Justification for war in Afghanistan

[questor]

We didn't win in Vietnam...why? What was the result?

If we don't win in Afghanistan, what will happen? If we do win, what will happen?

[Moontanman]

We didn't win in Vietnam...why? What was the result?

If we don't win in Afghanistan, what will happen? If we do win, what will happen?

 

We didn't win in Vietnam because we didn't treat it like a war, we treated like we were trying to stop a war. Lots of huge differences between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Vietnam didn't attack us, Vietnam didn't threaten the rest of the world with death and destruction and religious crazies. In Vietnam we didn't attack the north that was attacking the south, we waited for them to come south. The war in Vietnam wasn't a justifiable war to start with. We interviened in a civil war because we had stopped elections that would have favored the communist north, so we supported a corrupt south just because they were against communism. The entire war had nothing to do with the security of the USA in anything but an extremely indirect and round about way. We were owned by the Soviets in that war, just like we owned them in their Afghanistan war.

[Michaelangelica]

Not in the same vein. . . but I read an interesting article in the "Sun herald yesterday on Afghanistan.

The article, by Frank Walker, on UN report on opium in Afghanistan (claiming falling production???) does not seem to be on line so to quote a few interesting excerpts:-

• Oruzgan (where Australian troops are) is one of the biggest opium growing areas in the country. Australian troops have no orders to destroy opium crops.
  
• Under the Taliban opium farmers were forced to give up growing opium and production fell to almost zero
  
• Under US and NATO control poppy production soared
  
• 2007 opium poppy cultivation covered 200,000 hectares
  
• Opium crops grew 23% in the past 12 months and yields per hectare have increased markedly.
  
• 2007 opium production 82,000 tonnes- 93% of global production
  
• US paid for irrigation helped opium farmers and opened new areas in the south
  
• (Quotes an article by T Schweich in NYT will look that up)- He accused USA of turning a blind eye to opium growing.
  
• The Taliban is said to have now dropped their religious objections to heroin and it is now funding their activities.
   
  

 

Interesting how much detail seems to be known about the crop. I doubt agricultural experts in Oz would have as good figures as that on this year's wheat crop.

How do you secretly move 82,000 tonnes of anything;? let alone in a war zone.

 

The NY TIMES ARTICLE

On March 1, 2006, I met Hamid Karzai for the first time. It was a clear, crisp day in Kabul. The Afghan president joined President and Mrs. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Ambassador Ronald Neumann to dedicate the new United States Embassy. He thanked the American people for all they had done for Afghanistan. I was a senior counternarcotics official recently arrived in a country that supplied 90 percent of the world’s heroin. I took to heart Karzai’s strong statements against the Afghan drug trade. That was my first mistake.

 

Red Tide: Recent U.N. reports shattered the myth that poppies are grown by destitute farmers who have no other source of income.

 

Over the next two years I would discover how deeply the Afghan government was involved in protecting the opium trade — by shielding it from American-designed policies. While it is true that Karzai’s Taliban enemies finance themselves from the drug trade, so do many of his supporters. At the same time, some of our NATO allies have resisted the anti-opium offensive, as has our own Defense Department, which tends to see counternarcotics as other people’s business to be settled once the war-fighting is over. The trouble is that the fighting is unlikely to end as long as the Taliban can finance themselves through drugs — and as long as the Kabul government is dependent on opium to sustain its own hold on power.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/magazine/27AFGHAN-t.html

Some also say the Russian Mafia are dealing in heroin to the north.

"Follow the money" as they say in crime fiction.

[Buffy]

We didn't win in Vietnam...

No, but we did have "Peace With Honor!" And one of the greatest conservative Presidents of recent history engineered it! In fact he ran *both* of his campaigns on getting us out of Viet Nam! That's what *true* conservatives do: they avoid wasting out tax dollars on foolish pursuits!

 

Its only bleeding-heart liberals who start wars of liberation! Thank goodness the Republicans stopped Clinton from his foolish suggestion that we liberate Iraq!

...why?

Oh I suppose you want a serious answer. Really, this could go on forever, but here are a few...many of which developed into the Powell Doctrine (not to be confused with the Bush Doctrine, which Sarah Palin doesn't know about)....

• There was no definition of the word "win." "We had to destroy the village in order to save it," was about as close as we ever got.
  
• Body counts as the only measure of success. Unfortunately, the fact that Uncle Walter told us every night that ten times as many "North Viet Namese Regulars" and "Viet Cong" died every day as Americans kinda ignored the fact that dead boys nonetheless coming home to every town that you and I lived in. What the latest administration seems to have depended on is suppressing any coverage of these deaths, and counting on no one counting.
  
• Even after the fact, "winning" was obviously not possible: South Viet Nam (who we were "saving") was run by a bunch of corrupt politicians who were mainly in it for the dough (Nguyễn Văn Thiệu) who we then saved and shipped to (the Liberal state of) Massachusetts. Same mistake repeated when we backed the Shah of Iran and then saved him resulting in the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran and nearly 30 years of hostilities.
  
• We had nothing to offer the inhabitants except their "freedom" when in most of the country, they were de facto under the rule of the aggressors. In fact most of the time we were indiscriminately killing them because they were "harboring" the Viet Cong.
  

I could go on, but having personally talked to several people who do history and "what we learned" studies for the Pentagon, the main answer to the question "how could we have won Viet Nam?" is "never to have gone in in the first place" (which is the crux of the Powell Doctrine).

What was the result?

This of course is the most fascinating question. Answer? A fabulous trading partner to whom we can outsource many mid-level complexity manufacturing, which is much easier to work with than the Chinese!

If we don't win in Afghanistan, what will happen? If we do win, what will happen?

Afghanistan hangs in a precarious balance: Karzai is no Thiệu, but his government is corrupt. We have *some* support of the international community--much, much more than we have for Iraq--that can be leveraged into something positive. We have *some* support from the locals--again *unlike* Iraq where we are widely despised--but our welcome is wearing thin.

 

Once again "winning" is ill-defined, and once again the benefits we can bring to the people are marginal, and once again our ability to even achieve our goal of getting at our aggressors requires us to actually attack another nation (not just defend the one we're protecting), one in this case that is nominally our *ally*.

 

Gosh I hope we can "win" in Afghanistan, but we have to remember that we only can win if the Afghans can tell us what they want us to *do* when we win.

 

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also, :phones:

Buffy

[Michaelangelica]

 

Its only bleeding-heart liberals who start wars of liberation! Thank goodness the Republicans stopped Clinton from his foolish suggestion that we liberate Iraq!

LOL, Did he really?!

 

[*]There was no definition of the word "win."

Gosh I hope we can "win" in Afghanistan, but we have to remember that we only can win if the Afghans can tell us what they want us to *do* when we win.

 

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also, :phones:

Buffy

A the moment the people 'winning' financially are

1. Afghan Poppy farmers

2. Various nefarious, as yet undiscovered, heroin distribution networks

3. The Taliban

4. The government of Hamid Karzai

5. The Pakistani government, who seem to like a destabilised Afghanistan.

the loosers

1 The drug addicts and youth of the planet.

 

 

Personally I am all for pissing off and let the bastards kill each other

I don't know why Australia is bothering to kill /put its young army at risk.

[questor]

War in its purest form means beating the Hell out of the enemy until he surrenders totally. In the old days his land would be taken, males slaughtered and women and children sold into slavery. Today we are fighting an enemy which seems to believe all infidels should die. Since we are unable to negotiate with this enemy. and unwilling to decimate his population, we will not win. These people are not like us, and they do not want Western ways. We have no bargaining chips except to leave Iraq and Afghanistan to their own desserts. In 7 years we have not won and nothing shows me that we will win. JUST MHO

[Moontanman]

War in its purest form means beating the Hell out of the enemy until he surrenders totally. In the old days his land would be taken, males slaughtered and women and children sold into slavery. Today we are fighting an enemy which seems to believe all infidels should die. Since we are unable to negotiate with this enemy. and unwilling to decimate his population, we will not win. These people are not like us, and they do not want Western ways. We have no bargaining chips except to leave Iraq and Afghanistan to their own desserts. In 7 years we have not won and nothing shows me that we will win. JUST MHO

 

Damn, a rabid conservative who is against the war, who'd a thunk it? Are you sure you're not a liberal in disguise? Have you checked your identity card lately to see if you've been kicked out of the neocons? Everyone has two things Questor, an opinion is one of them, and you are entitled to both of them.

[questor]

I am more interested in preserving the economic stability of our country than

fighting a war with no help from our ''allies''. Why is this a liberal idea? It justs makes common sense.

[Buffy]

...Today we are fighting an enemy which seems to believe all infidels should die. Since we are unable to negotiate with this enemy. and unwilling to decimate his population, we will not win. These people are not like us, and they do not want Western ways.

Who is "these people?" You know, if you throw everybody in the same bucket, call them "They" and ascribe all of the worst traits of the minority of the group to the whole, you ensure that you never understand what's going on or who your enemy really is, or what you might be able to do about it.

 

Its the insistence on simplistic solutions--like, just keep shooting until you decimate their population and therefore "win"--that prevents real solutions from being found.

 

Sometimes those solutions are messy and non-optimal, but it hardly makes you a "loser" or a "traitor" to pursue the least-worst solution.

We have no bargaining chips except to leave Iraq and Afghanistan to their own desserts. In 7 years we have not won and nothing shows me that we will win. JUST MHO

So are you saying that we should "Cut and Run?" Or do you still support John McCain's strategy for taking the gloves off and shooting until we "win?"

 

Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself, :confused:

Buffy

[alexander]

Emmk, i've been out of this topic for too long to control it, now i must contain the discussion, perhaps by means of pissing off people, but i will do, what must be done...

 

To me they are barbaric. Their major export is opium and derivatives. A great number of the population are Taliban sympathisers. We are in a no-win situation there for a non-strategic country. They will bleed us just like they bled Russia. Our country is teetering on financial chaos, what is our gain to stay there?

Technically we are all Barbaric, the origin of the term is traced to Greece, and references foreign individuals or tribes whose first language was not Greek...

If you are talking in modern terms ("brutal, cruel, warlike, insensitive person whose behaviour is unacceptable in the society of the speaker"), then i still don't agree with you. How are they different from you, me, US if you like? Just because you know how to use a computer, does not make the behavior of this nation any less "Barbaric" then any behavior of the people of Afghanistan. You say that Taliban is bad, and that's a fair thing to say, but so is bush, and as far as i can see, you support the administration, thus you are as bad as the people who support the Taliban. You don't even know why they support the Taliban rule, and yet stand for destroying innocent lives simply because you think that they want to support an administration that terrorizes the very citizens that support them?

 

FYI it was USSR at the time, and it wasn't the Taliban that bled USSR, it was the US Money and CIA and training of the Taliban troups that are now fighting on the opposite side that bled USSR... Anyone who read about the war would know that it was USSR vs US not USSR vs some afghanees. It took the troups at the time, something like 2 months to take over, start rebuilding, then destroying, then defending then inventing new tactics and taking over again, all in all 2 months to take over, 10 more years to get out...

 

And also don't take this as anything personal, i just really don't think that your position is a humane one... that's all

 

On Heroin export, Afghanistan went from exporting under 5% of the world heroin under the taliban rule, to over 70-75% under US rule.... makes one think...

 

We didn't win in Vietnam...why?

The same reason US will never win the "war on terrorism"

 

Today we are fighting an enemy which seems to believe all infidels should die.

You have not the slightest clue about the Muslim religion, do you...?

 

Who is "these people?" You know, if you throw everybody in the same bucket, call them "They" and ascribe all of the worst traits of the minority of the group to the whole, you ensure that you never understand what's going on or who your enemy really is, or what you might be able to do about it.

 

Its the insistence on simplistic solutions--like, just keep shooting until you decimate their population and therefore "win"--that prevents real solutions from being found.

 

Sometimes those solutions are messy and non-optimal, but it hardly makes you a "loser" or a "traitor" to pursue the least-worst solution.

:)

also how do you define "win", so far, US has been really bad at defining what "wins" the war, look at nam and korea :)

[questor]

Buffy, ''they'' are the people we are fighting. Do you think we are just fighting a few terrorists, or are we fighting the ideas of over a billion people? I have not seen an overwhelming number of ''peaceful' muslims rise up against these

jihadists. I have not see a worldwide coalition of Muslim leaders condemn the

jihadists. If we had help from all peaceful Muslims, this war would be over in a few weeks. Where is our help? Since you question my view of war and my comments, how would you handle this problem?

[alexander]

I have not seen an overwhelming number of ''peaceful' muslims rise up against these

jihadists.

if the rise up without backing (and US is not any sort of backing against various terrorist organizations), meant that your children were going to be killed, and wives raped, would you rise?

 

I have not see a worldwide coalition of Muslim leaders condemn the

jihadists.

I have personally not seen a rise in the RCC to condemn what US is doing, or what Nato did in Serbia. I have not seen the Russian patriarchate attempt to condemn Russian efforts in Georgia, nor Georgian efforts in south ossetiya.

 

Muslim leaders don't support extremists any more then the Pope supports the war in Iraq, but neither can do anything about things they think are unjust, because religion in it's core only supports peace.

 

Since you question my view of war and my comments, how would you handle this problem?

Certainly not by bombing civilians, and causing more distress in places that are already unstable...

[Michaelangelica]

War in its purest form means beating the Hell out of the enemy until he surrenders totally. In the old days his land would be taken, males slaughtered and women and children sold into slavery.

Strictly speaking that may be true but we have not seen that sort of war since biblical times, even Atilla the Hun was better than that. Rome's obliteration of Catharge probably comes closest to your definition

Yet Rome ruled and subjugated countries by adsorbing, absorbing their cultures and allowing citizenship. Even the might of the Roman legions could not subjugate that many people over that vast an area

I guess

War is just another facit of foreign policy. Some times going on and off for years for example the 100 year war (French English). Many wars in medieval times stopped while the peasants got in the harvest!

 

Since (& including) WW1 I don't thing there have been "winners" of wars.

(Unless you include Halliburtun shareholders and similar)

We have all been brutalised, socially & mentally scarred and diminished by them.

Has any attempt been made to communicate with extremists to see what they want? To open a dialogue?

The only county I know who has done this -with great success- is Indonesia. The largest Muslim nation in the world.

[Buffy]

I have not seen an overwhelming number of ''peaceful' muslims rise up against these jihadists. I have not see a worldwide coalition of Muslim leaders condemn the jihadists.

So does that justify considering them "collateral damage" that can be dismissed?

 

Do you think that the average Iraqi wonders whether its worth it that more Iraqi's have died in the last 5 years than in all of the terrorist incidents in America's entire history?

 

Don't you think that would make folks more than a little hesitant to "join the coalition?"

 

Here in America, you can dissent all you want and be called names. In Iraq--or heck, even in Mexico--if you go against the thugs, you're likely to end up *dead*.

 

You honestly wonder why they don't "join us?"

 

As to a solution, you'll find that its hard to "give" someone a spine. They have to develop it on their own. Sure we can help as long as we make it *worth their while* and they continue to *ask* for the help. But when they ask you to leave, you can't tell them "we're going to anyway because its good for you" unless you have the unquestionable moral high ground of Caesar's wife, which unfortunately the current Administration has squandered hideously, and will require years to redevelop.

 

Bombing the Murrah Federal Building was morally and strategically equivalent to the U.S. hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations, :)

Buffy

[REASON]

These questions were not addressed to me, but in deference to Buffy, I'd like to respond.

 

 

...''they'' are the people we are fighting. Do you think we are just fighting a few terrorists, or are we fighting the ideas of over a billion people?

 

I gather from previous statements of yours and by the nature of this question here that you don't necessarily distinguish between an average Muslim and a Fundamentalist Jihadist Muslim, and that they are all taught, and therefore all believe, that infidels should be eradicated from the planet, and by infidels, Islam is essentially referring to Western Capitalists. Do I gather correctly? If so, isn't this like suggesting that all Christians possess the same ideology and beliefs as those of white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, or the KKK? Would a country that feared the policies of these types of Fundamentalist Christian organizations be justified in invading the United States militarily, indiscriminately killing Christians in an effort to get rid of their radical and threatening ideology?

 

Would you join them in such an effort, or would you resist?

 

 

I have not seen an overwhelming number of ''peaceful' muslims rise up against these

jihadists. I have not see a worldwide coalition of Muslim leaders condemn the jihadists. If we had help from all peaceful Muslims, this war would be over in a few weeks. Where is our help?

 

And exactly why do they want to help us? Is it possible that the dire warnings raised by the radical Fundamentalist Musims that have arisen out of countless invasions by Westerners over the centuries, are once again being proven to be correct as we use aggression to invade and occupy their lands for what has been demonstrated to be blatent falsehoods. As countless Afghani and Iraqi citizens, who previously held no hatred or even contempt for the United States, share their stories of anger and sadness about the loss of loved ones, the loss of their resourses, the loss of jobs and livelyhood, ethnic cleansing, and the destruction of their neighborhoods, what makes you think that they would consider our method more desirable?

 

Our actions have proven to be what has been called a cause celebre that has justified the warnings and actions of the Jihadists in the minds of many Muslims, and stimulated their recruitment. I believe this is in direct opposition to the goal of any effort to rid the world of Terrorism, and is counterproductive to any effort to ingratiate a populace to which you intend to influence. Therefore I can only gather that that has not been our actual objective in all of this. Hmm, I wonder what this invasion is really all about. :)

 

It is no wonder why they have not rushed to help us in our cause. Our general motives remain suspect.

 

 

...how would you handle this problem?

 

Generally speaking, it seams to me that Jihadism and Terrorism by radical groups is primarily a local problem as it is with any radical group in any country. Because acts of terrorism are perpetrated in different parts of the world, there becomes a shared interest in dealing with certain groups, and ultimately certain idologies or philosophies. The goal is to get people to reject a radical, destructive ideology, and to marginalize and reduce its importance in the community.

 

You'd think, since Capitalist Americans are so good at marketing campaigns, we should be able to come up with a positive way to sell our democratic way of life to the people of the Middle East in such a way that they would realize that we are genuinely concerned about them, that we want to coexist peacefully with them, are willing to assist them, and that the radical, destructive attitude and behavior of Jihadists and Terrorists is what's harmful to their existence. In many ways, this type of effort is what has yielded success with the "surge" in Anbar Province. It was really less about the number of additional troops, and more about the way we worked with local Sunni leaders, which included monetary incentives, and encouraged them to take up arms against the radical, foreign al Qaida presence in their communities. We got them to stop killing us and get rid of the terrorist element on their own. This has proven to be effective and can be accomplished without a military invasion and occupation. It's called diplomacy.

 

But many in this country prefer to harbor hatred or indifference, and espouse the same rhetoric that we condemn in the fundamentalist Muslim world. They use patriotism to justify their calls for war and revenge, and talk of wiping them all out while condemning Ahmadinejad for allegedly stating that Israel should be "wiped off the map." It's like punks fighting in a school yard...a lot of ego, not a lot of common sense or consideration.

 

We have witnessed the effects of this approach for seven years now, and the situation throughout the Middle East has substantially worsened and become more inflamed across the region. Aggressive military conquest in this situation has generally yielded the opposite effect of what we are trying to achieve with regard to the elimination of Terrorism and terrorist ideology. Should we really be surprised?

 

Of course, this assumes that the elimination of terrorism is really the objective in all of this.

[Michaelangelica]

I have not see a worldwide coalition of Muslim leaders condemn the

jihadists.

This is not true.

There are extremists in Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

Sane Islamics are just like you and me, appalled by this extremism, which is NOT condoned by the Koran. They often speak out but are not often reported.

 

Look to the Indonesian example of re-educating jihadists

[questor]

It seems that the consensus here is that the US is murdering and bombing innocent Iraqis as a matter of policy and we are in Iraq for our own selfish purposes, mainly oil. My view is that many thousands of Iraqis have been killed by other Iraqis and jihadists. American induced casualties to innocents have been minimal in comparison, regrettable but understandable when the combatants intermingle themselves with the populace.

As far as the oil question... where is our oil? Or where is the money we received for it? How much oil have we really taken?

If the population of Iraq wanted to end the war, it could happen tomorrow.

Sadr and the other Imams could exert their influence and drive out the Jihadists and form a coalition government.

It won't happen, they are too busy fighting among themselves and the idea of the infidel being in their country to work together for their own good. Wars can only be won by subjugation or winning the hearts and minds of the populace. We are not willing to do the former and have been minimally successful in achieving the latter. Is it our fault or the failure of the Iraqis to intelligently act in their own behalf..or is it that they really think this is another western crusade meant to take over their country and convert them to christianity? At any rate we need to save our own country financially and must end this unwinnable war.

We have killed and been killed, how many more troops, how much more money, how much more time?