NATO to meet as Afghan war effort founders
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rjd_jr
Even a British commander felt that the war in Afghanistan was unwinnable. These issues coming in light that 30 civilians were killed in a recent U.S. airstrike, far more than what U.S. officials first admitted.
Now it has come to this, all that is left is to talk to the Taliban. I feel bad for the pro war guys but this is what it has come to. Piss poor planning, execution, airstrike after airstrike that has accomplished nothing but create more insurgents.
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SuperLib
"airstrike after airstrike that has accomplished nothing but create more insurgents."
Airstrikes don't create insurgents.
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SezWho2
Airstrikes do not directly create insurgents.
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Betzee
Obama weighed in on this last year, arguing that we need more ground troops in Afghanistan “so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.”
On the campaign trial Sarah Palin has taken the quote out of context to paint him as someone who both hates the military and the USA. But, as John McCain pointed out with respect to Kosovo, an over reliance on air power creates a lot of civilian casualties. And this has aided the Taliban's resurgence. They've even made inroads in the ethnic Tajik part of Afghanistan which supplied most of the leadership for the Northern Alliance that fought the Pashtun-dominated Taliban.
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SuperLib
How were they able to build a following and take over an entire government before airstrikes? Seems almost impossible.
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SezWho2
SuperLib,
I'm not quite sure what you are asking.
Of course airstrikes can prevent insurgents from taking over a government if we are willing to keep the strikes up indefinitely. And airstrikes will certainly kill insurgents. But none of this means that airstrikes are not also a spur to people to join with the Taliban.
Prior to the airstrikes--and this is only my imagination now--but I would have thought that the Taliban doctrine actually appealed to a certain number of people and, similar to the case with many Iraqi Sunni Ba'athists, actually was expedient to a good many others. I think this is how the Taliban were able to build a following and assume control.
Post invasion, however, those who adopted the Taliban doctrine as an expedient found it more expedient to abandon it and some Taliban may have actually turned apostate. But now, it seems to me, continued airstrikes that kill civilians help to validate the Taliban's political message, if not its religious one. They can be seen to be heroes for standing up to US and NATO while armed comparatively only with slingshots. And people tend to fight for what they consider to be their homeland, especially if it has been tribal land throughout centuries.
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adaydream
the Congressional Research Service noted in its September 2007 report that attacks from al-Qaeda are less than two percent of the violence in Iraq and criticized the Bush administration’s statistics, noting that its false reporting of insurgency attacks as AQI attacks has increased since the "surge" operations began
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlQaedain_Iraq
In light of the above statement, it's easy to understand that Al-Qaeda isn't as large as some want it to be believed. There are those who would ignore that our bombings in Iraq grew an insurgency. These same people would have you believe that our bombings don't create insurgents in Afghanistan. < :-)
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rjd_jr
Yes airstrikes create insurgents as SezWho describes. At any rate even the US general who will soon be overseeing Afghanistan is sounding a much less optimistic note by willing to negotiate with the Taliban:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081008/tsnm/usafghanusapetraeus
A far cry from the fire and brimstone, cowboys and indian speeches that Bush tried to rabble rouse with. Now it has come to this, negotiating with the very people that harbored and aided a man and organization that was responsible for 9/11. Sad to say but the U.S. military seems unable and unwilling to "win" in Afghanistan thanks to the disastrous policies of the Bush administration.
0
Sarge
"Is it time to talk to the Taliban?"
Might as well ask "Is it time to surrender to the Taliban?"
Heck no!
Hey, maybe the Chinese can contribute 10 or 20 thousand People's Liberation Army troops in Afghanistan - they're not doing anything else other than keeping their own people in line...
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adaydream
If we'd have done the job right the firsat time, instead of leaving it and going into Iraq, we might have won it already. But we've been dicking around there for 6 years almost and we're no better off than we were 5 years ago.
We need to get an end to this war also. Not a hundred year war in Afghanistan. < :-)
0
Madverts
Founders?
Shouldn't that be flounders?
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CavemanLawyer
adaydream, thank you for that information. Your link did not work, so I did my own cut and paste.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-QaedainIraq
I wonder if anyone can confirm or deny that information? Even I would be made a fool of if its true. I already cursed Bush and his administration, but this is really makes it all fresh again. --Cirroc
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CavemanLawyer
Man, I really wish that people who cannot differentiate between talks, ceasefires, and surrenders would go fight to the finish themselves. There is no excuse if you are that adamant. If the U.S. military won't take you, join a mercenary group.
We have gotten plenty of revenge on the Taliban for the act of harboring bin Laden. And there has been more than our fair share of acceptable civilian deaths in getting it. Let it go already. I know of no Taliban who killed an American until the invasion of Afghanistan. What is your beef that you think only a Taliban surrender or driving them into the earth are the only two acceptable choices here? --Cirroc
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CavemanLawyer
Trying again. Why does the link always get corrupted? Something with the underscores.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-QaedainIraq
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SuperLib
The Taliban have been a lot more brutal to their own people than the US ever has or ever will. The difference is that a US airstrike is headline news but another Taliban school beheading isn't. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
My guess is that there are a lot of people caught in the middle of the war between the Taliban and the West. And I'm sure when civilians die it makes them angry. But I don't think they're going to join a group who brutalizes their own people because of anger at the US.
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rjd_jr
That's the classic argument by the pro war crowd SuperLib. Always try to counter that whatever the U.S. does (or any other country for that matter), by saying the 'enemy' has done far worse. That's not much consolation to the father whose baby, wife, and children were destroyed by wanton airstrikes. So as long as wars are waged on those fronts, and civlian casualties are minimized and disregarded, the war on that front has been lost.
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Sarge
"wanton airstrikes"
Yeah, we just dropped those bombs for the heck of it.
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Betzee
SezWho,
I don't think that is one of your better answers. It's very hard to follow, in fact, and usually in your posts the logic leaps off the screen (plus they are very well written).
After the Taliban regime was toppled the Taliban, like the Khmer Rouge, largely returned to their village homes. This enabled them to regroup and what they are peddling, in addition basic security in a lawless environment, is a means to earn a living, namely growing opium poppies.
As coalition soldier fatalities have gone up over the past year, NATO forces respond in kind (which favors the Taliban not us) as this visitor recognized:
The second incident took place on a dirt road in Khanabad, where I noticed a group of Afghan Tajiks, including an old guy with a long beard, weeping quietly in the street. A couple of U.S. soldiers had kicked down a door and were inside a house, presumably searching for weapons.
“During Soviet times, under the Taliban, even during the civil war, no one dared break into a man’s home,” the old man told me. “No one. Even if the Taliban came to execute you, they knocked on the door politely and waited for you to come outside.” I knew we weren’t going to win then and there. Word of the Americans’ treatment of Afghan men – flexicuffing them, grinding their faces into the dirt with their boots, placing bags over their heads – spread quickly. Battles were still raging in Kunduz and Kandahar between the U.S.’s allies and Taliban holdouts, but the Americans had already lost the war for hearts and minds.
http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/ourbadwarinafghanistan/7356/
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SezWho2
SuperLib,
What I have been trying to get from you is an understanding of the question you are asking. If you think that what you said immediately above is the case, then I will return your own question to you:
Additionally, when you talk about the Taliban's "own people", who are you talking about? Afghanis generally? Certainly not Tajiks or Hazaras. Tribal ethnic Pashtun? I was talking about the Pashtun. You?
I think people will almost always prefer the devil they know to the one they do not.
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Betzee
I think most people in the field would probably agree with that. Indeed, "much of what drives support for the Taliban is not support for their agenda or support for their objectives. It is grievance driven. It is grievances with a local government. It is grievances with the international community that is often perceived as supporting a corrupt or illegitimate provincial government."
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. "Mistakes by Afghan translators endanger lives, hamper antiterrorism effort." 9 February 2008. http://www.afgha.com/?q=node/8789
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WilliB
adaydream:
Define "doing the job right". Bet you can`t.
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WilliB
You think wrong. There is one word for the reason missions like this are doomed, and is islam. But we are too politically correct to acknowledge that.
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SuperLib
Caveman Lawyer: Man, I really wish that people who cannot differentiate between talks, ceasefires, and surrenders would go fight to the finish themselves.
...and on the other side it would be nice if people could differentiate between the legitimate use of force and simple aggression.
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SezWho2
Well, it would certainly be nice if aggressors could make that differentiation.
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