I totally agree, given your premise, and the sooner we produce sentient robots to do our ground work for us, the better. I just happen to think that we have no business there, other than those aforementioned, of course.
Maybe it’s time someone made the attempt to unify them for their own common good. These are the same douchebags that provided haven for terrorists in the form of Al-Qaeda to train to attack us, and the same ones that stultify their own human progression in the sense of abdicating basic human rights to men AND women, sell opium and/or heroin to keep themselves supplied with Kalishnakovs, and generally are a sore on the ass of the modern world.
What’s not to like?
Soviets tried it.
Bush coulda tried it, but chose not to.
What’s in it for Obama?
How to Trap a President in a Losing War
-Not that anyone is saying that the Republicans would do anything it takes to bring down Obama.
They’ve been perfectly circumspect in their behavior as America’s ‘loyal opposition.’ 
Now I think you are being ironic.
Whether or not you are, here’s a little Afghan history video that is certain to enlighten. Anyone really interested in the OP would do well to see this.
No, it wasn’t a pleasent time but I was asking whether you supported the US fighting the American Civil War and World War 2.
Except Iraq’s government which was mildly pragmatic the Taliban were batshit insane people.
Are you a liberal? If you are not apologies but if you are you probably supported the Stimulus Package and universal health care and etc. so please don’t talk about the monetary cost. Also I think hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives should not be considered by money.
Any amount possible.
We’ll have to get to the opium traders once we’ve crushed the Taliban.
If you asked the average Afghan he would say that he prefers the current government to the Taliban.
In what world is it that only conservatives get to talk about costs? Is it the one in which John McCain won the presidency?
That’s NOT a real place!
Here in reality, people don’t have to argue things in just the way you want them to argue things.
Getting back to your civil war, WWII casualty figures, you still haven’t explained what the heck they have to do with staying in Afghanistan. Is it that we’ve lost so few men over there that it doesn’t even really count as a war yet in your eys, and hence is worth pusuing to the tune of a few hundred thousand more dead?
No I’m just saying that it’s contradictory for a liberal who supports UHC to complain about the cost of the Afghan War.
What I meant was that wars are hell and must be won at any cost.
lol, I think that there would’ve a good chance that your remarks would be different if you won the draft lottery in 1968.
Winning the war in Afghanistan is easy…per your namesake, we just bomb all those Afghans back to the Stone Age.
Afghanistan is already stuck in the middle ages, so it shouldn’t be to hard. It worked so well in Vietnam.
To the point of volunteering? I think not.
Our so-called Civil War was waged by Northern industrial capital on Southern agricultural capital. There was no way they were going to secede and take their cotton and 3/4 of our coastline along with control of the Missisippi and the Caribbean. The South was driven into the Stone Age in a prolonged war and the Northern industrial and banking interests which financed it ended up owning the USG. It was the start of the corporate takeover of this country. And they’re still pulling exactly the same shit today in Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance.
WW2? Hitler had plenty of help from US banks and industry after his initial rise to power. Geez. How did this guy “secretly” rearm?
Made no difference in the end, we fucked them both. It really makes no difference to us if a regime is popular or repressive. If it’s in the way of our business interests, we’ll sponsor violence there with little regard for the lives and welfare of the local citizenry. Our attitude is “Gee, too bad. You just happened to live in the same neighborhood as our villain of the month.”
You tell me. I believe that government has two valid functions.
- Facilitate the equitable distribution of resources
- Prevent coercion, essentially, enforce the Golden Rule
I’m displeased but not surprised to see Wall Street CEOs rewarded for fraud and billions in bailout money unaccounted for. Sure, we are entitled to UHC (like the rest of the civilized world) and the money spent killing others abroad is better spent here on health care, imo.
Whatever that actually means, me neither.
Perhaps the urban well-to-do would, not the folks in the country. Check out that video.
Nah, providing for the national wellbeing is a responsible use of our resources. Chucking money down a hole like Afghanistan has become is not.
Why would we want to win hell? Some wars are worth winning, at some cost. Others are pieces of crap.
Now I know Condoleezza Rice equates Afghanistan to a shiny new Cadillac:
But the girl is notorious for her lack of imagination.
The problem is “Bin Laden’s Determined to Attack Within the United States”, not the presence or absence of American butts sitting on the Hindu kush.
Were I to be conscripted I would comply immediatly with the orders. Also when did I advocated bombing? I’ve advocated a “surge” strategy like in Iraq.
Are you some sort of a Marxist? Anyways the American Civil War also ended up freeing the slaves.
It’s American corporations not American government. At any rate there were lots of Nazi sympathizers in the US but in the end most of them realized how evil the Nazis and joined int he war effort.
The Afghan War was certainly not in the interests of businesses. It was because we have to root out Al-Qaeda so in order to prevent an another attack on the American homeland.
I guess you a Marxist or at least a socialist from your views. Anyways no. 1 and no. 2 are self-contradictory as to equalize the distribution of resources you have to have government-enforced coercion. Also Al-Qaeda attacked us thus to enforce the Golden Rule it was imperative that we launch a military response.
It’s for the self-defence of the United States of America so I’d think it’s equally important as UHC and more. Also for health care much of the uninsured are one of three things 1) they can afford health care but haven’t bothered to, 2) they are eligable for Medicaid but haven’t signed up, and 3) they’re illegal immigrants.
It means you shouldn’t criticise the costs of the Afghan War as if we pull our far more people will die.
Maybe because of war they prefer not to but were the Karzai government to be stable they will overwhelmingly prefer it.
It is imperative for national defence as I’ve said above to fight in Afghanistan.
True and Bin Laden and his lieutenants along with many other Al Qaeda people are in Afghanistan and if we pull our they will use Afghanistan as a safe haven for terrorist attacks.
That video is one of the more simplistic and deceptive “history” videos I’ve seen. Not only does it gloss over the first, second, and third British-Afghan wars as just being colossal British defeats (bit more complicated than that), the narrator states that through U.S. financial and military aid, the U.S. essentially created the Taliban and Al Queda. Hardly. The mujahideen fighting the Soviets (aka the “godless communists”) was a cause celebre throughout the Muslim world, with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in particular giving plenty of aid and providing a steady supply of foreign fighters. In fact, the Taliban did not appear as any kind of organization or military force until after the Soviets had withdrawn and civil war had started. It was the Pakistani ISI that continued to supply and assist the Taliban, seeing them as a force that could be co-opted and manipulated into being pro-Pakistani (especially since so many fellow Pashtuns live in the border regions of Pakistan).
As for Al Queda, there is some evidence that Bin Ladin and others who formed the inner circle had their first meeting in 1988, just before the Soviets withdrew, but Bin Ladin himself only seemed to concern himself at all with the US during Desert Shield/Desert Storm, when US forces became (then) permanently based in Saudi Arabia.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/03/14/2009-03-14_where_is_osama_bin_laden_us_zeros_in_on_.html Since Benny is in Pakistan ,I don’t see how blowing up Afghanistan will collect him or his entourage.
The destruction of a cultural monument is not the same as an insurgent ambush or an IED attack. This is a ridiculous notion and since you didn’t really argue it beyond that one sentence, hopefully you see that it’s pretty baseless too.
One of the reasons for the drastic increase in American and NATO casualties this year in Afghanistan is because we have gone on the offensive into Taliban controlled or dominated areas, such as the Marines in Helmand province. Oh, and Taliban rule doesn’t simply mean girls will stop being educated or will be bartered in exchange for cattle, goats, or simple repayment for any kind of accident or insult. Even in non-Taliban dominated villages, girls are bartered for in that same way. However, with the Taliban, they will enforce their strict interpretation of sharia law, which means that unmarried women will not be able to go outside without a male escort, anyone who defies the Taliban will be killed or have their nose or tongues cut off, anyone who votes will have their hands or fingers cut off, and all beatings and executions will be public. The video is of the Pakistani Taliban, but they’re not exceptionally less brutal than their counterparts.
While the CIA and some Special Forces units had capturing or killing Osama Bin Ladin as one of their primary mission objectives, it was never one of the primary objectives of the larger military operations. Putting American troops on the ground in Pakistan in an active military offensive would start a much broader war, as it almost did when Special Forces troops made a brief helicopter incursion into Pakistan earlier this year. Given that the last high-level Al Queda member who may have known Bin Ladin’s location was captured in 2002/2003, this 6-7 year old intelligence doesn’t do us much good. Bin Ladin doesn’t likely stay in one location more than a few days, if that.
It was a very important objective until they discovered it would be difficult to achieve. Then it was downgraded and suddenly not all that important. If they got him it would make huge headlines and would be trumpeted as a great victory. We did not put a multi-million dollar bonus on him because he did not matter.
He’s got a 50 million dollar reward from the US govt and a 2 million one from the Airline Pilots and the Air Transport associations. That’s not multi-million enough for ya?
(7/16/2002) Ever-Elusive Usama Becomes Bush Headache Here is an article from 2002. Osama was our number one desire until then. He was downgraded because they could not catch him, not because he was suddenly not important.
Afghanistan is 4 x the size of Michigan. It is slightly smaller than Texas. It is 44.5 percent of the people under 15 years of age. The median age in 17.6. Life expectancy is 44 years old. 80 percent of their people are involved in agriculture. It is a backwards place that really is not a big threat. It is a country of warlords and corrupt politics and graft.
Which we view as a valuable resource.
Yeah it’s worse to kill a man than to kill his culture, huh?
You think?
Maybe we should’ve done that back in 2002, when we had a least a little bit of goodwill going for us? Now we’re just a bunch of imperialist wankers trying to prop up a corrupt puppet regime. We’ll look better to the Afghans if we have the balls to admit what shitty job Bush did, and leave.