Afghanistan............WHY ??

[lwien]

Ok, so we hear just about every politician including past and present Presidents that the reason why we are there is to prevent another terrorist attack.

Huh?

Makes no fucking sense. Terrorists don't need a whole fucking country to plan and carry out a terrorist attack. It can be done in a one bedroom apartment in Pasadena, for Christs sake.

Not only that, but if you REALLY think that it does take a country to plan out attacks, then you shut down Afghanistan, and they move to Yemen. Shut down Yeman, and they move to Libya. Shut down Libya and they'll move to Somalia, and so on, and so on, and so on, It's like a game of Wackamole.

Every time I hear someone state a reason why we should be there, I just have to shake my head and ask, "Does anyone really believe this shit?"

I remember watching when we were carpet bombing the mountains at the very beginning of that war. I was like.........WTF? All they're doing is blowing up rocks.

I know this is kind of beating a dead horse, but man, some of this stupidity just boggles the mind.

Doesn't it make more sense to fight this terrorist threat with clandestine operations such as the one that took out Bin Laden along with whatever preventative measures that we can take within our own boarders?
Full scale military operations seems totally ineffective for dealing with something like this, but hey, it's what makes us who we are, right, so we might as well use it.

 

[Purple-Days]

The reason we are there, is to 'find a reasonable conclusion to this conflict'... as oposssed to . . . winning.

Won't it be sad, to be the last soldier to die in one of these 'conflicts'? What for? Aren't we still involved in the Korean Conflict?


This is a poem that has stayed with me a long while. It's about a Civil War Soldier.

By: Edgar Lee Masters


Knowlt Hoheimer

I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
When I felt the bullet enter my heart
I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
Instead of running away and joining the army,
Rather a thousand times the county jail
Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,
And this granite pedestal
Bearing the words 'Pro Patria.'
What do they mean, anyway?


In case you can't translate Latin, they mean, "For One's Country"

BTW I am a Veteran and flew the American Flag proudly yesterday.

 

[VWFringe]

I think politics has something to do with it, fear of alienating potential voters.
It's been proven & they know they're creating more terrorism than they are resolving.

I do not agree that war is what we are, I believe the elites who rule us believe it, and get us to go along with it, but the only way they've been able to recruit people into the armed forces is with SPIN, heavy spin.

I think military conflict is destined to failure ultimately, killing all those civilians at road stops can't generate any good will.

I've heard they have standard operating proceedures, which we know include saying things to the public that don't jibe with the real world, but this troubles me...the idea that they do a kind of scortched earth policy while pulling out of any conflict...by going around and killing thousands of civilians who "may" be opposed to the regime they've installed. I don't know if that's happening, but it's been written about in other conflicts in recent history. Sucks that they paint us this way to the world, but luckily the world seems to know it's not us, just our government.

 

[Purple-Days]

VW, you may get this... I haven't said it out loud much, but after President Obama's election and before swearing in, I told Pammy they would show him "THE BIG BOOK"... ie. it's a big machine and has a momentum of it's own. You say, "just our government" . . . that's us, or have we lost that?

 

[VWFringe]

VW, you may get this... I haven't said it out loud much, but after President Obama's election and before swearing in, I told Pammy they would show him "THE BIG BOOK"... ie. it's a big machine and has a momentum of it's own. You say, "just our government" . . . that's us, or have we lost that?

I think we've lost it...they feed us the same candidates over and over, we don't get to choose them, only pick among their choices, which are always the same (except for their stance on abortion). So we get distracted by the media, and forget we shouldn't trust them, either of them.

I often wonder how that BIG BOOK works.

 

[Purple-Days]

Me too, brother ???

I sometimes think it works to keep the powerful powerful. On either side.

I think the electorate may finally get pissed...

Heard a comment, from a prominent commenter today, he pondered what was on the other side of a debt crisis... said, maybe they have cried wolf too many times, about too many things. Korean Conflict, Cuban Conflict, Viet Conflict, War on Poverty, War on Drugs, Grenada Conflict, Libya openly blows an airliner... no problem... oil is $100 that bastard has to go... but it's just a conflict, not a War.

 

[VWFringe]

well, they've got most of us pretty convinced they're taking good care of things, that's all that counts (to the people watching TV and the politicians who count on it's influence)

 

[Plotinus]

I don't agree that the candidates are all the same. The president is a good example. He was never meant to win the 2008 election...any 'elite' of any consequence had his money on another Clinton.

I do think it's true that there is a corrupting influence on any sitting president, though, no matter how "outside" he once was - and I think the current president is no exception.

lwien, I think the (original) Afghanistan issue wasn't a matter of stopping individual terrorists, but of disrupting a large network of terrorists and their support infrastructure that had been allowed to grow up in Afghanistan. It is true that a person can do a lot from an apartment - but Afghanistan was playing host to entire training camps full of terrorists-to-be. That's mayhem on a different scale. Not to mention that Afghanistan had become a hub for the transfer of money, goods, and information that was being fed into terror networks.

However, I agree with your second point. Launching a war against Afghanistan doesn't eliminate the problem, it just shifts it elsewhere. At best it dismantles a given terror network, allowing us all some reprieve from a particular group of lunatics. But our experiences in the past decade ought to have taught us that terrorism is an organic phenomenon that can't be bombed out of existence. The 'balloon' theory that is so true of the drug war applies here as well: squeeze the balloon in one place, it only expands elsewhere.

 

[lwien]

The 'balloon' theory that is so true of the drug war applies here as well: squeeze the balloon in one place, it only expands elsewhere.

GREAT analogy.

 

[aesthyrian]

Most likely the same reason we didn't want the Soviets to stay there.. http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/14/us-afghanistan-minerals-idUSTRE65D0OH20100614

that was officially announced last year, but the government has known of it since the Soviet/Afghanistan conflict in the late 70's and early 80's.

My biggest fear is that even if we do completely pull out from all military conflicts, we have TONS of private military contractors running around doing everything from building KFC's in bases, to transporting kitchen supplies, to full scale escorting of high ranking officials through busy streets with giant guns mounted on the vehicle and no accountability. I fear that they will remain, and they cost way more than our actual Military, and make us look like complete jackasses.

 

[lwien]

^^ Yeah. China is mining copper big time in Afghanistan, and they have spent ZERO dollars in any military action there. Pretty smart, eh?

 

[Vapemania-original]

There is no news to show that China has started any copper mining, although they have won the contract.
Mes Aynak, where all the copper is, is still full of insurgents apparently.
The best time to buy a copper mine is when the country owning the land is at war.
If Afghanistan wasn't at war, then they may have charged much more for the mine.

And if China offer cash up front, when Afghanistan desperately needs the money, then the mine can be bought even cheaper ($3.5 bn) .

The Chinese are an empire that have lasted thousands of years.
This is how a mature empire thinks.

America is also in Afghanistan.
It's generating greater investment in its military due to the war.
Which is good if you want a strong military.
And it's securing access to Middle Eastern oil.

This is how a new empire thinks.
The only difference is, China has not lost lives and is not vulnerable to criticism by the world, including Al Qaeda.

 

[VWFringe]

deleted - got confused with Iraq

 

[pakalolo]

VW, you may get this... I haven't said it out loud much, but after President Obama's election and before swearing in, I told Pammy they would show him "THE BIG BOOK"... ie. it's a big machine and has a momentum of it's own. You say, "just our government" . . . that's us, or have we lost that?

I don't believe they needed to. I have always been of the opinion that Obama is just another creature of the keepers of THE BIG BOOK. Almost everything he has done since getting elected has simply reinforced my opinion. As much as I despised Bush & Co., they were at least up front about what they were doing: "We're going to fuck you and you just have to take it." Obama convinced the majority that he was different, but once he was elected he fucked everyone while lying about what he was doing. (Health care "reform" anyone?) That's far worse in my opinion.

 

[VWFringe]

A different and perhaps more accurate picture of the big book...

Manuel Zelaya Discusses the WikiLeaks Cables About the U.S. Ties to the Honduran Military CoupLINK