Dem congressman: Afghanistan conflict 'not a winnable war'

[kpete]

Source: The Hill

Dem congressman: Afghanistan conflict 'not a winnable war'
By Shane D'Aprile - 12/04/10 10:21 AM ET

...................

In an appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, the Democrat said the war is costing the U.S. far too much and the military effort is misdirected at best.

"The problem is this is not a winnable war, Chris," Moran said. "Even our combatant commanders know that we can't win this militarily."

Moran warned that while a Republican-led Congress may continue to support the president's current path in Afghanistan, Obama has "a political problem at home."

.................

"I'm saying that we can't win it militarily," Moran said. "We can't capture or kill or convert enough young people in the Afghan population from siding with the Taliban because we're backing a government that is inherently corrupt, that doesn't relate to the people, that doesn't deserve the people's respect and is unsustainable."

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/131985-dem-congressman-afghanistan-not-a-winnable-war

[mbperrin]

1. Well, no duh! What was your first clue? Collapse of Alexander?

British Empire over? Soviet Union collapse? That whole "Graveyard of Empires" nickname?

The point for this country's action is corporate profit, of course. Winning is irrelevant. How long can we convince taxpayers to line the pockets of war merchants with profits far greater than doing things like growing food, treating medical conditions, or educating people?

[sakabatou]

2. +1

[saigon68]

44. Hey Nice War Obama

It's all yours !!!!!

Here come a few thousand more Gold Star Mothers

[Michigan-Arizona]

3. Thank you well stated n/t

[elehhhhna]

9. LOL - this was "LBN" like 200 years ago...

or more.

[Odin2005]

17. Dobn't forget Cyrus the Great, he was killed whine fighting there.

[mbperrin]

19. I also forgot that Genghis Khan had to make a deal with the Afghans,

since he couldn't beat them. Thanks for the addition!

[corkhead]

4. Corkhead DU Poster: "Water is wet"

[Mhak]

5. We're not trying to win it militarily...

I'm honestly getting tired of hearing this. You guys think the American military doesn't know that we can't beat an insurgency with conventional, and even unconventional, warfare? You think we haven't learned our lesson from the Philippines, Vietnam, and watching Britain and Russia in Afghanistan?

The inevitable question to follow - well then what are we doing here? We're building roads. We're building infrastructure. We're rallying NATO countries to send in civilians to teach about medicine, basic education, basic local governance. The terrorists and insurgents have a great recruiting tool they use where they present 2 choices to youngsters - live in squalor, or pick up a weapon and fight for a better life. It's not an accurate or fair representation of the choices the young men over their have, and it's not fair to blame America, but it works and that's why there are so many insurgents.

American and allied forces are working, more than anything else, to give the people there a 3rd choice - just live a decent life. Get a fair-paying job, feed and clothe your children, get educated so you know your REAL options in life. That's what's going on in Afghanistan, because if roads can be built, if people can be educated, and a third choice can be given to the kids raised as farmers who previously had nothing to look forward to in life, then their odds of picking up an AK-47 and attacking anybody goes down drastically. And we still have American troops over there with guns because the TALIBAN WANTS NONE OF THIS TO HAPPEN, BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY WILL LOSE THEIR TOTALITARIAN, UNHUMAN GRIP ON POWER IF IT HAPPENS. Insurgent forces NEED people to not be educated, they NEED people to live in squalor, otherwise they wont get any recruits anymore. That is the root of the problem, and that is what we're doing in Afghanistan.

Take it from somebody who was there. It's not America oppressing a poor country and just shooting a bunch of teenagers because that's what we think is best. There are sheep on both sides of the isle. I'm a proud liberal democrat, telling you all - don't be sheep here. Learn the facts. There's still plenty to be angry about, even on this very issue. But think first. Please.

[bahrbearian]

7. Mean While

at home our roads , medicine, basic education, crumble.

[elehhhhna]

10. Plus we're forcing National HC on them. Wow big punishment, right?

If we really wanted them on their knees we'd force Cigna and United "Healthcare" (lol) on them, pronto.

[jtuck004]

13. +1

[Mhak]

11. Completely fair retort.

But few Americans fly planes into buildings because of it.

The middle-east, Afghanistan especially, is a great place to draw terrorist recruits from because of a lack of education and life quality. If that's fixed, maybe less terrorists would want to Jihad people they don't know, and maybe these ridiculous airport security measures won't be necessary. That is the approach to the problem in Afghanistan, and I get so disheartened when I hear people think it's just a bunch of shooting going on. There's a lot of shooting, but only because there are people who don't want the citizens there getting educated or living a better life, because then those people won't want to blindly Jihad everything anymore.

[bahrbearian]

16. There were no Afghani's or Iraq's on those planes 9-11

We need to Identify our real enemy's.

[midnight]

23. Indeed....

[jmowreader]

41. Iraq and Afghanistan are two different wars

We went to war against Afghanistan for good reasons: (1) the Taliban were harboring al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, giving them support and protection. and (2) The Taliban really, really needed to be run off--remember their fun little Catch-22 interpretation of the Koran that said (a) women could only go to female doctors but since (b) the Koran forbids women from working outside the home, female Afghanis couldn't receive medical care? Or when they kicked all the girls out of school because they couldn't be taught by male teachers but no female teachers were allowed to work? Yeah, they needed to fucking go, and since they'd helped out Osama's forces it was only fair to go in and get rid of them. The problem is, once we got rid of the fucking Taliban we then proceeded to install the most corrupt people in Afghanistan as Our Chosen Government. Which, of course, brought the Taliban back.

Iraq? We went to war there because George Bush's oil was under Saddam's sand.

[frylock]

18. one of the most ignorant posts i've seen here..

how many afghani's participated in the attacks on 911? how much money did afghanistan contribute to the mission? what training, aside from the famed "monkeybar" video we've all seen, did the participants recieve in afghanistan? how much training did they receive in the US? how do you convince people to not "blindly Jihad" by using drones?

[Mhak]

22. Ugh, I didn't mean to imply there were Afghanis on the plane on 9/11

I was referring to the fact that while many Americans are still living in poor conditions and not educated, they don't kill other Americans in the name of Jihad because of it. I was paraphrasing how Americans don't launch terrorist attacks as an indirect result of poor living conditions, while other people do. 9/11 was the scenario I used to illustrate that, and I think you know that and just wanted to pick the words apart.

Here's a question for you - why did NATO and the UN consider America sending troops into Afghanistan right after 9/11 as legitimate self-defense? Can you count off all the times the UNSC has agreed on something on one hand? Do you enjoy asking lots of rhetorical questions that have no single empirical answer thinking they win you arguments? Take a step back for a second and realize you're not dealing with a right-wing thrall and don't have to pick my words apart and be a dick about it.

I didn't want to go to Afghanistan and I still wish we weren't there. Also, I wish extremists weren't using Afghanistan and dozens of other countries with terrible living conditions as recruiting grounds for their efforts to kill innocent civilians all across the world, Americans included. But what I wish doesn't coincide with reality, and sir, there ARE terrorists recruiting kids in Afghanistan. There WERE training camps in Afghanistan, and there were multiple very large operations to destroy those training camps which are not confidential and which you can find all about by reading any open source timeline of military operations in Afghanistan.

[tpsbmam]

31. No, Americans don't kill each other via jihad -- don't need to. The powers that be kill far more

with denial of healthcare, low wages, poor educations, staggering costs of medications, high costs of services THEY provide....and on and on. How many people were killed on 9/11? Now, how many die annually just because of lack of health insurance? How many more will die because we spent all of this fucking money on wars and to the detriment of our own economy, leaving people jobless and more and more living in poverty and homeless? Now tell me convincingly why the hell we need to be spending that money OVER THERE when we need it so badly here? And tell me convincingly why the small numbers of people who have been and will be killed by jihad is more important than the millions who will be killed by our own corporatocracy?

[JDPriestly]

35. Don't be so certain, Mhak

. . . . while many Americans are still living in poor conditions and not educated, they don't kill other Americans . . . . I used to work for a homeless shelter.

Further, just the other day I got into an elevator with a couple of very desperate men who were quite threatening. They suggested (in much stronger language) that people of my race should not get on the elevator with them because they were angry about the political and economic situation and they were homeless and something to the effect that people were going to rise up.

Nothing happened to me. Having worked with a shelter for a number of years I knew how to handle myself. But don't be so certain. Poverty does not cause people to be violent. But poverty is frustrating and can cause a person to become very angry. It is just one step from extreme anger to violence. And when masses of people are angry, violence can really get out of hand.

I lived through the race riots of the 1960s and the LA riots in the early 1990s. (I think it was 1992.) Sorry, but Americans can become very violent. And if you think about the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing, it isn't just Muslims or African-Americans who can become frustrated and violent. Don't be so certain, Mhak.

I don't want to scare people or incite violence but if you study the history prior to the French Revolution, you can see a lot of parallels -- especially with the issue about taxing the rich. The French monarchy refused to require the rich to pay a just share of taxes, leaving the middle class to bear that burden and the poor to go hungry and lose their rights to their harvests and the fruit of their labor. We must remember how that ended and not make the same mistakes.

[soryang]

12. It's the old "White man's burden"

We're here killing you peasants because we want to help you!

[elehhhhna]

15. This begs the questions:

THAT'S why we invaded and occupy them? If so, when do we invade the other 100 shitty countries on the planet for their own good? And, of course, WHO THE F DO WE THINK WE ARE? Geez. We're so together we can make war on less-together people so as to "help" them?

You're kidding, right?

[Mhak]

26. No, that's not why we invaded.

We put troops in Afghanistan and actually a lot of other countries right after 9/11 as purely a reactionary measure. There were people responsible for that attack still alive, and still wanting to continue to create operations to kill innocent people, Americans included. Some of them were in Afghanistan, Bin Laden included, and there were multiple attempts and missed opportunities to get him before he left the country. Not one of our finer hours, but we were still there for a legitimate reason. Initially.

We killed a lot of bad guys in Afghanistan. The Taliban had an iron grip on the country and cooperated with extremist terrorist groups because they have the same extreme ideology. Most Afghanis did NOT want to live under Taliban rule. It took a few years of dirty fighting but we finally nearly completely eradicated the Taliban's and other extremist influence in the area by around 2006/early 2007. It was at this point where I think we should have left, and I say this after 3 rotations there as an infantryman. Some people argue that if we had left then, everything would have just returned to the way it was before. I disagree, but people like me lost the argument, and that's why you see "nation building" going on now - to try and prevent things from going back to the way they were.

I could write you a damn novel about Afghanistan, operations there in 2001/2002, situations that if America had just acted a *tiny* bit differently would have made Afghanistan a hands-down victory before 2003. But to summarize - Iraq was a war of choice (one that, unfortunately and truly, is entirely about energy security for America and preventing Russia from coming into Iraq. Story for another time), but Afghanistan was a war of necessity. Initially, not any more. If we didn't react to 9/11 and hunt down and disrupt and kill as many of the people in charge of that as we did, and we did get a lot of them, they would have been victorious and just attacked America again and again and again and again. There has been no successful terrorist attacks on America since 9/11 for a reason.

[No Elephants]

42. I use a lot of sarcasm, so maybe I should make it clear I'm not being sarcastic:

If, as you say, you indeed could write a book, you should.

[Javaman]

48. We are never leaving Afghanistan...

Here is why:

Afghanistan finds new oil deposits

Oilfield with an estimated 1.8 billion barrels found, Afghan ministry of mines says.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/08/20108159431776396.html

An oilfield with an estimated 1.8 billion barrels has been discovered in the north of Afghanistan, the country's ministry of mines has said.

The discovery of the deposit between northern Balkh and Shiberghan provinces was made after a survey conducted by Afghan and international geologists, a spokesman for the ministry of mines told Reuters news agency.

"I do not know its price in the market but the initial survey says there are 1.8 billion barrels of oil and I think there will be more than what is estimated," Jawad Omar said on Sunday.

(one doesn't "suddenly" find oil. The US knew that there were untapped reserves in Afghanistan. They have been wanting to get their hands on it for years. )

Then there has been this...

Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline

Afghanistan Pipeline (TAP or TAPI) is a proposed natural gas pipeline being developed by the Asian Development Bank.<1><2><3> The pipeline will transport Caspian Sea natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan and then to India. The abbreviation comes from the first letters of those countries. Proponents of the project see it as a modern continuation of the Silk Road. The Afghan government is expected to receive 8% of the project's revenue.

>snip<

The new deal on the pipeline was signed on 27 December 2002 by the leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.<4> In 2005, the Asian Development Bank submitted the final version of a feasibility study designed by British company Penspen. ‘Since the US-led offensive that ousted the Taliban from power,’ reported Forbes in 2005, "the project has been revived and drawn strong US support" as it would allow the Central Asian republics to export energy to Western markets "without relying on Russian routes".

(wars are have always been about resources. While many can be labeled "noble" or "just" wars, in the end, they are all about resources. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I also fully expect that several years from now, it will be found out that oil corporations, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, are slant drilling into Iranian oil fields)

And if you don't believe me, google "vietnam war rubber plantations". Communism was just the smoke screen.

[Karenina]

49. Those who convince you to believe absurdities

can also convince you to commit atrocities. Got milk? ;-)

[ronnie624]

20. There are large hydrocarbon reserves around the Caspian Sea,

and Afghanistan is considered by Western political/corporate leaders to be essential to routing them onto Western markets. There are also a trillion dollars worth of key minerals in Afghanistan. After examining the history of U.S. intervention in small, weak countries that happen to be rich in resources or otherwise "essential" to U.S. "interests", I'm not prepared to believe the U.S. invasion is motivated by an altruistic desire to build hospitals and highways.

One thing is for certain, Ziggy Brzezinski, Robert Gates and the CIA were not motivated by altruism when they deliberately provoked the Soviet invasion with one of the biggest, most expensive covert operations in U.S. history, thereby sacrificing Afghan civil society, for the hope of bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

[JackRiddler]

30. No. Also, typical use of the false "we."

You think we haven't learned our lesson from the Philippines, Vietnam, and watching Britain and Russia in Afghanistan?

Learned it? Possibly. Applied it? Fat chance.*



The inevitable question to follow - well then what are we doing here? We're building roads. We're building infrastructure. We're rallying NATO countries to send in civilians to teach about medicine, basic education, basic local governance.

What bollocks. When they (your "we," not mine) stop bombing from the air, instead of escalating, let us know.





* I'm being kind and assuming the "lesson" is how to help countries develop. In fact, the only lesson to be learned from Vietnam is that it was a crime from the start, an aggressive war launched by a superpower on a small country that posed no threat and provided no provocation. It was an invasion and an occupation that turned into a genocide in all but legal definition. Your "we" were the invaders, the bad guys. Unfortunately the architects of these crimes went unpunished and some of them still live and prosper today, and serve as advisers to those now in power.

.

[JDPriestly]

33. I hope you are right, Mhak.

I also think that we are trying to just stay close to Pakistan's nukes.

But I cannot support the killing. We don't have to do so much killing to achieve our goals in Afghanistan. And we should insist on a more honest government -- not just in Afghanistan -- at home too.

[No Elephants]

43. I don't agree that Muslims want to fight America to get a better life.

Our Israel policies and our killings of Muslims in Beirut under two presidents and elsewhere have a hell of a lot more to do with it. This is a quote from long before 911: "Everytime we got bombed, we look up and the plane says U.S.A."

[somone]

6. Not so fast. We're bringing in a new weapon - TANKS!

USSR Red Army tanks, east of Kabul, Afghanistan

[bahrbearian]

8. We should have thought of that sooner.

[bowens43]

14. ya think?

are these guys ALL freakin idiots?????

EVERYONE knew it was un-winnable BEFORE Bush invaded.

[Amonester]

21. Ahh! A Moran That Got A Brain! FINALLY!

Wake Me Up When The Other Millionaire Morans There Will Finally Get Themselves A Brain Like This One, And We Might Get Somewhere.

Until Then, They Will Keep On Screwing The American People At The Benefit Of Their Corporate War-Masters, No Doubt.

[FlyByNight]

24. MICC uber alles

Afghanistan is essentially a loose confederation of valleys and villages "run" by someone thoroughly and utterly corrupt (Karzai).

An overwhelming proportion of Afghans seem unaware as to why the US is there or have ever heard of 9/11. After all, there are pipelines to build, poppies to harvest and mineral wealth to extract. Bin Laden/al Qaeda has nothing to do with the occupation any more (a few dozen left in country maybe). The war machine must be fed and President Obama seems just fine with it. So much for that peace (piece?) prize.

Get. The. Fuck. Out.

[sarcasmo]

25. The No shit, weekend award winner.

[aquart]

27. Well ain't he a bright one.

[JackRiddler]

32. And your sarcasm is supposed to signify what?

Is he a fool for belatedly being right, instead of stubbornly continuing to be wrong?

[aquart]

39. You thought that was sarcasm?

Because he figured out the obvious almost a decade late? Heavens no. I applaud the quickness of his mind. Don't you?

Just as I rejoice in the dead who didn't live to see his enlightenment.

[JackRiddler]

40. Okay, we're fine. And you certainly have a point.

At this point, anyone seriously trying to withdraw from this massacre has my applause for it. This however is probably insignificant.

[DesertFlower]

28. 8 billion a month, but no one talks about that.

[saigon68]

45. Pissing Away $$$$$ in the bank accounts of Millionaires

[tekisui]

29. No shit. I just wish Obama recognized that.

[burning rain]

34. Moran's got a brain!

:D

[La Lioness Priyanka]

36. no one has won anything in afghanistan. rough terrain. poverty

illiteracy. deep religiosity. too many tribal conflicts.

[boppers]

37. We made it that way. Well, not the terrain, but the rest.

Afghanistan in the 70's was a modern nation. A modern, socialist, nation. We "couldn't allow that". We funded the zealots, the zealots attacked the government, the government asked for help, the Soviets sent in help, we increased funding to the zealots, and between the US and USSR, 30 years of strife turned the clock back on the country for a thousand years.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

38. yeah, i didnt mean to say that afghanis cant rule afghanistan

they can and used to. I was referring to Russian and American desires to control AFghanistan

[saigon68]

47. BOMBED THEM BACK TO THE STONE AGE

well maybe the early Bronze Age

[Synicus Maximus]

46. I though we have know that for years