Palast: "Now that the sonovabitch is dead, why is the US still angry with us?"

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/17393-focus-qnow-that-the-sob-is-deadq

"Us", in this conversation, are the Taliban. The SOB in question is Osama bin Laden.

<snip>

So I figured, what the hell, let's ask an Afghan about Afghanistan's future. Maroofi, the minister into whose hands this future falls, takes a different tack entirely. He has no time for the American fixation on whether Afghans will fight the Taliban. He makes it clear that Afghans don't want to fight the Taliban at all. And the Taliban don't want to fight fellow Afghans.

But General Joe wants the Afghan army to prove its mettle in "fighting fellow Muslims and countrymen", as the Times puts it. It appears the US has a great fear that, without US boots on the ground and drones in the sky, the war will end, and with it, the Great (and very lucrative) Game.

However, it is the hope of most Afghans, and the goal of the Karzai government, not to kill Taliban, but to bring them into the government.

Or, as Maroofi explains, to recognise publicly that "the Taliban are already in the government, in the Parliament, in control of governorships" - but not openly. The talks among the frontline nations are to bring the Taliban back to its roots as a political organisation, not an armed insurgency.

<snip>

Left out of the published US reports (but something I dug out of old paper CIA files not purged from computers) was the most valuable stash of all: uranium, possibly the world's largest deposit. The Soviets secretly mined the uranium, using only imported Russian workers, until they were chased back home in 1988.

Uranium mining beats the hell out of the opium trade (which is slipping to Myanmar, anyway). The Karzai government's hope is to leave a path to wealth as its legacy, but that wealth can't be dug out until the soil above is free of land-mines and maniacs.

Chinese state companies are lining up in Kabul with shovels and signing bonuses. Maroofi likes Chinese companies - they're more likely to provide jobs than baksheesh. Unlike Western companies.

Chinese state companies are lining up in Kabul with shovels and signing bonuses. Maroofi likes Chinese companies - they're more likely to provide jobs than baksheesh. Unlike Western companies.

[derby378]

1. That crumbling sound you hear is the increasingly fragile status of women in Afghanistan

Would the Chinese make any of those jobs available to women under a new Taliban regime?

[Egalitarian Thug]

2. Young or old, male or female, the Chinese are happy to work anybody to death so it's

up to the Afghans themselves.

[eridani]

3. You are suggesting that it's possible to bomb them into liberation?

If that works so well, why haven't we tried it in Saudi Arabia?

[Scuba]

4. You really think Republicans want to continue a war so as to protect women's rights?

Bwwwwaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaa.

[derby378]

6. Those are your words, not mine

[kelliekat44]

5. Remember, the status of women in Iraq and Lybia was pretty good until the US toppled their leaders.

Women were educated, held high level jobs, were scientists, could drive etc...but the media here would never give this impression. Now the lives of women and children in both these countries are most miserable. And we can't wait to do the same thing to Iran. As long as foreign soldiers on their lands the Taliban will really tough on women...the strictness is, in their minds, designed to "protect them from the infidels." Everywhere the US military has invaded the women and children have suffered the most. When the military leaves and we are no longer on a war footing with a country, the women become more free and the children are safer. Check out history. Viet Nam for one example.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

7. I think your idea of "pretty good" needs some work.

Try "appalling and disgusting" or "far worse than in all Western, and practically all non-Muslim countries" and you might be closer.

"As long as foreign soldiers on their lands the Taliban will really tough on women...the strictness is, in their minds, designed to "protect them from the infidels.""

They were "tough on women" before the American invasion and they will be "tough on women" after the Americans leave; they believe that their religion requires them to be. When America leaves Iran the Taliban influence will spread, and women will become less free. That's not a sufficient justification for America to stay there, but we should be honest about the downsides of withdrawal.