In four days it will be October 7, 2011

[Stinky The Clown]

That will mark ten fucking years in Afghanistan.

Ten

Fucking

Years.

There is some bullshit weasel talk about some bullshit, half-assed "withdrawal" in maybe a year or so. No one is committing. In that face of that, the Marine general who is the head honcho du jour over there says "not so fast. We're gunna be here a loooong time."

Ten

Fucking

Years.

Happy Anniversary, George.



Nice follow through, Barack.



Can *anyone* tell me why we're still there? What's the objective?









Does no one recall the fate of the Soviet Union?

Does no one have an appreciation of eons of Afghan history with respect to invading armies? Those guys NEVER lose.

How are we paying for this?

[ixion]

1. we're there because that is the neocon agenda

and nothing has changed, as far as that goes.

[PETRUS]

12. funny how certain...

...neocons and neoliberal globalists appeal to different segments of the electorate here at home, then behave remarkably similarly outside of our borders.

[tblue]

2. K&R

$$$$ is the only thing I can think of.

[Motown_Johnny]

3. We are trying to support the puppet government so it won't be overrun as soon as we leave

but since they don't want us to leave they are dragging their feet




I'm sure the withdrawal will be next summer, as the election heats up but not so close to election day as to be obviously politically motivated

[Kennah]

4. I got this one, and it's easy. $1 trillion worth of minerals.

Perhaps we didn't invade for that reason, but we're staying for that reason.

[RZM]

6. Plenty of people have been skeptical about the 'bonanza' from the beginning

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/14/say_what_afghanistan_has_1_trillion_in_untapped_mineral_resources

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/06/16/fp-junk-science-week-afghan-mineral-bonanza-is-bogus/

Haven't heard as much about it recently. But the timing of the story was a little suspect, as it appeared right when there was a lot of bad news coming out of Afghanistan. It's been argued that it was floated as a reason to stay. I don't know what the truth is myself. What I do know is that the time it takes to make any real money off of it will be a lot longer than the US public has patience to be there.

[Drew Richards]

10. Actually the Afghani gov already signed deals for min extraction to China and Russian..US doesnt get

shit

[reformist2]

5. We are there to stop the development of pipelines.

[joshcryer]

7. We've been in Iraq since 1991.

Think about that for a second. :(

[NightWatcher]

8. The only thing we make is War. It's a trillion dollar business...and business is good

for the war pigs. It took less than half this time to defeat Germany and Japan, but somehow a handful of disorganized... Oh what the hell, we're in the back pockets of the Military Industrislists and Obama doesn't dare stand up to them.

[RZM]

14. WWII was also total war

And we had Allies (one of which, the USSR, did most of the real fighting and dying against the Germans) who were also fully mobilized. A fully mobilized US with allies would have 'won' the Iraq and Afghan Wars a long time ago.

[spanone]

9. you can bet the super congress will take a token 'chunk' of war money

war is a criminal enterprise

now with petreaus running the cia we can have perpetual war.....

[doc03]

11. You are leaving out all the years we supplied Bin Laden with

arms to fight the Soviet Union.

[Fire Walk With Me]

13. Evidently, Afghanistan has lots of minerals and other resources.

And of course, the person the CIA trained and provided weapons to fight the Soviet invasion was Osama Bin Laden.

Afghanistan is poison.

[ellisonz]

15. What happens if we leave?

Taliban restrictions and mistreatment of women include the:

1- Complete ban on women's work outside the home, which also applies to female teachers, engineers and most professionals. Only a few female doctors and nurses are allowed to work in some hospitals in Kabul.

2- Complete ban on women's activity outside the home unless accompanied by a mahram (close male relative such as a father, brother or husband).

3- Ban on women dealing with male shopkeepers.

4- Ban on women being treated by male doctors.

5- Ban on women studying at schools, universities or any other educational institution. (Taliban have converted girls' schools into religious seminaries.)

6- Requirement that women wear a long veil (Burqa), which covers them from head to toe.

7- Whipping, beating and verbal abuse of women not clothed in accordance with Taliban rules, or of women unaccompanied by a mahram.

8- Whipping of women in public for having non-covered ankles.

9- Public stoning of women accused of having sex outside marriage. (A number of lovers are stoned to death under this rule).

10- Ban on the use of cosmetics. (Many women with painted nails have had fingers cut off).

11- Ban on women talking or shaking hands with non-mahram males.

12- Ban on women laughing loudly. (No stranger should hear a woman's voice).

More: http://www.rawa.org/rules.htm

[Leopolds Ghost]

16. That is a fair criticism. The only problem is, what does our presence achieve

Stopping this from happening In the long run?

[ellisonz]

18. Time changes things. Give Muslim women a chance!

Who two years ago could have predicted that Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Gaddafi would be gone? That Syria would be in the throes of a Revolution. I think our foreign policy in this regard is to act in the interest of moderate or secular society. To shield them from the worst abuse that could be heaped.

I think a compelling argument could be made too that if we pull out entirely Pakistan could be destabilized and that could result in a regional war.

We have to change our strategy. Opium production is the biggest thing sustaining the Taliban resistance. I do not know why we haven't more aggressively attempted to co-opt production by buying up the crop and putting it to better use or destroyed. The cost of doing so would be minimal to military action and would severely disrupt worldwide heroin distribution. The Bush administration was incompetent in addressing this issue. Eventually, this would allow use to create a different cash crop - article on saffron production: http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1068856.html

Some background:

With the Taliban now controlling large swaths of Afghanistan, traffickers and their networks pay the militants as much as $500 million a year, according to U.S. and U.N. intelligence estimates, to grow and protect the poppy fields, smuggle the drugs and run sophisticated processing labs and drug bazaars in Afghanistan and neighboring countries.
Ads by Google

Similar drug trafficking activity is flourishing in the tribal belt that includes northwestern Pakistan, and it is providing huge amounts of cash to the Pakistani Taliban and possibly Al Qaeda, the officials said.

"We see their involvement through just about every stage of drug trafficking, and in each of the four corners of Afghanistan," Thomas Harrigan, deputy administrator and chief of operations for the DEA, said of the Taliban. "They use the money to sustain their operations, feed their fighters, to assist Al Qaeda."

----

Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told Congress in June that the Obama administration was redirecting resources that lawmakers had appropriated for opium eradication toward the new strategy of "interdiction, rule of law -- going after the big guys. And those involve people in the government."

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jul/20/world/fg-dea-afghan20

We need smarter guys in the room. Simply trying to kill the bad guys isn't solving the problem. We need to defend the population and allow the people of Afghanistan to take ownership of their country.

[ixion]

19. Afghanistan has shown for centuries that it will not be occupied

so our mission their is futile.

[ellisonz]

20. History does not repeat itself inexoriably.

Humans make history.

Afghanistan is not some monolith. It is a nation - with real people who are not identical to one another in thought or action.

[ixion]

21. That is currently occupied by a hostile nation

so...

[bigwillq]

17. K and R (nt)