So we needed to send armed troops instead of the Peace Corps? Why?

[closeupready]

??

[bigtree]

1. we don't even need the corps

Afghans have plenty of talent and expertise among them. They should be funded (if we choose) and our military should come home.

[Ozymanithrax]

2. Because the Peace Corps is unprepared to defend themselves...

against angry militants.

Besides, do we really need another CIA tool in Afghanistan?

[paulsby]

21. do people forget that these assholes

bombed the frigging red cross? the red cross had to pull out for fear for their safety

[Ozymanithrax]

22. No, they don't remember...or consider the ramifications of what they say...

Though it was Iraq they pulled out of after the bombing, though they are not immune to the carnage brought on by suicide bombers in Afghanistan.
Red Cross worker among Afghan bomb victims

The Peace Corps is not set up to go into a war zone.

[paulsby]

25. you're right.

it was iraq.

[treestar]

23. The Peace Corps is a CIA tool?

[B2G]

32. I wonder if my 90 year old granny knew that

when she volunteered for her final stint.

:eyes:

[Robb]

47. Mrs. Robb and I are still waiting for our CIA check, then. nt

[JonQ]

3. Because anyone we send from the peacecorp

would be a very appealing target and would either be killed or kidnapped (and likely killed later.

[BeFree]

5. So

They hate our guts and will kill us any chance they get?

And more troops are gonna fix that?

[JonQ]

6. A small minority certainly do

and sending troops to kill that minority would increase our standing over there, if for no other reason than removing those who extremely dislike us from the equation.

We were never there to be loved in either event.

I mean, we didn't send peace corp or boy scouts to storm the beaches of normandy, nor did we much care how we'd be received.

[BeFree]

9. Right

We can't send peace corps over there because they will kill them, so we kill them to make it safe for the peace corps?

Equating this action with WW2 is quite the stretch. But I'm not surprised. War mongering has no limits.

[JonQ]

10. You seem to think the purpose of the invasion

(which obama approved of) was to be loved by all immediately, rather than destroy terrorist groups based there.

Can you think of any active war zone we've ever been in where unarmed americans are perfectly safe?

Or for that matter, unarmed anyone? China is not sending troops there, but unarmed chinese would require an armed escort or risk a similiar fate.

Personally I don't believe in sending people to their deaths with no possibility of defending themselves for no other purpose than to score a political point. Do you?

[BeFree]

11. Well

The reason for being there is to rebuild the nation.

Has the military been successful at that?

Haven't killed enough of them yet?
How many have we killed, and how many more must we kill?

You seem to know every thing there is to know about being there, so, come up with the answer to when will it be safe for the peace corps.

[BeFree]

12. Crickets?

I hear nothing but crickets.

[JonQ]

14. Because if no one responds in 20 minutes

Then they just aren't going to respond.

:eyes:

[JonQ]

13. "The reason for being there is to rebuild the nation"

Incorrect.

"Has the military been successful at that?"

Have they been successful in spreading christmas cheer to all the boys and girls of the world? No, clearly not. As long as we're setting up false objectives for the military why not go all out?

"Haven't killed enough of them yet? "

Killed enough of who? Terrorists? I think we could kill a few more. Taliban or taliban wannabes? Why not, get a few more of those women murdering bastards.

"You seem to know every thing there is to know about being there, so, come up with the answer to when will it be safe for the peace corps. "

It isn't safe for the peacecorp to go to certain places in the US. I'm not sure when "sending the peacecorp in safely" became a mission objective. Could you explain that? Maybe in the lead up to the invasion bush said something like "we are invading to secure the safety of all peacecorp members, in every nation"?

You've set up these false objectives that exist only in your head then get annoyed when no one explains how our actual strategy addresses them.

[BeFree]

15. Well

You have set yourself up as some kind of authority here. So I figured you'd answer the questions.

So, what are the objectives? And how do we get there from here?

I didn't hear any answers from dear leader, or the military, except that more guns will be better to accomplish.... Well, what are we there to accomplish if it isn't peace?

But yes, I am annoyed. Only a fool would not be. We are being asked to support more of something that hasn't worked.

You have put yourself up as having answers, but all I hear is crickets.

[JonQ]

16. Perhaps you should get your fingers out of your ears then

no one, repeat no one, pushed for this war on the basis that it would be necessary to rebuild afghanistan and make them love us and form a society without crime or violence.

I'm not sure where you got that idea, but it just ain't so.

[BeFree]

17. heh

What we have done is make them hate us, and that's why after 7 years we are still there. Maybe we should go about it differently?

But nope, you are here proposing the same gawd damn thing: kill more and piss them off more. Right?

[JonQ]

44. I've got news for you

they didn't exactly love us prior to the invasion.

A wars necessity and justness is not determined by being loved after a certain period of time, or winning quickly, or avoiding casualties.

[closeupready]

39. Yes. the fallacy is we can kill a finite # of people called 'terrists', & then peace will prevail.

Um, no. But again, Obama shows by his actions that he does not believe in winning hearts and minds - or rather, that he prefers war to peace.

Makes a travesty of the peace prize.

[JonQ]

45. Your solution?

To a country harboring people who wish to (and have) come over here and kill us that doesn't involve killing anyone?

Remember, americans are people too, so doing nothing and saying we should suck it up and deal with civilian casualties does mean you have decided people should die, just different people.

[viscrente]

35. Unarmed Peace Corps?!?!

I agree with JonQ... Unarmed peace corps would last about 17 minutes until they were decapitated by those 15th century throw-backs.

[Dogtown]

36. Post a copy of your DD214

you can black-out the personal-identifiers.

Your post is hopelessly naive and shows you have no understanding of warfare. Taking lots of VC and NVA "out of the equation" wasn't a productive strategy *there*, either.

Republican shills, BTW, love to use gruff-voice pronouncements in pseudo-militarize. Killing people isn't fucking math. It's very messy.

I can assure you that Afghanistan, just like Nam, can NOT be won. Sending more troops will only provide more density of targets for the "insurgents".

[LWolf]

37. Not necessarily.

Not Peace Corp., but doing the job anyway:

http://www.gregmortenson.com/

[closeupready]

40. Oh, right! I actually saw a segment on his on, was it the News Hour?

Now there's someone who deserves a peace prize. :)

[LWolf]

43. I agree.

He's a pretty amazing person, and he's accomplished an incredible amount of good.

[janx]

4. OMG

:rofl: Good one!

[cali]

7. unrecced for mind boggling, world class, earth shattering cluelessness.

[arcadian]

18. Thank God It Passed!

I didn't know you were a medium, dearie. :rofl: <- at you

[cali]

28. thank god what passed, snookums?

laugh away. I'm glad I can enrich your sad little life, honeybuns.

[arcadian]

33. punkin, it's a reference to a particularly nasty right-winging

former DUer, who you remind me of, shnookie cookie.

[closeupready]

41. You two get a room already.

:rofl:

[Freddie Stubbs]

8. Because the Tailban probably would give them the Daniel Pearl treatment

[wuushew]

20. Unlikely

Despite concern that international aid workers are facing increasing danger, the death of Peace Corps volunteers is a rarity.

Though violent incidents are reported every year, murder is a rare occurrence. According to an annual report called “Safety of Volunteer, 2007,” 21 Peace Corps volunteers had been killed between 1961 and 2007.

http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/international/2009/march/Death-of-Peace-Corps-Volunteer-a-Rare--Tragic-Occurrence.html


Pearl was a prominent journalist and Jew, the actions needed to reduce risk in certain parts of the world should be obvious even to you. Going with you hypothetical, should aid be suspended if it saves far more people than any who are murdered? The cosmic balance probably would be favorable.

[B2G]

24. Uh, those stats are so good

because we don't put them smack dab in the middle of WAR ZONES.

[wuushew]

29. Why do feel Afghanistan would continue to be a warzone?

doesn't it seem to reason one faction or another would evidentially consolidate power? Why would this victorious faction decline efforts to improve local irrigation or road construction projects?

There were NGOs and other groups operating in Afghanistan prior to 9/11.

We are fueling the existence of a warzone.

[B2G]

31. Because it's *currently * unsafe

to send in a volunteer corps. What may or may not happen eventually doesn't alter the fact that it can't be done right now, which was the premise of this thread.

[Turborama]

38. In July 1998, the Taliban closed down "all NGO offices" by force

News articles from the time this occurred: http://www.rawa.org/agancies.htm">Foreign Workers Leave Afghanistan

---- --- ----

Relations with the United Nations and aid agencies

A major issue during the Taliban's reign was its relations with the United Nations (UN) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Twenty years of continuous warfare, first with the Soviets and then between mujahideen, had devastated Afghanistan's infrastructure and economy. There was no running water, little electricity, few telephones, motorable roads or regular energy supplies. Basic necessities like water, food and housing and others were in desperately short supply. In addition, the clan and family structure that provided Afghans with a social/economic safety net was also badly damaged. Afghanistan's infant mortality was the highest in the world. A full quarter of all children died before they reached their fifth birthday, a rate several times higher than most other developing countries.

Consequently international charitable and/or development organisations (NGOs) were extremely important to the supply of food, employment, reconstruction, and other services in Afghanistan. With one million plus deaths during the years of war, the number of families headed by widows had reached 98,000 by 1998. Thus Taliban restrictions on women were sometime a matter not only of human rights, but of life and death. In Kabul, where vast portions of the city had been devastated from rocket attacks, more than half of its 1.2 million people benefited in some way from NGO charity, even for water to drink. The civil war and its refugee-creation processes continued during the entire time the Taliban were in power. During that time, more than three-quarters of a million civilians were displaced by new Taliban offensives in the north around Mazar, on the Herat front, and in the fertile Shomali valley around Kabul. The offensives used "scorched-earth" tactics to prevent civilians from supplying the enemy with aid.

Despite the receipt of UN and NGO aid, the Taliban's attitude toward the UN and NGOs was often one of suspicion, not gratitude or even tolerance. The UN operates on the basis of international law, not Islamic Sharia, and the UN did not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Additionally, most of the foreign donors and aid workers, who had tried to persuade the Taliban to change its strict policies and allow women more freedom, were non-Muslims.

As the Taliban's Attorney General Maulvi Jalil-ullah Maulvizada put it:

Let us state what sort of education the UN wants. This is a big infidel policy which gives such obscene freedom to women which would lead to adultery and herald the destruction of Islam. In any Islamic country where adultery becomes common, that country is destroyed and enters the domination of the infidels because their men become like women and women cannot defend themselves. Anyone who talks to us should do so within Islam's framework. The Holy Koran cannot adjust itself to other people's requirements, people should adjust themselves to the requirements of the Holy Koran.

Frustrations of aid agencies were numerous. Taliban decision-makers, particularly Mullah Omar, seldom if ever talked directly to non-Muslim foreigners, so aid providers had to deal with intermediaries whose approvals and agreements were often reversed by Taliban higher-ups.<43> Around September 1997 the heads of three UN agencies in Kandahar were expelled from the country after protesting over a female lawyer for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees being forced to talk to Taliban officials from behind a curtain so her face would not be visible.

When the UN increased the number of Muslim women staff to satisfy Taliban demands for Muslim staff, the Taliban then insisted "all female Muslim UN staff traveling to Afghanistan to be chaperoned by a mahram or a blood relative." In July 1998, the Taliban closed down "all NGO offices" by force after those organization refused to move to a bombed-out former Polytechnic College as ordered. One month later the UN offices were also shut down.

As food prices rose and conditions deteriorated, the Taliban Planning Minister Qari Din Mohammed explained the Taliban's indifference to the loss of humanitarian aid:

We Muslims believe God the Almighty will feed everybody one way or another. If the foreign NGOs leave then it is their decision. We have not expelled them.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Relations_with_the_United_Nations_and_aid_agencies

[JonQ]

46. Well fine then, send the forest service then

their war time casualty rate has been negligible.

[branders seine]

19. because that's the American way

[Noseyaboutpollution]

26. Doctors and teachers would be nice...

unfortunately, it would not go as you would hope.

[Ignis]

27. Not enough profit in it for the oligarchs. (nt)

[Occulus]

30. We should send a drum corps

[Renew Deal]

34. Ever heard of David Pearl?

[closeupready]

42. No, but I've heard of Daniel Pearl.

You are referring to the WSJ journalist who was based in Karachi? What does that have to do with escalating in Afghanistan?