How many Afghans caused any harm to the US? If you know the answer and still support the massacre

[ConsAreLiars]

of the people of that poor country, how do you justify that? The candidates of both parties seem to want to keep the invasion and occupation going, even intensified. Do you want to continue that slaughter? What do you hope to accomplish? What good will come from that?

[EFerrari]

1. This whole flap about who has enough experience to continue

this insane policy is in itself insane.

[Solly Mack]

2. What you said and said so well.

[provis99]

3. I suppose we can pull out and watch the Afghans slaughter each other?

[EFerrari]

4. Because they die so much better when we kill them?

Afghanistan is not Iraq. There is no civil war there. There is a struggle among tribes as to who will control territory. But the fight isn't ideological.

[TomInTib]

5. It's total crap, all about footprint.

Those people are suffering because of a plan drawn up in a boardroom in Houston.

[EFerrari]

6. Exactly. n/t

[ConsAreLiars]

7. So you think that without the benevolent masters killing them they would all kill each other?

Any evidence? You might want to learn a bit of history. The internal conflicts began when Carter/Brzezinski/Reagan began promoting and arming a theocratic dominionist cult. As a tribal society they have loyalties, but, unlike your leaders, no drive to conquer and murder for profit, instead exacting retribution only for "two eyes for an eye" justice.

The idea that the US military was sent to invade and occupy Afghanistan as some sort of humanitarian project is as laughable as it is ignorant. Even the warmongers never put up such a silly rationale.

[L. Coyote]

23. That is a R talking point borrowed from Iraq. It is a false assumption.

And, the fact that they were slaughtering each other was a huge asset to the US because they simple aligned with one faction. Not that that is a good thing, but we entered a civil war and need to recognize the fact that this was a nation with a civil war before the U.S. invaded and overthrew the government.

[izzie]

8. I do not see either war as a smart move.

Take out the training camp and we should have been done with it. The other stuff is about oil, I think. I never thought the first war was a smart move with father Bush. Just why do we back all these autocrats any how? OIL and Cuba? Who knows about Cuba. We have treated them bad. Pretty crazy stuff. Cold War is gone but I guess the same old ways will live on and on. We do always drag our history with us. Do I have hope we will? Maybe if enough voters want to do it. Change will come but it maybe slow. Having been around so long I will say it is not the world I was born into. I think it is a lot better and we could do even better. I guess we will have these 1920 and 1930 wars.

[SquireJons]

9. How many does it take?

The Taliban was bad for Afghanistan and it's people, bad for the region, and bad for the world, period. They were not even Afghani's but arabs, so they were an invading, occupying force, sponsored by the Pakistani secret police. Under the Taliban, Al Quiada training camps grew like poppies in Afghanistan and sowed the seeds of chaos where ever they chose.

So yes, as a Democrat and a pacifist, I fully supported the CIA's plan to use the Northern Alliance to oust the Taliban. But...there is no such thing as nation building in Afghanistan. We've tried it, so did the Russians and the British... and even Alexander the Great. All have failed miserably. Let the thugs that will keep the terrorist training camps out of the country take control. Pay them off and lets go home. With our money and weapons, the Northern Alliance can handle Al Quiada.

[ConsAreLiars]

16. Your history is inaccurate. The CIA brought the Taliban into power, .

supported and armed them with the assistance of their counterparts in Pakistan, the ISI. The Taliban are not Arabs, but based in the Pushtun tribal regions. The CIA was also allied with and facilitated the foreign jihadis who came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya and so on.

[SquireJons]

25. That's not tue

For a complete look at the Taliban and how they were defeated, check out Frontline's web site. The Muhajedine were the ones that we helped in the early 80's and they were largely Afghani's fighting the Russians. But the ruling government that was the Taliban was not Afghani, but Arab. They did allow the Al Quiada training camps and they did bomb those ancient rock carvings, and those two things alone are enough for me.

[ConsAreLiars]

27. If you wish to become better informed on this, there is an excellent summary of the history

of the Taliban on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban

Three pertinent paragraphs:

The Taliban (Pashto: طالبان - ṭālibān, also anglicised as Taleban) are a Sunni Islamist and Pashtun nationalist movement<2> that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, when their leaders were removed from power by a cooperative military effort between the Northern Alliance and NATO countries. Committed fundamentalist insurgents, often described as "Taliban" in the media, originating<3> in the Frontier Tribal Areas of Pakistan, are currently engaged in a protracted guerrilla war against the current government of Afghanistan, allied NATO forces participating in Operation Enduring Freedom, and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.<4>

...

Though there is no evidence that the CIA directly supported the Taliban or Al Qaeda, some basis for military support of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Agency) provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets. Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing training camps for the foreign Muslim volunteers. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan and "by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war".<15>

The Taliban were based in the Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan regions, and were overwhelmingly ethnic Pashtuns and predominantly Durrani Pashtuns. They received training and arms from Pakistan, the U.S. as well as other Middle Eastern countries who had been recruited by the U.S. to thwart the Soviet invasion of this region.

[Djinn]

20. easy for you to support it

seeing as you didn't have to live with the brutality of the Northern Alliance. Women pack raped by NA "troops" (who btw where every bit as misogynistic and fundie as the Taliban) tend to disagree when asked if funding them was a great idea.

RAWA has plenty of accessible information which might (hopefully) change your mind about the wisdom of Brzezinski's Afghan trap

[SquireJons]

26. The Northern Alliance

I'm not saying that "they are the moral equivalent of our founding fathers." That was supposed to be the contra's. I said that they are thugs (and drug pushers and rapists, I know). I also said to give then money and guns and lets go home. If the Taliban had not been worse, then I would still be against the Northern Alliance, but at least they (the NA) don't mortar ancient rock carvings and export terror. With the NA running the show, it would be time to go home. Right now, no one is in charge.

[KG]

10. How many Iraqis caused any harm to the US?

your questions apply equally to Iraq also.

[ConsAreLiars]

19. Almost exactly the same. The invasions were NOT a reaction to any harm done to US by

citizens or the government of either country. The invasions were driven by a strategy intended to achieve global hegemony through overwhelming military force. There are differences between the two, of course, notably that bin Laden and his operation were located in Afghanistan (thanks to CIA support). But the PNAC monsters refused to agree to have him extradited, since their psychopathic delusions of being masters of the universe saw invasion and occupation as a better option.

(edit grammar)

[Djinn]

21. of course it could

it could also be applied to the people of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Indonesia, Timor, El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Palestine etc etc

[fed-up]

11. are you suggesting poppy production increase ($$$ 4 guns) since invasion is bad thing? sarcasm nt

[ThomWV]

12. Every Poppy farmer contributes to the misery, poverty, and crime in this country

But aside from the opium trade I agree.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

13. The poppy production has soared and not for one second do I believe that's an accident.

Who has been historically in the drug trade?

[EFerrari]

14. This time, it was a form of payment from us to the Northern Alliance.

When they reintroduced the crop, we looked away.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

15. I don't think

that we have looked away. I believe that the same group that ran drugs during Iran-Contra are also involved with the trafficking of the poppies.

[EFerrari]

24. You may have something there.

I've often wondered if they ever really stopped. Probably not.

[RedCappedBandit]

17. Only because our laws make it so.

[ConsAreLiars]

18. The opium trade was relatively insignificat before the US intervention.

I am also of the belief that the way US society handles addiction is the source of that misery. The farmers don't push opiates onto people in other countries - that part is done by the market systems in those countries, legal and otherwise.

[Djinn]

22. it is a bit rich

for bourgeoisie westerners to blame piss poor Afghan farmers when their little spoilt brats end up junkies.

We deliberately keep half the globe poor in order to prop up our unsustainable standard of living and then want to obliterate the only crop that's worth anything (because farmers aren't competing with heavily subsidized western growers) because some of us have no sense of moderation.