I notice our justifications for this war are morphing just like the excuses for Iraq did…we went to Afghanistan to find OBL, shut down Al-qaeda training camps, and to seek (misguided) revenge for 9/11. Now we’re there because the region is unstable….means to an end.
That is the mission. OBL is still missing. Afghanistan was headed by the Taliban, a regime that made the country fair game for terrorist training camps. The goal was to shut down training camps, get Bin Laden, and get rid of the Taliban in favor of a legitimate government like the one Afghanistan had before they got caught between the US and Russia and had their country destroyed by it.
Unfortunately, Dubya decided to invade Iraq to boost his poll numbers and all of this was forgotten. In the meantime, the country's feeble steps towards self-government degenerated into a bunch of warlords tearing up the country. So now we're stepping up our troops to help finish what we were supposed to do years ago... keep the warlords in check until the government gets off the ground and can hold it together.
I don't know how much of this you support. you've basically written the party line, so thanks for a straight answer.
Driftin summarized my view on the Bin Laden hunt....we'll never find him, I'd put money on it.
I would be willing to support some kind of international force to keep the Taliban's imposition of sharia law in check, and to keep them from doing their part in the further destabilization of Pakistan. But we can't pretend that our presence in Afghanistan has nothing to do with Pakistans' turmoil. And we can't pretend that we can be finished in Afghanistan, with stable government in even a few years. Can stability in Afghanistan be achieved by a Western-backed government? I have my doubts.
everyone keeps talking about how the Taliban's influence is spreading, their power is growing etc....how? We've been fighting them for YEARS. The only explanations are that they have a lot of fresh recruits, foreign funding, or both. If they have fresh recruits, it's likely people that have been pushed to extremism by the occupation. If it's foreign funding....well, hello....this exact situation was a huge part of how the US brought the USSR to her knees, remember?
It's never ending. I don't know how people keep getting caught up in the justifications. This is a continuation of imperialism that's been going on for decades. Spreading democracy, liberating the people, changing regimes, whatever the term du jour is.... We obviously didn't learn much from the last couple of times we played cowboy politics in the region...we essentially created the organizations we're fighting now. Who knows what future ramifications await us after this clusterfuck.
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I don't know how much of this you support. you've basically written the party line, so thanks for a straight answer.
Driftin summarized my view on the Bin Laden hunt....we'll never find him, I'd put money on it.
I would be willing to support some kind of international force to keep the Taliban's imposition of sharia law in check, and to keep them from doing their part in the further destabilization of Pakistan. But we can't pretend that our presence in Afghanistan has nothing to do with Pakistans' turmoil. And we can't pretend that we can be finished in Afghanistan, with stable government in even a few years. Can stability in Afghanistan be achieved by a Western-backed government? I have my doubts.
everyone keeps talking about how the Taliban's influence is spreading, their power is growing etc....how? We've been fighting them for YEARS. The only explanations are that they have a lot of fresh recruits, foreign funding, or both. If they have fresh recruits, it's likely people that have been pushed to extremism by the occupation. If it's foreign funding....well, hello....this exact situation was a huge part of how the US brought the USSR to her knees, remember?
It's never ending. I don't know how people keep getting caught up in the justifications. This is a continuation of imperialism that's been going on for decades. Spreading democracy, liberating the people, changing regimes, whatever the term du jour is.... We obviously didn't learn much from the last couple of times we played cowboy politics in the region...we essentially created the organizations we're fighting now. Who knows what future ramifications await us after this clusterfuck.