What are we doing in Afghanistan?
- Thread starter benny_patrick7
- Start date
Yeah. Obama wants more troops in Afghanistan and Harper does what ever the Americans do so we are SOL.
There isn't much point in quitting now as the Taliban will simply move back in and resume control. There needs to be a government in Afghanistan that can control a regulated military and stand up to the Taliban. Otherwise we just have the same problem 5 years down the road.
Unforgiven offered: "There needs to be a government in Afghanistan that can control a regulated military and stand up to the Taliban. Otherwise we just have the same problem 5 years down the road."
Wasn't that what the American-sponsored-and-supported Karzai government promised to do? I think it's time to review its commitments in the Afghanistan Compact.
Click here.
Wasn't that what the American-sponsored-and-supported Karzai government promised to do? I think it's time to review its commitments in the Afghanistan Compact.
Click here.
Nothing is for sure. But providing law and order while a government gets on it's feet is part of the solution. School and business is another rebuilding infrastructure is a third. But the security is the first order and that means killing off a high number of people who want to fight against that. As far as I can see, we need more troops and equipment there to make for an overwhelming force that can at once provide a high level of presence on the ground as well as investigation to root out the planners and suppliers.
Getting the US out of Iraq will help in having trained and combat proven troops to go into Afghanistan.
I would say also that strong leadership in the military command that can provide the level of security for rehabilitation to get going that provides the things that make people want to choose peace is key.
Before we can work on corruption in the government, there has to be a level of security in the country. In providing the man power it will take to make a serious change in the mountain regions will I think, will bring about that change quicker than simply pulling up stakes and heading home.
Getting the US out of Iraq will help in having trained and combat proven troops to go into Afghanistan.
I would say also that strong leadership in the military command that can provide the level of security for rehabilitation to get going that provides the things that make people want to choose peace is key.
Before we can work on corruption in the government, there has to be a level of security in the country. In providing the man power it will take to make a serious change in the mountain regions will I think, will bring about that change quicker than simply pulling up stakes and heading home.
Ah, I see! Shoot them so their compatriots, kith and kin will love us. Novel... But, hasn't that approach been tried before? It seems I remember somewhere in Europe....
PS
And don't forget what Sun Tzu said in the "Art of War" on occupations and the numbers of troops to sustain them.
"It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten
to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one,
to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army
into two."
And don't forget what Sun Tzu said in the "Art of War" on occupations and the numbers of troops to sustain them.
"It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten
to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one,
to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army
into two."
Cousin Spade,
I think it's been promised more then once but to date - nada seems to be happening. We have enough troubles going on here at home financially speaking so it seems time to concentrate on the "here and now" rather then other countries. In reality we have not been in our usual peace keeping role for sometime now so my vote goes to ending this and all troops going home.
I don't understand anyone who thinks killing off a high number of people is the solution to anything. That is not peace keeping and in fact - it couldn't get further away from it. Rebuilding is a wonderful thing - if there is a chance it will last. It is time now for these countries to take control on their own. We cannot babysit forever.
Ah, I am pleased to see that my fellow recent immigrants to this forum are the most sensible of that former lot. Peace was never won at gun point. Peace be to you all on this magnificent day. I am off on an adventure to the booming metropolis of Burton. See y'all this evening.
All my Relations
All my Relations
Well, perhaps peace was never won at gunpoint.....but a whole lot of things worth fighting for were......
like liberty and democracy (the American revolution)
an end to slavery in the USA (the Civil War)
an end to fascism in Europe (the Second World War)
security (the Cold War....not a shooting war, but lots of BIG guns pointed over there)
if you enjoy your peace and security, you should take the steps necessary to defend it.......as George Orwell said "we sleep peacefully in our beds only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf"
BTW, who said Harper was sending more troops?
It ain't happening. We're out of there in 2011, thanks to the spinelessness of far too many of the Canadian people......
Dear Colby,
And here I thought the spineless were those who talked tough and waved a small stick! Go figure!
Your cousin,
Spade
PS
Ad hominem attacks don't convince! Remember, defending freedom is defending dissent!
PPS
So the American Revolution was for liberty and democracy, yet slavery ended almost a century later, and systemic apartheid a century after that. Hmmmm....
And here I thought the spineless were those who talked tough and waved a small stick! Go figure!
Your cousin,
Spade
PS
Ad hominem attacks don't convince! Remember, defending freedom is defending dissent!
PPS
So the American Revolution was for liberty and democracy, yet slavery ended almost a century later, and systemic apartheid a century after that. Hmmmm....
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When our troops first went to Afghanistan, they went as snipers to help protect the American ground forces.
The libs got us there.
Harpo in his wisdom has decided to walk further into the swamp in the hopes he can find some American ass to kiss.
Thank God we had a Lib (remember Chretien), who sort of told Bush where to shove Iraq.
Now, we should bring the troops home. Nothing is going to make a tribal country supplied with troops and "tarrists" by Packistan, turn into a democracy.
But that's just MO, believe it or ............don't. Kind of tired of hearing.......why why why why?? Oh my oh me.
Someone's getting the payola big time, or we'd see some action with regards to returning the troops.
:angry3:
The libs got us there.
Harpo in his wisdom has decided to walk further into the swamp in the hopes he can find some American ass to kiss.
Thank God we had a Lib (remember Chretien), who sort of told Bush where to shove Iraq.
Now, we should bring the troops home. Nothing is going to make a tribal country supplied with troops and "tarrists" by Packistan, turn into a democracy.
But that's just MO, believe it or ............don't. Kind of tired of hearing.......why why why why?? Oh my oh me.
Someone's getting the payola big time, or we'd see some action with regards to returning the troops.
:angry3:
The following is a good explanation of why there is a war in Afghanistan:
[SIZE=+4]America's Pipe Dream[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+2]By George Monbiot[/SIZE]
"Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here," Woodrow Wilson asked a year after the first world war ended, "that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?" In 1919, as US citizens watched a shredded Europe scraping up its own remains, the answer may well have been no. But the lessons of war never last for long.
The invasion of Afghanistan is certainly a campaign against terrorism, but it may also be a late colonial adventure. British ministers have warned MPs that opposing the war is the moral equivalent of appeasing Hitler, but in some respects our moral choices are closer to those of 1956 than those of 1938. Afghanistan is as indispensable to the regional control and transport of oil in central Asia as Egypt was in the Middle East.
Afghanistan has some oil and gas of its own, but not enough to qualify as a major strategic concern. Its northern neighbours, by contrast, contain reserves which could be critical to future global supply. In 1998, Dick Cheney, now US vice-president but then chief executive of a major oil services company, remarked: "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian." But the oil and gas there is worthless until it is moved. The only route which makes both political and economic sense is through Afghanistan.
Transporting all the Caspian basin's fossil fuel through Russia or Azerbaijan would greatly enhance Russia's political and economic control over the central Asian republics, which is precisely what the west has spent 10 years trying to prevent. Piping it through Iran would enrich a regime which the US has been seeking to isolate. Sending it the long way round through China, quite aside from the strategic considerations, would be prohibitively expensive. But pipelines through Afghanistan would allow the US both to pursue its aim of "diversifying energy supply" and to penetrate the world's most lucrative markets. Growth in European oil consumption is slow and competition is intense. In south Asia, by contrast, demand is booming and competitors are scarce. Pumping oil south and selling it in Pakistan and India, in other words, is far more profitable than pumping it west and selling it in Europe.
As the author Ahmed Rashid has documented, in 1995 the US oil company Unocal started negotiating to build oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and into Pakistani ports on the Arabian sea. The company's scheme required a single administration in Afghanistan, which would guarantee safe passage for its goods. Soon after the Taliban took Kabul in September 1996, the Telegraph reported that "oil industry insiders say the dream of securing a pipeline across Afghanistan is the main reason why Pakistan, a close political ally of America's, has been so supportive of the Taliban, and why America has quietly acquiesced in its conquest of Afghanistan". Unocal invited some of the leaders of the Taliban to Houston, where they were royally entertained. The company suggested paying these barbarians 15 cents for every thousand cubic feet of gas it pumped through the land they had conquered.
For the first year of Taliban rule, US policy towards the regime appears to have been determined principally by Unocal's interests. In 1997 a US diplomat told Rashid "the Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco [the former US oil consortium in Saudi Arabia] pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that." US policy began to change only when feminists and greens started campaigning against both Unocal's plans and the government's covert backing for Kabul.
Even so, as a transcript of a congress hearing now circulating among war resisters shows, Unocal failed to get the message. In February 1998, John Maresca, its head of international relations, told representatives that the growth in demand for energy in Asia and sanctions against Iran determined that Afghanistan remained "the only other possible route" for Caspian oil. The company, once the Afghan government was recognised by foreign diplomats and banks, still hoped to build a 1,000-mile pipeline, which would carry a million barrels a day. Only in December 1998, four months after the embassy bombings in east Africa, did Unocal drop its plans.
But Afghanistan's strategic importance has not changed. In September, a few days before the attack on New York, the US energy information administration reported that "Afghanistan's significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from central Asia to the Arabian sea. This potential includes the possible construction of oil and natural gas export pipelines through Afghanistan". Given that the US government is dominated by former oil industry executives, we would be foolish to suppose that such plans no longer figure in its strategic thinking. As the researcher Keith Fisher has pointed out, the possible economic outcomes of the war in Afghanistan mirror the possible economic outcomes of the war in the Balkans, where the development of "Corridor 8", an economic zone built around a pipeline carrying oil and gas from the Caspian to Europe, is a critical allied concern.
American foreign policy is governed by the doctrine of "full-spectrum dominance", which means that the US should control military, economic and political development worldwide. China has responded by seeking to expand its interests in central Asia. The defence white paper Beijing published last year argued that "China's fundamental interests lie in ... the establishment and maintenance of a new regional security order". In June, China and Russia pulled four central Asian republics into a "Shanghai cooperation organisation". Its purpose, according to Jiang Zemin, is to "foster world multi-polarisation", by which he means contesting US full-spectrum dominance.
If the US succeeds in overthrowing the Taliban and replacing them with a stable and grateful pro-western government and if the US then binds the economies of central Asia to that of its ally Pakistan, it will have crushed not only terrorism, but also the growing ambitions of both Russia and China. Afghanistan, as ever, is the key to the western domination of Asia.
We have argued on these pages about whether terrorism is likely to be deterred or encouraged by the invasion of Afghanistan, or whether the plight of the starving there will be relieved or exacerbated by attempts to destroy the Taliban. But neither of these considerations describes the full scope and purpose of this war. As John Flynn wrote in 1944: "The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells." I believe that the US government is genuine in its attempt to stamp out terrorism by military force in Afghanistan, however misguided that may be. But we would be naive to believe that this is all it is doing.
[SIZE=+1]October 23, 2001[/SIZE]
War and Oil[SIZE=+4]America's Pipe Dream[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+2]By George Monbiot[/SIZE]
"Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here," Woodrow Wilson asked a year after the first world war ended, "that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?" In 1919, as US citizens watched a shredded Europe scraping up its own remains, the answer may well have been no. But the lessons of war never last for long.
The invasion of Afghanistan is certainly a campaign against terrorism, but it may also be a late colonial adventure. British ministers have warned MPs that opposing the war is the moral equivalent of appeasing Hitler, but in some respects our moral choices are closer to those of 1956 than those of 1938. Afghanistan is as indispensable to the regional control and transport of oil in central Asia as Egypt was in the Middle East.
Afghanistan has some oil and gas of its own, but not enough to qualify as a major strategic concern. Its northern neighbours, by contrast, contain reserves which could be critical to future global supply. In 1998, Dick Cheney, now US vice-president but then chief executive of a major oil services company, remarked: "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian." But the oil and gas there is worthless until it is moved. The only route which makes both political and economic sense is through Afghanistan.
Transporting all the Caspian basin's fossil fuel through Russia or Azerbaijan would greatly enhance Russia's political and economic control over the central Asian republics, which is precisely what the west has spent 10 years trying to prevent. Piping it through Iran would enrich a regime which the US has been seeking to isolate. Sending it the long way round through China, quite aside from the strategic considerations, would be prohibitively expensive. But pipelines through Afghanistan would allow the US both to pursue its aim of "diversifying energy supply" and to penetrate the world's most lucrative markets. Growth in European oil consumption is slow and competition is intense. In south Asia, by contrast, demand is booming and competitors are scarce. Pumping oil south and selling it in Pakistan and India, in other words, is far more profitable than pumping it west and selling it in Europe.
As the author Ahmed Rashid has documented, in 1995 the US oil company Unocal started negotiating to build oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and into Pakistani ports on the Arabian sea. The company's scheme required a single administration in Afghanistan, which would guarantee safe passage for its goods. Soon after the Taliban took Kabul in September 1996, the Telegraph reported that "oil industry insiders say the dream of securing a pipeline across Afghanistan is the main reason why Pakistan, a close political ally of America's, has been so supportive of the Taliban, and why America has quietly acquiesced in its conquest of Afghanistan". Unocal invited some of the leaders of the Taliban to Houston, where they were royally entertained. The company suggested paying these barbarians 15 cents for every thousand cubic feet of gas it pumped through the land they had conquered.
For the first year of Taliban rule, US policy towards the regime appears to have been determined principally by Unocal's interests. In 1997 a US diplomat told Rashid "the Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco [the former US oil consortium in Saudi Arabia] pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that." US policy began to change only when feminists and greens started campaigning against both Unocal's plans and the government's covert backing for Kabul.
Even so, as a transcript of a congress hearing now circulating among war resisters shows, Unocal failed to get the message. In February 1998, John Maresca, its head of international relations, told representatives that the growth in demand for energy in Asia and sanctions against Iran determined that Afghanistan remained "the only other possible route" for Caspian oil. The company, once the Afghan government was recognised by foreign diplomats and banks, still hoped to build a 1,000-mile pipeline, which would carry a million barrels a day. Only in December 1998, four months after the embassy bombings in east Africa, did Unocal drop its plans.
But Afghanistan's strategic importance has not changed. In September, a few days before the attack on New York, the US energy information administration reported that "Afghanistan's significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from central Asia to the Arabian sea. This potential includes the possible construction of oil and natural gas export pipelines through Afghanistan". Given that the US government is dominated by former oil industry executives, we would be foolish to suppose that such plans no longer figure in its strategic thinking. As the researcher Keith Fisher has pointed out, the possible economic outcomes of the war in Afghanistan mirror the possible economic outcomes of the war in the Balkans, where the development of "Corridor 8", an economic zone built around a pipeline carrying oil and gas from the Caspian to Europe, is a critical allied concern.
American foreign policy is governed by the doctrine of "full-spectrum dominance", which means that the US should control military, economic and political development worldwide. China has responded by seeking to expand its interests in central Asia. The defence white paper Beijing published last year argued that "China's fundamental interests lie in ... the establishment and maintenance of a new regional security order". In June, China and Russia pulled four central Asian republics into a "Shanghai cooperation organisation". Its purpose, according to Jiang Zemin, is to "foster world multi-polarisation", by which he means contesting US full-spectrum dominance.
If the US succeeds in overthrowing the Taliban and replacing them with a stable and grateful pro-western government and if the US then binds the economies of central Asia to that of its ally Pakistan, it will have crushed not only terrorism, but also the growing ambitions of both Russia and China. Afghanistan, as ever, is the key to the western domination of Asia.
We have argued on these pages about whether terrorism is likely to be deterred or encouraged by the invasion of Afghanistan, or whether the plight of the starving there will be relieved or exacerbated by attempts to destroy the Taliban. But neither of these considerations describes the full scope and purpose of this war. As John Flynn wrote in 1944: "The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells." I believe that the US government is genuine in its attempt to stamp out terrorism by military force in Afghanistan, however misguided that may be. But we would be naive to believe that this is all it is doing.
Why are we in Afghanistan?
It takes a long time dig a a pipeline deep enough while capping it with concrete. Rock doesn't grind it's self, rebar doesn't forge it's self itself and end up in trucks by it's self. These things take people and time and the facilities to do this require protection. The policies of war dictate "if you broke it you bought it" Afghanistan is a permanent investment by the taxpayer of the Corporation of Canada and a few of "willing"national corporate investors from around the globe, enforced by the Corporation of NATO and funded by the usual Saxe-Coburg Gotha, House of Orange, Rothchild and New World Rockefeller banking houses who stand to gain the most on the taxpayer's dime. No wonder they resist our brand of democracy when they see what what you don't.
It takes a long time dig a a pipeline deep enough while capping it with concrete. Rock doesn't grind it's self, rebar doesn't forge it's self itself and end up in trucks by it's self. These things take people and time and the facilities to do this require protection. The policies of war dictate "if you broke it you bought it" Afghanistan is a permanent investment by the taxpayer of the Corporation of Canada and a few of "willing"national corporate investors from around the globe, enforced by the Corporation of NATO and funded by the usual Saxe-Coburg Gotha, House of Orange, Rothchild and New World Rockefeller banking houses who stand to gain the most on the taxpayer's dime. No wonder they resist our brand of democracy when they see what what you don't.
