Alan Dowd takes A Closer Look at the U.S.-Afghan Partnership Agreement. You may want to, also.
It reminds me of the Agreement the the US made with Vietnam at the end of that war. It simply covered their defeat and retreat and provided no lasting benefit.
Yet WaPo carries an article today arguing that Obama has a winning hand in his foreign policy.
-
The polls could hardly be clearer. In early April, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 53 percent of Americans trusted Obama over Romney to handle international affairs. Only 36 percent trusted Romney more. On a list of 12 matters that a president would deal with, Obama enjoyed a larger advantage on only one other question, the handling of women’s issues. And on coping with terrorism, the topic on which Republicans once enjoyed a near-monopoly, Obama led Romney by seven points.
How did this happen? The primary reason, to borrow a term from science, is negative signaling: By the end of Bush’s second term, the Republicans’ approach to foreign policy was discredited in the eyes of a majority of Americans. The war in Iraq turned out (and this is being quite charitable) much differently than the Bush administration had predicted.
Bottom line is that Americans prefer military disengagement and diplomatic engagement which is Obama’s shtick rather than the reverse which was Bush’s shtick. They ignore or view favourably his embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood and his attacks on Israel.
Americans are war weary.
@ yamit82:
Symbolist reasoning is as useless — and spurious — as syllogistic argument
— both of them are good for absolutely nothing
except demagoguerie.
Jesus wasn’t a ‘Christian.’ (Sorry to disappoint you.)
He was born a Jew.
Lived, a Jew.
Died, a Jew.
Arose, a Jew.
And whensoever it shall be Hashem’s good pleasure to send him back
— it will likewise be
not as a ‘Christian,’ but again
as a Jew.
Nor did Jesus have occasion to call anybody else a ‘Christian.’
Not ever.
Those who loved him, he called: his friends
— nothing more, nothing less; ever.
No soul (ego, etc) ever did, or ever will, reincarnate or transmigrate.
So it couldn’t be ‘reborn.’
Not even the soul of Esav.
@ L Mansfield:
Ah, Little Sir Echo checking in, is he?
How nice.
@ yamit82:
In all seriousness, it’s quite clear that my initial suspicion was, regrettably
— correct: you have nothing new, in this matter, to add to what we’ve heard from you before
just more bile.
@ dweller:
Esau hates Jacob, it’s a immutable law.
Esau=Edom (red)=Babylonia=Rome=Christendom= America the leading Christian Nation.
The soul of Esau was reborn as the soul of Jesus the Christian…and that is why he is called Yeshua, which is an anagram [in Hebrew] of Esau. 😛
@ yamit82:
Dweller: Consider yourself properly f*cked. Well F*cked!!!!
@ dweller:
First of all it’s none of your business but your PROPOSAL “What I mean is that we ought to take them over: take over the fields that provide the Taliban an income. We should take over the cultivation of the opium poppies & give it our own military protection.”
Those fields are not yours to dispose of , give away or protect and deny to anyone. If you leave that country the Taliban are no threat to you or to America. Maybe American economic interests but then they have their own economic and other interests which don’t include you stupid arrogant militaristic Americans. It’s their country tribal or not and certainly not yours.
I didn’t challenge your free speech but only your insufferable arrogance. Not a single American should die or be wounded for you inane suggestions and as long as America stays there many more will die. They died for medicinal dope? They make many more times selling opium to the cartels which today are aided by the American army in the actual trafficking.
Get out of Afghanistan ASAP.
The defeated the Mongols, The British and the Russians and apparently the Americans as well. I don’t care what you call it, invading Armies for them are not welcome and in that sentiment I have no quarrel. prtotecting their poppy fields? From whom? The American Imperialist invaders, maybe? If they are xenophobic, so what that’s their right and besides most peoples are to a greater or lesser degree xenophobic.
What you call self-interested xenophobia is nationalist or the difference between them is a distinction without a difference in all things that really matter, at least to them. What are you a
ChristianJeffersonian missionary?.
So you are keeping score as to who and what motivates any of them to shoot Americans? You think or you know? Show me your evidence.
@ yamit82:
I have long suspected a Pathan origin in the Assyrian Exile (or even in the Babylonian Captivity).
— And I seem to recall our having exchanged some notes about this a year or two ago.
However, what connection there might be betw that and Christian America is unapparent to me.
@ yamit82:
“In all seriousness”?
“In all seriousness,” what gives me that right is the same thing that gives you the right to be asking that silly rhetorical question
— in this country [USA], it’s called the First Amendment, but most democracies acknowledge it in one way or another.
Do you hear me dictating to anybody?
In the post of mine that you referenced, I presented the idea as a “proposal.”
Why don’t you climb down off your high horse, and address the idea on its own merits — without cluttering it up with all the emotional tchatchkes?
If you find the concept unworthy or unwise or unworkable, fine. Say so and I’ll listen.
Perhaps you could suggest corrections or alterations or refinements along the basic line.
But spare me the attitude.
My proposal had nothing to do with regard to any oil pipeline.
I offerred because it seemed like it could be CONSTRUCTIVE in a multiplicity of ways.
That was —and is — the long & the short of it.
There is no Afghan ‘nationalism.’
There may COME to be such a thing, in time. But for the present, when non-Taliban Afghans shoot at us, it is to protect their poppy crop.
Or, alternatively, because they remain in the grip of the understandable xenophobia that has characterized the region since before the days of Alexander.
But xenophobia & nationalism are not synonymous.
@ dweller:
Do you think there is any connection between Christian America (Edom) and Israelite Afghans ? 😉
@ dweller:
Tell me in all seriousness what the hell gives you the right to tell another country what to do, what to grow what to produce and what the hell is your imperialist Army doing there in the first place? If there was one country that was not a threat to anybody else except to themselves it was/is Afghanistan. All for an oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to Pakistan?
Every Afghan has the moral and nationalistic right and duty to off every American GI in that country in any way they can manage. Israel should import them to take care of our neighbors, some might even convert back to their original religion,.. Judaism. 15 million fighting Jews could be a geopolitical game changer for us.
@ BlandOatmeal:
Afghanistan — Part Two
You got a problem with poppies? I realize that this is off the beaten path, but hear me out.
Three salient facts offer themselves as important parameters in defining the mission I’m proposing:
1. Morphine & some of its derivatives (codeine, etc) do have a legitimate & vital medical, and medicinal, function — & there exists at this time a worldwide shortage in its availability, a shortage particularly as aggravated by increasing rates of cancer & HIV/AIDS.
2. Arguably, the opium poppy is Afghanistan’s only cash crop. Grapes, dates & pomegranates seem to do well there, but it will be some time before anything on the order of a stable fruit industry will have any chance of becoming established in present conditions. Furthermore, only table grapes (as distinct from wine grapes) can have any real industrial potential in a Muslim culture — where wine, brandy [which is distilled wine] & other alcoholic spirits are strictly off-limits.
3. Together with India, Turkey & Australia (which already participate in a licensing system endorsed by the International Narcotics Control Board), Afghanistan is one the world’s great morphine repositories.
What I am proposing is that we take the poppy cultivation out of the hands of the war-lords (or perhaps coopt their services).
Take the poppy cultivation & its revenue away from the Taliban, while giving the crop our own military protection.
We could place the morphine production AND the drug trade into the hands of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
— or perhaps create an entirely new, international blind trust to administer the revenue on behalf of the Afghan people: and in such a manner as would keep the trade forever above & outside of the control, not only of private interests (both licit & illicit), but maybe also would keep the trade outside & above the control of even successive Afghan governments, perhaps in perpetuity
so that such a universally VITAL product couldn’t become a political football.
That last element, of course, may well be a hopeless pipedream, not least because of the different & preexisting arrangement with the aforesaid other large poppy countries.
OTOH, perhaps some kind of independent consortium could be created, involving the poppy & morphine production of all 4 countries.
@ dweller:
Sounds heroic. The reality, though, is that the Taliban had successfully suppressed the Afghan opium business before we got involved there. Now, Afghanistan supplies 90% of the CHEAP heroin that has flooded the world, supplying 133% of the demand. There are 16 million hopeless junkies, and the number is growing. Entire economies are corrupted because of this trade.
Attacking Afghanistan was a colossal waste of effort. If Mecca had been bombed right after 9/11, the Muslims would have taken notice; and bin Laden would have become a pariah. Instead, he became a hero.
Taking over the oil fields is a somewhat good idea, but it carries with it the problem of dealing with the locals (including the Iranians, who would still control the Straits of Hormuz). If we really needed those fields, we could occupy them at a later date. Bombing Mecca, on the other hand, would mean that we absolutely mean business. The Arabs respect peoople who mean business.
PS. No further comment from me on Vietnam. I’ve read their history — in Vietnamese.
@ Ted Belman:
Bombing Mecca would have been both expected and appropriate, as well as far less costly than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Medina could be spared for future retalliations.
US Constitution provides for Congress to declare war.
Doesn’t specify the form OR manner OR parameters of the declaration itself.
The issues at hand are whether we have a “Just War vs an “Un just war” Not to borrow Catholic theology on the justness of war, we need to figure out what are the basis for wars in the first place vs “Police Actions” Chasing Pancho Villa into Mexico was a “Police Action” that led General Pershing nowhere. Vietnam,was a Police Action along side Iraq and Afghanistan. All undeclared acts never authorized by Congress. In other words, a complete waste of time, treasury, and most of all innocent American liveas.
@ BlandOatmeal:
Afghanistan — Part Two
You got a problem with the idea of our taking over the poppy fields?
I realize the proposition is off the beaten path, but think about it.
Three salient facts offer themselves as important parameters in defining the mission I’m proposing:
1. Morphine & some of its derivatives (codeine, etc) do have a legitimate & vital medical, and medicinal, function — & there exists at this time a worldwide shortage in its availability, a shortage particularly as aggravated by increasing rates of cancer & HIV/AIDS.
2. Arguably, the opium poppy is Afghanistan’s only cash crop. Grapes, dates & pomegranates seem to do well there, but it will be some time before anything on the order of a stable fruit industry will have any chance of becoming established in present conditions. Furthermore, only table grapes (as distinct from wine grapes) can have any real industrial potential in a Muslim culture — where wine, brandy [which is distilled wine] & other alcoholic spirits are strictly off-limits.
3. Together with India, Turkey & Australia (which already participate in a licensing system endorsed by the International Narcotics Control Board), Afghanistan is one the world’s great morphine repositories.
What I am proposing is that we take the poppy cultivation out of the hands of the war-lords (or perhaps coopt their services).
Take the poppy cultivation & its revenue away from the Taliban — while giving the crop our own military protection.
We could place the morphine production AND the drug trade into the hands of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
— or perhaps create an entirely new, international blind trust to administer the revenue on behalf of the Afghan people: and in such a manner as would keep the trade forever above & outside of the control, not only of private interests (both licit & illicit), but maybe ALSO outside & above the control of even successive Afghan governments, perhaps in perpetuity
so that such a universally vital product couldn’t become a political football.
That last element, of course, may well be a hopeless pipedream — not least because of the different & preexisting arrangement with the aforesaid other large poppy countries.
OTOH, perhaps some kind of independent consortium could be created, involving the poppy & morphine production of all 4 countries.
@ BlandOatmeal:
Afghanistan — Part One
We should encounter the Taliban economically; without funding, they fail.
Terrorist outfits typically stay afloat on what they get from state sponsors.
Without state sponsors, they’re forced to rely on specialized sources peculiar to their circumstances.
For the Taliban, that’s the Afghan poppy fields. So we need to stake out the fields.
No, I didn’t say, ‘take’ them out. I said stake them out.
What I mean is that we ought to take them over: take over the fields that provide the Taliban an income.
We should take over the cultivation of the opium poppies & give it our own military protection.
Without income, the Taliban will have to come after us — and when they do, we’ll put them out of their misery. . . . by tenderly ministering to their needs with heavy ordnance.
No need to hunt them down for now, especially since they know the terrain better than we anyhow.
What we should be doing is drawing them in. The paradigm should be — not “search-&-destroy” — but, rather, at this point, “ ‘Come into my parlor,’ said the spider to the fly.”
There may come a time to chase them down, but this is not that time.
(I’ll finish this in another post.)
@ BlandOatmeal:
Afghanistan
We should encounter the Taliban economically; without funding, they fail. Terrorist outfits typically stay afloat on what they get from state sponsors. Without state sponsors, they’re forced to rely on specialized sources peculiar to their circumstances.
For the Taliban, that’s the Afghan poppy fields. So we need to stake out the fields.
No, I didn’t say, ‘take’ them out. I said stake them out.
What I mean is that we ought to take them over: take over the fields that provide the Taliban an income.
We should take over the cultivation of the opium poppies & give it our own military protection. Without income, the Taliban will have to come after us — and when they do, we’ll put them out of their misery. . . . by tenderly ministering to their needs with heavy ordnance.
No need to hunt them down for now, especially since they know the terrain better than we anyhow.
What we should be doing is drawing them in. The paradigm should be — not “search-&-destroy” — but, rather, at this point, “ ‘Come into my parlor,’ said the spider to the fly.”
There may come a time to chase them down, but this is not that time.
You got a problem with poppies? Three salient facts offer themselves as important parameters in defining the mission I’m proposing.
1. Morphine & some of its derivatives (codeine, etc) do have a legitimate & vital medical, and medicinal, function — & there exists at this time a worldwide shortage in its availability, a shortage particularly as aggravated by increasing rates of cancer & HIV/AIDS.
2. Arguably, the opium poppy is Afghanistan’s only cash crop. Grapes, dates & pomegranates seem to do well there, but it will be some time before anything on the order of a stable fruit industry will have any chance of becoming established in present conditions. Furthermore, only table grapes (as distinct from wine grapes) can have any real industrial potential in a Muslim culture — where wine, brandy [which is distilled wine] & other alcoholic spirits are strictly off-limits.
3. Together with India, Turkey & Australia (which already participate in a licensing system endorsed by the International Narcotics Control Board), Afghanistan is one the world’s great morphine repositories.
What I am proposing is that we take the poppy cultivation out of the hands of the war-lords (or perhaps coopt their services).
Take the poppy cultivation & its revenue away from the Taliban, while giving the crop our own military protection.
We could place the morphine production AND the drug trade into the hands of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) — or perhaps create an entirely new, international blind trust to administer the revenue on behalf of the Afghan people: and in such a manner as would keep the trade forever above & outside of the control, not only of private interests (both licit & illicit), but maybe also would keep the trade outside & above the control of even successive Afghan governments, perhaps in perpetuity
— so that such a universally vital product couldn’t become a political football.
That last part, of course, may well be a hopeless pipedream, not least because of the different & preexisting arrangement with the aforesaid other large poppy countries. OTOH, perhaps some kind of independent consortium could be created, involving the poppy & morphine production of all 4 countries.
@ BlandOatmeal:
No comparison.
We lost in Vietnam because we got in too late in the game. By the time we went for it in earnest, Ho Chi Minh had already been organizing for damned near four decades.
We were playing catch-up from Day One — and we couldn’t catch up with that.
We were never able to develop a SE-Asia-tailored, market-based nationalism to compete with Uncle Ho’s long-established and WAY deeper-dug-in, mini-Stalinist version of it. He simply had too much of a headstart on us.
Had FDR pressured the Free French during WWII to agree to make a start (post-bellum) on preparing the Viets for independence, the story might’ve been different. There might’ve never been a Dien Bien Phu in 1954 — and we might’ve never had to consider going in, in the first place.
But FDR died while the War was still raging & Truman had his hands full after the War. French Indochina simply fell thru the cracks.
The US effort was a worthy one, well-intentioned — but the timing was far-kakh’d.
You can do the right thing with the wrong timing — and the net effect will be as bad as if you had done the wrong thing altogether.
In Iraq the only way we lose is by leaving.
Nationalism is far more embryonic in Iraq than it was in Vietnam when we arrived there. In a very real sense, we are in on the ground floor in Iraq where nationalism is concerned. But it will die if we leave; it’s just that simple.
We should stay, and take some of their oil to pay our expenses (which we should’ve been doing all along).
There is a timing issue in Iraq also — but not in the same way there was in Vietnam. We shouldn’t have gone into Iraq, in 2003 — because we should’ve finished the job in ’91. Would’ve been easier then than it was THIS time around. Still, it was necessary — to establish a presence in close proximity to Iran. Though now we seem to be squandering that postioning.
Tehran is just biding its time till we leave. . . .
@ BlandOatmeal:
No comparison.
We lost in Vietnam because we got into it too late in the game. By the time we went for it in earnest, Ho Chi Minh had already been organizing for damned near four decades. We couldn’t catch up with that.
We were never able to develop a market-based nationalism to compete with Uncle Ho’s long-established and WAY deeper-dug-in, mini-Stalinist version of it. He simply had too much of a headstart on us. Had FDR pressured the Free French during WWII to agree to make a start (post-bellum) on preparing the Viets for independence, the story might’ve been different. There might’ve never been a Dien Bien Phu in 1954 — and we might’ve never had to consider going in, in the first place.
But FDR died while the War was still raging & Truman had his hands full after the War. French Indochina simply fell thru the cracks.
The US effort was a worthy one, well-intentioned — but the timing was far-kakh’d.
You can do the right thing with the wrong timing — and the net effect will be as bad as if you had done the wrong thing altogether.
In Iraq the only way we lose is by leaving.
Nationalism is far more embryonic in Iraq than it was in Vietnam when we arrived there. In a very real sense, we are in on the ground floor in Iraq where nationalism is concerned. But it will die if we leave; it’s just that simple.
We should stay, and take some of their oil to pay our expenses (which we should’ve been doing all along).
There is a timing issue in Iraq also — but not in the same way there was in Vietnam. We shouldn’t have gone into Iraq, in 2003 — because we should’ve finished the job in ’91. Would’ve been easier then than it was THIS time around. Still, it was necessary — to establish a presence in close proximity to Iran. Though now we seem to be squandering that postioning.
Tehran is just biding its time till we leave. . . .
Afghanistan
We should encounter the Taliban economically; without funding, they fail. Terrorist outfits typically stay afloat on what they get from state sponsors. Without state sponsors, they’re forced to rely on specialized sources peculiar to their circumstances.
For the Taliban, that’s the Afghan poppy fields. So we need to stake out the fields.
No, I didn’t say, ‘take’ them out. I said stake them out.
What I mean is that we ought to take them over: take over the fields that provide the Taliban an income.
We should take over the cultivation of the opium poppies & give it our own military protection. Without income, the Taliban will have to come after us — and when they do, we’ll put them out of their misery. . . . by tenderly ministering to their needs with heavy ordnance.
No need to hunt them down for now, especially since they know the terrain better than we anyhow.
What we should be doing is drawing them in. The paradigm should be — not “search-&-destroy” — but, rather, at this point, “ ‘Come into my parlor,’ said the spider to the fly.”
There may come a time to chase them down, but this is not that time.
You got a problem with poppies? Three salient facts offer themselves as important parameters in defining the mission I’m proposing.
1. Morphine & some of its derivatives (codeine, etc) do have a legitimate & vital medical, and medicinal, function — & there exists at this time a worldwide shortage in its availability, a shortage particularly as aggravated by increasing rates of cancer & HIV/AIDS.
2. Arguably, the opium poppy is Afghanistan’s only cash crop. Grapes, dates & pomegranates seem to do well there, but it will be some time before anything on the order of a stable fruit industry will have any chance of becoming established in present conditions. Furthermore, only table grapes (as distinct from wine grapes) can have any real industrial potential in a Muslim culture — where wine, brandy [which is distilled wine] & other alcoholic spirits are strictly off-limits.
3. Together with India, Turkey & Australia (which already participate in a licensing system endorsed by the International Narcotics Control Board), Afghanistan is one the world’s great morphine repositories.
What I am proposing is that we take the poppy cultivation out of the hands of the war-lords (or perhaps coopt their services).
Take the poppy cultivation & its revenue away from the Taliban, while giving the crop our own military protection.
We could place the morphine production AND the drug trade into the hands of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) — or perhaps create an entirely new, international blind trust to administer the revenue on behalf of the Afghan people: and in such a manner as would keep the trade forever above & outside of the control, not only of private interests (both licit & illicit), but maybe also would keep the trade outside & above the control of even successive Afghan governments, perhaps in perpetuity — so that such a universally vital product couldn’t become a political football.
That last part, of course, may well be a hopeless pipedream, not least because of the different & preexisting arrangement with the aforesaid other large poppy countries. OTOH, perhaps some kind of independent consortium could be created, involving the poppy & morphine production of all 4 countries.
@ Dr. Sanford Aranoff:
Quite so.
Objects are hung.
Persons are hanged.
Unless one wishes to “objectify” a person
— as in, “hung like King Kong.”
(Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)
The correct word is “hanged” when referring to people. A shirt is hung on a line. A person is hanged.
dear ted,
i take your question/staement “9/11 happened. In hindsight, what should America done in response? Nothing? Bomb Mecca and Medina in response? What?” as somewhat rhetorical.
what was was. there is no sense to waste time and energy with ‘coulda’s and shoulda’s’
the only question of immediate pertinence is “islam is infiltrating just about every fabric of our society. they are using stealth jihad to bring on sharia. as their percentage of the population increases, so does their brazen militancy. what should our response be?”
unless we start to comprehend post haste that we are not dealing here with ‘disenchanted and unemployed youts’…but this is an all out war, an unresolveable clash of civilizations in a zero sum game, where there can be only one winner ….our world as we know it will quickly come to an end.
the curious american brings up a very unpleasant truth: the world is getting weary and tired, while the musloids are just warming up…
CuriousAmerican Said:
I doubt it. Maybe now but not then. Also I did not say bomb Mecca. Just take over the oil fields and after rebuilding what was destroyed, offer all the revenue to the Arabs to share. That would have pacified them. Keep in mind that was how Sadaam tried to enlist the masses and various revolutionaries. They wanted to dislodge the wealth from a few. It would be a different world today all to the better. America could have increased production to keep the price down. It would have allowed increased growth in the West and it would have undermined Russia and Iran who depend on high prices. A win-win for the US all the way around. And for the Arabs.
My point was to show Iraq was different than Vietnam. We never occupied Hanoi or hung Ho Chi Minh.
In theory nice. In reality, there would have been a major world war with hundreds of millions dead. Muslims who are now quiet would have revolted. Saudi Arabia is their holy land.
There would have been street fighting in every major city in the Western world. In Israel, too.
Let’s look at your Canada where there are large Arab populations in Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg. Mercifully most are Lebanese Christian … BUT NOT ALL.
This happened just 1 year after 9/11
Street and university fighting drove out Benjamin Netanyahu from talking at Concordia.
DISCORDIA – 1 hour documentary of how Canada buckled under to Arab extremists in Montreal in 2002
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcedmeGewF0
There would have had to be martial law in Montreal and Toronto if we had attacked Saudi Arabia.
Maybe it should have been done … Maybe this war is inevitable. But seriously, there would have been hundreds of millions dead.
Maybe we Americans squandered an opportunity when world opinion was on our side; but how long would that have held up.
Parts of London, Paris, your Montreal, your Toronto, Madrid, Rome, etc. started burning, how long would sympathy for America have held up.
Bush let the Saudis go. He should not have.
But we would have been facing a real world war … with war rations … war coupons … tens of thousands of dead racking up regularly.
The West no longer has the stomach for this. The Muslim world still does.
@ CuriousAmerican:
America had a need for revenge, an outlet for their anger. To equate 9/11 with hanging Sadaam is ludicrous. America should have occupied the Saudi Oil fields because 15 of the high jackers were Saudis and because the Saudis were financing Wahhabi and al Qaeda. The US would import from America all the workers they needed to extract the oil so as to avoid sabotage. The revenue earned would first pay for the reconstruction of the same twin towers and then be distributed to any Arab country that adopted a real democratic secular government or deployed for the welfare of Arabs generally.
Instead America protected the Saudis and diverted attention to Afghanistan and then Iraq.
The wars were not immoral. They were unwise. Other means of retaliation could have been effected.
I was vehemently opposed to the war in Afghanistan because I was aware of the disasters in that area.
The first Afghan War between Britain and the Afghan resulted in the almost total eradication of the whole army.
Modern weapons are almost useless.
In the mountains the air is too thin to support helicopters.
Tanks can be defeated with man made avalanches.
Regular airstrikes by drones and missiles was indicated.
The last man to securely conquer Afghanistan was Alexander the Great.
As a Vietnam Vet I can assure you all that the US went to war over a non issue and then went on to lose 55,000 plus soldiers in a war that the USA basically lost. Now we have two non entity wars, one in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan that will end in utter failure as well. Let’s save some lives and a whole lot of cash and simply declare victory and get the hell out of these two hell holes.
We did hang Saddam Hussein.
In a guerrilla struggle, counter-insurgency is more appropriate. Sending in teams of assasssins would have been better to do pointed assassinations.
AND SPENING THE MONEY TO GET OFF THE ARAB OIL TEAT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER!
DRILLING OFF SHORE!
SHALE OIL PRODUCTION!
@ Ted Belman:
The State Department should have ceased all attacks on Israel and tried to grow Israel and secular influence, instead of stigmatizing all resistance to Islam and ramping up its support for the same cult ideology and value system held by the 9/11 killers.
9/11 happened. In hindsight, what should America done in response? Nothing? Bomb Mecca and Medina in response? What?
@ yamit82:
Yamit,
Don’t stretch people’s credulity. The biggest bigot here is you; and I don’t think you would bat an eyelash if all the Christians on the planet were suddenly delivered a painful death.
You’ve dug up some interesting facts. Please stick to them, and can the BS.
I believe Germany was carptet bombed in WW2 and was Christian – about 1/2 Protestant, 1/2 Catholic.
They aided Al-Qaeda.
The oil theory was exaggerated.
@ CuriousAmerican:
You are a Bloodthirsty SOB. Anyway America did CARPET BOMB THEM MANY TIMES. Killed tens of thousands if innocents in the process. Would you be advocating the same thing if the population were Christians and not Muslims? Are you some kind of Bigot?
Besides resisting Christianity, what did the Afganis ever do to you? They were Reagan’s Pets and they still have some old stingers from that time, (probably don’t work anymore).
What some won’t do to get oil. 🙂
If you call destroying the whole infrastructure of a country winning, you are right, If you call the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of iraqis winning, you are right.
If you confiscated all of the WMD the Saddam was said to have you’d be right.
America has firepower no one doubts but based on war aims stated by Bush America lost. Created the recipe for a civil war and breakup of Iraq. Eliminated a bulwark against Iran and it’s regional ambitions, helped to bankrupt the American economy, weakened America at home and abroad and thousand of Americans came home in body bags and tens of thousand wounded and maimed for life. ASK THEM WHO WON THE WAR? And for what?
@ CuriousAmerican:
All good points.
Americans are war weary.
The polls could hardly be clearer. In early April, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 53 percent of Americans trusted Obama over Romney to handle international affairs. Only 36 percent trusted Romney more. On a list of 12 matters that a president would deal with, Obama enjoyed a larger advantage on only one other question, the handling of women’s issues. And on coping with terrorism, the topic on which Republicans once enjoyed a near-monopoly, Obama led Romney by seven points.
It’s not difficult for a weak primitive country to defeat America. All they need do is to outlast the Americans. That could be between 4-8 years due the election cycles where it is known that there will be an inevitable change in administrations, They just have to bleed the Americans of enough loss of life and national treasure so that popular sentiment becomes negative and the expected change in administrations should if it reflects the popular will change the administration and it’s war policies along with a strong desire to quit the fight.
Call it the law of Diminishing Returns.
If the war aims of America were just to topple Saddam and then leave Iraq to her own devices, then one could contend that America won with little loss of life to American forces and an affordable war financially.
Note: American and NATO Mercenaries working for contractors like Blackwell are still in Iraq, some say they have 30,000 some say more.
Both Iraq and Afghanistan were fought to secure for American companies Black Gold!! Bush had intended to attack Afghanistan even before 9/11. The attack on 9/11 just gave him the excuse. Besides securing for American companies vast reserves they intended to cut the Chinese out of both Markets. The day before 9/11 the price of a barrel of oil was under $20bbl closer to $15bbl. American and Global oil giants were threatened with Bankruptcy. 9/11 and the subsequent wars saved Big oil, but was a major contributor to the economic meltdown that occurred at the end of 2007. You cannot produce real economic growth in a modern industrial society with oil priced around $100.
If my memory serves, the defeat of the Taliban were not listed in Bush’s or Obama’s stated war aims nor was nation building in either Iraq or Afghanistan. We may not like or agree with the Taliban but it’s their country and not Americas, If they fight America is it as Nationalist who want to throw the American and NATO foreign imperialists out of their country or is it because they are fundamentalist Muslims who want to throw the American and Nato Infidels Crusaders out of THEIR country?
America lost both in Iraq and Afghanistan Because she did not attain most of her stated and unstated war aims. Even the declared murder of Ben Laden was said to be in Pakistan and not in Afghanistan. Logic dictates that you don’t fight for over 10 years, lose over 3000 of your own men, spend hundreds of billions of dollars to kill a few hundred terrorists, and along the way destroy two countries and murder hundreds of thousands of innocent non combatants in their own countries.
The fiasco of Iraq and Afghanistan should be laid almost exclusively at the Republicans gate
@ CuriousAmerican:
Curious, you seem to be missing some pieces of info:
1. Ho Chi Minh couldn’t be hung, because he died of natural causes. US leaders were claiming in 1968 that we had “defeated” the Viet Cong in their Tet offensive. Indeed, the Viet Cong were put out of action as the primary opposition force — and replaced by North Vietnamese regulars. The defeat and humiliation of Sadaam Hussein had a very similar effect — it put the Sunnis out of action as the primary opposition force; but now Iraq is led by the Shiites sympathetic to Iran. Both situations led ultimately to the US quitting the country, and its enemies victorious.
2. The US “won the war, but lost the peace”? Curious, similar things were said about Vietnam: We “won” all the battles, but lost the war. It would have been better to win the war; but in both cases, the US Government did not have any clear “victory” objectives: We were simply fighting, it seems, to be seen as fighters.
3. Carpet bombing was effective in Vietnam, but not in Iraq. We tried it, but Sadaam’s tank emplacements were practically impregnable to such attacks. That’s why we abandoned carpet bombing and stuck to “smart bombs” that exploded INSIDE the emplacements.
No, we lost in Vietnam AND Iraq, and will lose in Afghanistan, all for the same reason: The US President has no clearly-defined objectives, other than to “Vietnamize/ Iraqize/ Afghanistize” the war.
The US was not clearly defeated.
Saddam Hussein was hung. Ho Chi Minh was not.
The US won the Iraq war. It lost the peace.
In Afghanistan, I never expected victory.
The Afghanis had defeated the British and the Russians. War to them is an improvement in the standard of living.
In 2003, the wise thing would have been massive carpet bombing, and then leaving.