NEWS: Deja Vu All Over Again

POLITICS: Deja Vu All Over Again

Afghanistan, the abandoned front in the war on terror. Remember when Afghanistan was our number one enemy, the place where training camps spawned terrorists who hatched a plan to destroy the Pentagon and the World Trade Center? Remember when the war in Afghanistan was over, and we could start focusing on more pressing issues, like Saddam Hussein's imminent arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that were threatening mushroom clouds over American cities? Well apparently that all... never happened. That's right, because Donald Rumsfeld has just declared that we will defeat the Taliban....er, again.

Haven't we been here before? Didn't we already beat the Taliban? One would think that had we not been distracted by Iraq, lost the international goodwill that followed the 9/11 attacks, and made a concerted effort to finish off the Taliban and rebuild Afghanistan in a way that could actually support an economy that didn't involved heroin that this problem might have been avoided in the first place.

Next lets hit Egypt and Syria!!

we never left afghanistan, my best friend just came back for a second tour...the focus just kinda went to iraq i guess.

just saying...

ooh, "master plan" sounds familiar...

Whoa, whoa. I work for an Egyptian company. Attack Egypt and I'm out of a job.

(Nods head toward Syria) I hear they've been saying shit about your mother....

aah 9/11 was staged anyway...
Its easy to kill a man, but damn near impossible to kill a mentality. My guess is that these fellas weren't apart of the Taliban when it was "overthrown", but have now either joined up with the remants or recreated it. Can't kill 'em all, so something news gotta be done. That "master plan" sounds abit dubious however
And yeah the war in Afghanistan never ended, my Uncle just went over there last week with my nations' Special Forces.

Why not Pakistan? I've windered this for the longest time - we jbew there was no link between 9-11 & Iraq, yet Pakistan has had nukes or years, threatens India regularly, refuses to let our troops be there, and is generally believed to be harbouring Osama bin Laden. So again, why did we invade Iraq instead of Pakistan? Smokescreen?

Technically speaking, our defeat of the Taliban is at the very least the third time it has been done. The British fought them at the end of the nineteenth century. The Russians dealt with them during the seventies and eighties. We went after them in the twenty-first century. I'm almost certain their was a point when the Chinese or Japanese were dealing with them in the early part of the twentieth century...

Also, it was just a bit of an exaggeration to claim we defeated the Taliban. Like the Russians did before us, we managed to drive them out of the major cities and away from the modern hubs of power. And just like when the Russians did it to them, the vast majority of the leaders of the Taliban fled the cities and regrouped with their tribes in the hills and caverns of Afghanistan. If the nineteenth and twentieth centuries should have taught us nothing else it is that you cannot defeat the ruling power in Afghanistan. The leaders of the Taliban have very close ties to the old nomadic tribes. By very close I mean they're still family, and still come from the families at the top of the tribal hierarchies. These people know the land, maintain fanatical beliefs that haven't changed in almost six centuries (same can be said for their way of life), and have been steadily stealing and stockpiling Western weapons since the Crimean War. The Russians spent twenty years with the second most powerful army in the world hammering at these guys and accomplished nothing. We went in and used the exact same bloody tactics as the Russians... got the same immediate early results, and than moved on. And just like the Russians, we are now realizing a bit too late just how grossly we underestimated the resourcefulness of the Afghani guerillas.

A better reason for why the war in Afghanistan tapered off in the news? Try looking at the numbers. You'd be amazed how many U.N. troops, especially medical support personnel, have been killed there in the last four years... not counting the massive civilian death toll. Point being: once again the U.S. military realized too late it had walked into something it couldn't handle in its traditional, plodding way and is now trying to pretend victory and ignorance to avoid any messy clean up issues.

Why did we invade Iraq at all?


Also, I would say we have never "pretended victory", therein lying the insidiousness of Bush's master plan. This is a self-perpetuating crusade. As long as Bush is President this war will likely not end.

remember "Animal Farm" ?

Theoretically, Afghanistan is not Bush's top issue, although he needs to build a strong Afghanistan to complete his "master plan" within the next 18 months. Once we build a large enough army in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush will invade Iran. No country has ever withstood an attack on two fronts, and don't think for a minute that Iran is not the main goal in W's plan. We're poised to invade now, and the mounting tension between Israel and Hezzbolah will create a "need" for the US to move additional forces to the Middle East.

We did "defeat" them. Unfortunately, we did so in a conventional way, and then only under the constraints of lines on a map that our opponents don't recognize. There are two factors that will enable violence to continue.

1) The doctrine used in these conflicts has called for smaller-than-traditional forces.
2) The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is as porous as is Pakistan's ability to regulate the regions where the crossings occur.

The Pashtu tribal groups, who constituted the majority of the Taliban's backers, occupy territory in both southern/eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan. Tribe comes before "nation" (in the sense that we think of it) to them, and thus they see no reason to follow Musharaff's lead if it contradicts that of their own strongmen. Currently, many of those strongmen recruit and lead guys to go on forrays and fights against US/ISAF forces in Afghanistan. This will be a re-curring fight that won't be done until enough the border can be sealed. Until then, all you've done is hammer about 40% of the population of an incredibly tenacious society of bandit-warriors whose mentality often centers on equal parts of stubborness and machismo.

Even then, the situation will be far from perfect. Pashtu tribes separated by a military-controlled border will, in effect, become the world's next "Kurds"--which will generate a whole new bag of issues.

I thought 'we' wiped out the Nazis. And don't we still preach about their terrible wrongs? And isn't Christians killing the sickest joke?

Phoebus said:
We did "defeat" them. Unfortunately, we did so in a conventional way, and then only under the constraints of lines on a map that our opponents don't recognize.
QUOTE]


That's an interesting POV. I'm not sure I totally understand it. To say we "defeated" someone in their homeland under the constraints of lines on a map that they don't recognize".

I would submit that not only have we not "defeated" anyone, but that Bush's "war" is not against the Taliban at this point. I think he has proven that his "war" is basically an ever-shifting, all-consuming enterprise of resentment.

However, all of the middle east, at this point (and not just the Taliban) is certainly now at war with the united states (and this a direct result of Bush's sabre-rattling, fiercely nationalistic campaign).

Americans are the biggest enemies Muslims have and Pakistan is only one of our worries. Syrians, Egyptians. There are Muslims who pour in wherever the US is fighting with guns who can't wait to kill Americans

It's unfortunate, because it didn't have to be this way. However, IMO (this is just my opinion) the united states has sown the seeds of war. Eventually, the price we pay may become too big for us to withstand

this is worth a read. I'd also like to point out that the British now have 3,000 troops in Afghanistan and in the last couple of weeks 6 soldiers have been killed.

Yeah, Hamid Karzai has been saying that something needs to be done about Pakistan for a while now. God knows what though. At the end of the day Musharraf is still a military dictator lacking a mandate. So bribing him to get on board more is, in no small part, repeating history's mistakes of standing with friendly dictators.

On the drugs front, I really hope we opt to buy the stuff. Heroin is actually rather expensive stuff for hospitals to buy, so loads more on the market wouldn't hurt.

Isn't he such a prophet?

remember what the pigs did to Boxer?
ONe day I swear I'm going to get a knock on my front door and four secret service guys are going to come in and take me off to the glue factory.

Because of Hussein's continued refusal to comply with the treaty he signed at the end of the Gulf War. Hussein agreed to routine weapons inspections by the UN. You might remember the 4 day air strike against many of his military installations in 1998 when Clinton got sick of his shit as well. Clinton continued to target them for months after that. Saddam has always been a threat and has rarely (if ever) complied with the treaty.

Honestly, Bush senior fucked up when he thought Saddam could be trusted. Any dipshit who would just take over Kuwait because they felt they were entitled to it is clearly not someone who could ever have good intentions. For those who keep insisting this has anything to do with oil, Saddam offered the U.S. 10% of all Kuwaiti oil production if we allowed Iraq to take over Kuwait.

We "invaded" after more than a month of non-compliance with his treaty. When I say "we" - I mean the U.S., Britain, and Poland.

As for the Taliban? Defeating them is no more plausible than defeating al Qaeda. Sure we'll take out some of their leaders - but there's always someone willing to take their place.

Pashtu tribesmen have been bandit warriors for thousands of years. No one has ever brought peace to that region for any length of time in their known history

That and we actually have a fairly good relationship with Egypt.

Syria is nothing and Egypt wants nothing to do with it. We do have allies in the area, islamic countries, but none want to be to obvious about ti and unfortunately many are not much better than the countries we are most likely to have problems with. The problem is the situation is just to complicated to top off with a couple of sentences and think you have captured the true situation.

If we want to intimidate Iran, then this shit that's been going on in Iraq and now Afghanistan probably isn't doing the trick!

I think they were intimidated, but now believe that the US doesn't have the "Will" to fight another campaign now. Mind you Israel could prob beat them by themselves but that would be a huge mess.

In a perfect world - the UN would actually step in with troops and follow through instead of the U.S. having to take on any campaign. But again, in a perfect world - we wouldn't have the idiotic conflicts and issues either.

Israel could probably hold their own but it's my guess that they assume the U.S. will "have their back."