Afghanistan: Eight Years and Counting- END THE WAR

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Afghanistan: Eight Years and Counting

By Dennis Loo
October 6, 2009

Editor’s Note: At the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, more and more Americans are questioning why the United States is still fighting this war – and asking whether there is any end in sight for this bloody occupation.

In this guest essay, sociology professor Dennis Loo expresses the view of this emerging majority, in favor of ending the war:

Eight years ago, on Oct. 7, 2001, the U.S. launched a war upon Afghanistan.

What have eight years of war and occupation accomplished?

Government corruption is so rife and pervasive that even the U.S. State Department has condemned it. The recent elections are still being contested because of massive fraud. War and drug lords are part of the government.

Afghanistan is near the worst in the world in poverty rates, life expectancy, unemployment, child mortality, and lack of human rights. It remains, however, number one in opium production.

Thousands of Afghans have been killed and millions continue to be refugees – either within Afghanistan or driven to other nations. Large gatherings of people, including wedding and dinner parties, are considered legitimate targets by the US military for bombing.

The results of this are predictable: Afghan anger and growing rage at the U.S.

Eight years of war and occupation and what do we see?

The Afghan economy is shattered. Women remain oppressed, as they were under the Taliban. This year President Hamid Karzai signed a law that requires Shi’ite women to obtain their husband’s permission to go to school, visit a doctor, go to work, and other ordinary activities.

...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2009/100509b.html

[FiveGoodMen]

1. K&R!

[blindpig]

2. Bring them all home

bring them all home now.

k&r

[Don Caballero]

3. Taliban and Al Qaeda will never end the war

Even if we left AfPak the war would continue. The militants of the region want to kill as many Americans as possible. Even if we left they would continue the war. President Obama understands that this is a war of ideology, not technology.

[pansypoo53219]

4. no,

georgee effed it up after the 1st. we have to kick out karzai and do this right. make it too hard to survive in afghanistan. r do we have another 9/11 in 30? 15? 5 years?

[blindpig]

8. "we have to kick out Karzai"

Spoken like a true neo-colonialist. Hah! So much for democracy. The stench of Viet Nam rises to heaven...

Got any dominos?

[TBF]

5. K&R nt

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

6. Naw

Leaving would recreate the bastion for radical Islam that Afghanistan was in the 1990s. Doesn't really seem like the wisest move, especially when other options haven't been tried yet.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

7. So

you swallowed the propaganda?

Please review Afghani history.

[TBF]

10. "Bastion for radical islam" - you mean Osama right.

OG is correct - read your history. Don't skip the part about Osama being on our payroll. What "other options" would you like to see? Maybe Afghanistan could be our 51st state.

[Stinky The Clown]

9. I couldn't agree more

K&R to keep this post on the greatest page against the inevitable onslaught by the apologists.

[BrklynLiberal]

11. This is what Gordon Goldstein says in this interview..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6719321&mesg_id=6719321

[robdogbucky]

12. Aside from the cost of both Afghan and US lives

There is the monetary cost.

At this rate for the two wars, with the one now escalating to keep pace with the other one that was supposed to wind down, we have the following:

I trust everyone has seen this?
http://costofwar.com/

Not to mention the history of the ages in regard to Afghanistan. Who are we, the most arrogant, most foolish idjits in the history of this mortal coil?

I repeat:

“...In 1900, Abdur Rahman Khan (the "Iron Amir"), after twenty years of rule, looked at the events of the past century and wondered how his country, which stood "like a Lion between these Hypocrites (Britain and Tsarist Russia) or a King between two Hypocrite ministers, stand in the midway of the stones without being ground to dust?" Islam played perhaps the key role in the formation of Afghanistan's society. Despite the early thirteenth century Mongol invasion of what is today Afghanistan—which has been described as resembling "more some brute cataclysm of the blind forces of nature than a phenomenon of human history," even a warrior as formidable as Genghis Khan did not uproot Islamic civilization; within two generations, his heirs had become Muslims.

“...By 642 AD, Arabs had conquered Persia and invaded Afghanistan from the west, introducing Islam. Afghanistan at the time had local rulers called the Shahi, which were under the influence of the empire of Tang China, which had extended its influence all the way to Kabul. The Khorasani Persian-Arabs controlled the western and northern areas until they were conquered by the Ghaznavid Empire in 998...”

Mongol conquest (1200-1500); Post-Mongol divisions (1500-1700); Hotaki dynasty (1709-1736); Durrani Empire (1747-1818); European influence in Afghanistan (1826-1919); Reforms of Amanullah Khan and civil war (1919-1929); Reigns of Nadir Shah and Zahir Shah (1929-1973); Daoud's Republic of Afghanistan (1973-1978); Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (1978-1979); Soviet intervention (1979-1992)

...After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Najibullah government was overthrown on April 18, 1992 when Abdul Rashid Dostum mutinied, and allied himself with Ahmed Shah Massoud, to take control of Kabul and declare the Islamic State of Afghanistan. When the victorious mujahideen entered Kabul to assume control over the city and the central government, internecine fighting began between the various militias, which had coexisted only uneasily during the Soviet occupation. With the demise of their common enemy, the militias' ethnic, clan, religious, and personality differences surfaced, and civil war continued...”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan


Leave now!


Just my dos centavos

robdogbucky

[RyboSlybo]

13. No War For Oil!

Wrong war you say?

We are there to catch Bin laden?

We are there to stop the Taliban?

We are there for payback for 911?

Ah yes, that sounds all good and sugar coated for the American public but if you don't know what I am talking about run a web search on "trans-Afghanistan pipeline" you will find this has been in the works long before 911...