. 
Peace,
mangeorge
I think giving aid to the people of Afghanistan as described in the OP won’t do much to deter terrorism at all. It may make the lives of the people who receive the aid better, but the people who took down the WTC did so pretty much because they dislike the US as a matter of principle.
Exactly–and they are well fed. The Taliban don’t give a damn about the Afghan people, whom they see as expendable as those under Stalin or Mao.
The Taliban is going to go. If they declare a Holy War on the U.S., they are history. The U.S. may not go in just to attack them, and may initially focus on Bin Laden. But if Taliban troops attack the U.S., the retaliation will be swift and severe. And unlike Saddam, who was left in power at the request of the coalition, the Taliban have no friends. They’ll go.
The most likely scenario I see is that the Northern Alliance (which has already pledged support to the U.S.) will fight against the Taliban, and will be installed as the new government, with some serious U.N. oversight.
If that happens, at that point we should flood that country with food and other forms of aid. The Afghan people have been through hell. They’ve been fighting invaders (and their own internal wars) for a long, long time. Let’s give them a break.
That will also send a nice carrot-and-stick message to the people of other brutal regimes. Hurt the U.S., and you will be smashed. Help the U.S., and you’ll benefit. And that seems to be the policy - apparently, Pakistan has been promised a lot of things in return for their support, not hte least of which is the removal of all embargoes. This is a great opportunity not just to defeat the enemies of freedom, but to bring a lot of states off of the fence and onto our side.
I like this approach. What better way to demonstrate that as a nation we’ve got our head on straight? Give the people the assistance they need to secure peace, perhaps for a lifetime. I hope Bush has this in mind as well.
$43 million worth of food in May.
Fat lot of good it did us.
But I’m with Sam. We need a Marshall plan to make the Marshall plan look like peanuts.
Should have given a cite.
I see the US taking the initiative with air strikes, then moving ground troops into Pakistan. Then demands are made to the Taliban. Then more air strikes, then the tropps move in.
Hopefully, army engineers won’t be far behind them. We should have a huge humanitarian effort set up… and help build some sort of infrastructure so the people of Afghan won’t die this winter.
In short, we should handle it just like we did in Vietnam, but instead of depending on the local government to handle everything while we simply push the Taliban out, we will try and do both things. We do have many more available troops than we did in vietnam, and I believe less of Afghanistan is populated due to geographic problems (and food distribution) so it seems very possible.
We should do everything in our power to restore the Afghan government along more democratic lines and to remove the Taliban from any sort of power position.
But simply being nice will not pacify the people who hate us already. We don’t even want to demonstrate that we are the good guys, really. We just want a fucking peaceful government and an end to terrorism.
They don’t want to be friends, you see, so peace offerings ain’t gonna cut it.