Why no "insurgents" in Afghanistan?

[laura888]

Every day we hear that insurgents are causing violence in Iraq.

Why are we not seeing this same level of violence in Afghanistan?

Could it be because we don't have 14 military bases in Afghanistan, and the troops numbers are much less?

Now that Sadam is gone, shouldn't Afghanistan and Iraq be treated EXACTLY THE SAME WAY???

Shouldn't the level of troops be exactly the same?

Why is no one questioning this disparity?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I thought the Taliban

has had a resurgence and that they are starting to control parts of the country again. We are only in Kabul....anyone else heard this?

[laura888]

3. Iraqis are pissed because US has taken over

Not the same story in Afghanistan. We really don't care what happens in Afghanistan. Watch to see what happens if indeed the Taliban regains control. Do you really think we're going to send in troops?

[Massacure]

2. Afghan rebels control more of the country than they should.

If Bush did anything about it, then that would mean bad poll numbers though.

[AlCzervik]

4. My nephew was in Afghanistan for a year before being stop lossed and sent

into texraq. When he was there he said the the US keeps low visibility and there are also international troops as well so it's not so heavily American. It's also not really a true occupation. I think there will be an uptick in violence there especially after Karzai wins election.

[whistle]

5. Let's get the terms correct, what we are now seeing in Iraq are...

...resistance fighters. These are Iraqis who want Americans to get the hell out of Iraq now! Insurgents is Bush's term to candy coat the fact that this two-faced liar said we were going into Iraq to free Iraqis from the tyranny of Saddam, the mad dictator. Well, now Iraqis see Americans as the new tyrant and there could not be a better icon of American tyranny in Iraq than John Negroponte. That is the person directly responsible for the acceleration of violence from Iraqis so that the U.S. can clamp down hard to squash all resistance and install an anemic puppet government5 that will carry out U.S wishes and corporate interests there. Iraq is being transformed into a colony of the U.S.

[Ms. Clio]

6. The warlords are in control of Afghanistan

They are pretty satisfied with the situation because they are the guys who were in power before the rise of the Taliban.

Karzai is merely the exquisitely-attired mayor of Kabul.

[Maple]

7. Because the Taliban control Afghanistan

having solved the warlord problem while everyone else was busy in Iraq.

Where has everybody on here been...this has been headline news for months now!

Not even downtown Kabul is safe, and heroin sales are at an all time high.

[Ms. Clio]

10. Jinx!

I agree that the Taliban control some parts of the country, but isn't Dostum in control in the north and that other guy whose name escapes me still in control of Herat? And he is really just like the Taliban when it comes to women, etc.?

I think all the foreign aid orgs. have pulled out, too, which is not a good sign.

[2Design]

8. Bases being built in iraq = permanent occupation

[GeorgeBushytail]

13. Bush wins 2004 = permanent occupation

[GeorgeBushytail]

9. Hard to think about

My first thought was that Afghanistan might have a much smaller population than Iraq. I looked it up and Afghanistan has a slightly larger population: 28 million to 25 million. Didn't know that.

My bet is that we are doing much more to wreck the daily lives of Iraqis than Afghans. Afghanistan, even under the Taliban, had warlords and now that the Taliban is out of power the old warlords reexert their control, business as usual. Power was much more centralized in Iraq and the country is (or was) more modern, so when we broke it we broke it much worse than we did Afghanistan.

[laura888]

11. exactly! so....why isn't anyone asking "are we going to fix both"?

The reason why we're in Iraq is because Civil War will break out if we leave, right?

Are we just going to say chaos is the status quo for Afghanistan and leave it at that?

I want to see this occupation covered on CNN the same way the invasion was.

[GeorgeBushytail]

12. Unfortunately

I think we are going to see more of Afghanistan in the news. Even Bush said to watch out for coming violence there.

When the violence gets bad or picturesque enough the news will give it play. Disgusting but true.

[laura888]

14. Disagree. I think that if 40 Afghans died today, we'd see it in the news

this is happening daily in Iraq.

The question is: why so much more violence in Iraq?