I’m not suggesting anything, rather describing the situation as I see most likely given current and historical trends. Is vs. ought, friend. And yeah, I imagine it will! That’s why we have a lot of guys there with guns and bombs. Machine gunning weddings via unmanned drones is too impersonal.
Never is a long time. Are we never going to leave Germany, South Korea, Japan, South America, or the dozens (hundreds?) of bases we have in the Middle East and North Africa? I dunno. As long as it’s “useful” and as long as the United States can physically support it we’ll stay.
That balances nicely with bombing the shit out of them, killing their men, women and children . The infrastructure will be a mess. We will fix it like Iraq, no lights and sewage for years. They see us as invaders. We are.
Oh yeah, they’d be lost without the USA. God knows how they’ve managed these past 2000 years.
You see, it just feels a little like you’re scratching around for a slight undulation that you can grab as the moral highground. There isn’t any moral highground. The US is using the people of Afghanistan.
They haven’t managed well for the last few thousand years. :rolleyes:
Anyways America’s national security is of the upmost importance to our government even if there wasn’t any moral reason to the Afghan War it is necessary for our security. Please have a sense of realpolitik.
So, the Afghani’s, being unfortunate enough to be born in a country whose main product/asset was heroin production, rather than oil, or something else western governments deem “useful”, are forced to allow their main asset to be controlled by “warlords” as they are the only ones capable of defending it, then, the country is ostracised by the “outside world”, and then we are surprised that the country becomes a haven for outlaws of all shapes and sizes?
If Afghanistan was a “base for terrorist camps”, why was it allowed to become so in the first place? I thought our intelligence agencies were supposed to be keeping a keen eye on all this shit?
Bolding mine. The point is that many ‘innocents’ are being killed now and not achieving the West’s aims.
Why is it morally correct to kill many as long as we are doing it for the right reasons (installing democracy), but not because we have specific goals (essentially capturing/killing those who have killed our citizens) if neither is likely to be accomplished? At the end of the day people are just as pointlessly dead.
At least if we had approached it like Gray Ghost suggested we’d have been more likely to achieve that limited goal.
It seems to me that wishing for an exit strategy with a “victory” is a pipe dream. America needs to lose a war like in Vietnam in order to extricate all its troops.
The ground Afghanistan is on is crucial to future pipelines carrying Asian gas to western markets. Right now there are a bunch of competing pipeline projects being touted to transport a significant chunk of the world’s energy in the direction of either Asia or the west. So we unquestionably have a strategic interest in the region. We definitely wouldn’t mind having military bases and a compliant government there, and we’ll go to the length of continuing to state a preposterous bunch of reasons for us being there and by propping up a government that many believe is fraudulent. We couldn’t give a shit about democracy anywhere, we prop up and smile on tons of despots and repress democratic governments we don’t like.
Since AlQueda moved to Pakistan, we will not solve anything in Afghanistan. They are being trained and sent in to fight. As long as we have our Military fighting in the Middle East, they will have plenty of reinforcements. Then of course we will have to tackle Pakistan. AlQueda is in a lot of countries now. What doe we do, just take them on in order until we conquer the world?
While China may want some kind of pipeline through Afghanistan, given that any oil or gas deposits are in Asian countries around the Caspian Sea, does the West really have a pipeline interest in Afghanistan?
The US has somewhat of an interest in a (relatively) corruption-free and democratic Afghanistan, but the widespread perceived corruption of Afghanistan’s government DOES concern the American military there. The Taliban are already exploiting the election investigation for propaganda purposes. Without a freely elected government, or however close we can get to that goal, the people of Afghanistan will likely see that they have a choice between supporting a corrupt puppet government of foreign infidels or brutal religious zealots who at least claim to be acting under the precepts of Islam. They’d likely choose the Taliban, just as some already are.
I agree-show me a bank (or insurance company) that would finance a gas pipeline through Afghanistan? And why would you route a pipeline through such mountainous territory anyway?
I understand, such a pipeline would bypass Russia(andremove the threat of Russia shutting the gas off), but Afghanistan sounds like a strange place to put such a line.