Taliban-U.S. peace talks look more likely; military worried

reply to post by ManjushriPrajna


Yes, the usual political side - fighter side model. This isn't our first introduction to the model. My last name Irish. I think we invented it.

Originally posted by nenothtu

Originally posted by Aeons
reply to post by beezzer

 

The definition of "win" just has to change, because the type of war isn't the same.

The amorphous tribal conflict brought forward in time. The definition of "win" needs to be updated in the minds of the West.

A "win" is what you have when you've accomplished your objective.

You have a different definition in mind?

Nope - just a pressing need for the objective to be clarified in the minds of the public.

America is the evil invading force. Afghanistan didn't do anything to us. Why are we stomping through their country like we own the place? They are the victims and America is the evil entity occupying a peaceful country for drugs and oil! The Taliban are freedom fighters! Stop the occupation! Purge the evil Americans from that poor country!

Now back in reality...

I think we should talk peace. And watch as it fails. And watch as Obama has a stupid look on his face when he realizes we have been double crossed by a faction that in no way, shape, or form recognizes anything that even closely resembles proper civilized rules of war. Yes, there are rules of war. They don't follow them and they do some seriously messed up stuff and STILL people sympathize with them.

I said it earlier in this thread that we really need to get out of there and fix this broken country of our own. We've got our own problems that we should be focusing on instead of playing find the bacon in the desert. I've been there. That place sucks. The only thing that was decent was the pay I had stocked up when I got back stateside. And right now, the country I love and cherish is starting to become a hell hole to live in because of people who can't seem to ever be happy.

Let's just make believe we have the peace that so many people say we need and focus on #1.

Originally posted by nenothtu

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

Unfortunately I've already seen the data that proves that Taliban attacks have been both desperate and resulting in a mere fraction of the catastrophe that the Americans have brought to the region.

Too bad.

Maybe they ought to rethink who they pick fights with.

"Brought catastrophe to the region"? What is it you think wars are composed of? Flowers, skittles, and unicorns?

Taliban picked a fight with who?

Originally posted by Aeons

Originally posted by insaan

Originally posted by neo96
Yeah make peace with the people who stone and behead and cut off women's noses and keep their women "barefoot" and pregnant so to speak.

After a decade of war must be nice to cut an run like that they don't have to live there and it goes back to the safe haven it use to be.

Then more plotting and planning for the next time.

Generalizing is racist, or bigotry at its best, your opinion is hateful at its core.

On topic, this is a great move, finally American troops can come home and the money can be used for some other more productive purpose. After all, how long can US keep borrowing and at the same time print money from thin air?

Yes: most of these guys really hate to the core the way "those" guys treat women and children. Its one of the traits I like in them. The capacity to be disgusted by the disgusting and want to do something about it.

I kind of agree with you about the monetary aspects of this. Being bled for money is a strategy of the enemy. One that I think isn't being properly strategically addressed, but I haven't really been thinking on it for very long.

And what of the rare earth minerals? They aren't doing anything with them. What's your beef with someone who will? Sifting stuff out of the dirt is a horrible idea? Gets in the way of smoking poppies and beating the thirteen year old wife?


reply to post by buster2010

 

Oh buster - there may not have been a good reason to go into Iraq. But there was a damn good reason to go to Afghanistan.

If it had ever been about saving women, no one would have ever gone. The Taliban existed that way for a decade, and no one did squat until their leadership provided a homebase for a pan-national terrorist attack.

Besides, what the last 20 years has shown me is that your type will be the first people to push women out of the staircase during the Zombie Apocalypse. Buying a few minutes of peace with the bodies of women is always a price you're willing to pay.

edit on 2012/1/20 by Aeons because: (no reason given)

No the reason why are in Afghanistan is because of opium. When the Taliban took over they started burning the poppy field and prices shot up big pharma didn't like that. So because I don't support a war that has nothing to do with our security or defense then I'm the type person who would use a person to escape a zombie. Seems like you've learned next to nothing in the last twenty years get out into the real world and learn a few things.

reply to post by Aeons

Yes: most of these guys really hate to the core the way "those" guys treat women and children. Its one of the traits I like in them. The capacity to be disgusted by the disgusting and want to do something about it.

Your comment is very vague and I don't know whether you are being sarcastic or if you are really defending the generalization" which is a common characteristic of racism and bigotry.

Let's not generalize. When you say "those" people, who are you referring to? Are you referring to Taliban? Who is the Taliban? How many are there? Do you know all of them? Do you personally know any of them? Where did you get your information from? Or are you talking about the Pashtoon population of Afghanistan and Pakistan?

If you want to be disgusted about individuals treating their women badly, then no doubt it is understandable, but when you generalize and characterize a group of people based on the actions of few, that is bigotry and racism at its best.

double post//

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

Originally posted by nenothtu

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

Unfortunately I've already seen the data that proves that Taliban attacks have been both desperate and resulting in a mere fraction of the catastrophe that the Americans have brought to the region.

Too bad.

Maybe they ought to rethink who they pick fights with.

"Brought catastrophe to the region"? What is it you think wars are composed of? Flowers, skittles, and unicorns?

Taliban picked a fight with who?

The Whole Damn World.

reply to post by buster2010


The Taliban burned the poppy fields down long before they started to set up the New Caliphate and attacked the US.

Your timeline doesn't add up.

reply to post by insaan


Individuals make choices. I agree.

Those individuals are making them, and when they can removing any possibility of some others making their own.

I am happy to tell you, I am judging them as individuals. That there are many individuals who are currently using the same basic ideology. Now I understand that when you live in an area with little possibility of access to another set of choices that this is a limiting factor in your ability to make choices.

Then again if your lack of choices still makes you do things that your own eyes should be able to see are horrible and instead you take enjoyment out of it, well that says a lot about you.

reply to post by Aeons


Sorry I'm lost by your post, but I have laid down my point of view very clearly and can't make it any more clearer, in that sense the discussion has ended here for me.

Originally posted by insaan
reply to post by Aeons

 

Sorry I'm lost by your post, but I have laid down my point of view very clearly and can't make it any more clearer, in that sense the discussion has ended here for me.

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” ― Oscar Wilde

Originally posted by SeekerofTruth101
2. The Karzai gov, no matter its flaws, ARE STILL the PEOPLE's choice, won by a free election based upon Afghan's free will. The taliban? They are mere nobodies. No body elected them. They EXISTS only because their voice are loud and are willing to MURDER others to achieve their aims, regardless if afghans or fellow humans.

Karzai government? You mean ex-mujahideen fighters that were supplied and trained by the US during the 90s? The same Northern Alliance that fought with the Taliban for feudal control over Afghanistan?

Funny how you say "free elections" as if elections are part of Afghan culture. The "free elections" were forced on Afghans under American occupation, and it should be no surprise that the winners were the US allies with the only other serious rival faction (aside from the communist party) deemed as the evil terrorists who were not allowed in the election for obvious reasons.

I mean, how could the Taliban be allowed in the elections if they were the labelled enemy in the invasion? So free indeed. Wouldn't it had been funny if the Afghan people elected the Taliban instead of the American proxy warlords/druglords? That possibility was not allowed. The only reason those elections happened was to legitimize the fact that the US was invading Afghanistan regardless of who was there at the time; if the Northern Alliance was in control of Kabul in late September, 2001, then the Americans probably would have bought off the Taliban to help "liberate" the Afghan people from the perceived Northern Alliance terrorists.

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

Originally posted by nenothtu

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

Unfortunately I've already seen the data that proves that Taliban attacks have been both desperate and resulting in a mere fraction of the catastrophe that the Americans have brought to the region.

Too bad.

Maybe they ought to rethink who they pick fights with.

"Brought catastrophe to the region"? What is it you think wars are composed of? Flowers, skittles, and unicorns?

Taliban picked a fight with who?

The US.

Originally posted by Aeons

Originally posted by nenothtu

Originally posted by Aeons
reply to post by beezzer

 

The definition of "win" just has to change, because the type of war isn't the same.

The amorphous tribal conflict brought forward in time. The definition of "win" needs to be updated in the minds of the West.

A "win" is what you have when you've accomplished your objective.

You have a different definition in mind?

Nope - just a pressing need for the objective to be clarified in the minds of the public.

I'd be tickled if they just settled on an objective, and stopped moving the goalposts around.

Take Afghanistan as an example, It was my understanding that we originally went there to erase AQ and the Taliban which was harboring them - making of themselves an AQ ally and a US enemy by so doing. Now, it seems, the goals has changed to everything from "regime change" to "protecting the flower of Afghan womanhood", depending on who you are talking to.

I personally think the originally stated goal was plenty sufficient, and specific enough. Now the water is just being muddied with excuses, it seems to me. Some of those other things would occur in the pursuit of the original goals, but they are side issues, not the goals.

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi
if the Northern Alliance was in control of Kabul in late September, 2001, then the Americans probably would have bought off the Taliban to help "liberate" the Afghan people from the perceived Northern Alliance terrorists.

Baloney.

Speculative revisionist history at it's finest.

The Northern Alliance was already in control of roughly 40 percent of Afghanistan. The only way your speculative fiction could be tested would be if they had been in control of the parts of Afghanistan where OBL resided, and had refused to turn him over. That was not the case - the Taliban fell into that groove, and we see what happened in the real world, not some alternate universe.

Oddly, perhaps, all indications are precisely opposite of your speculation. AQ was fighting alongside of the Taliban and against the NA (this is why the road to Kabul was paved with AQ corpses that the NA was stuffing money into the mouths of - an Afghan tradition of derision - and why AQ were the ones to assassinate Masud, one of the NA leaders, just before 9/11), so it hardly seems logical that the NA would have refused to turn OBL over had it been within their power to do so.

When trying to pass fantasy as fact, it's usually best to try to make it at least plausible.

reply to post by Tw0Sides

So what was the point of this war ?

Money for the contractors, political capital and drug money for the CIA. Basically always the same things.

Originally posted by nenothtu
When trying to pass fantasy as fact, it's usually best to try to make it at least plausible.

Or even palatable with a smattering of even the tiniest amount of those missing facts.

Originally posted by nenothtu

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi
if the Northern Alliance was in control of Kabul in late September, 2001, then the Americans probably would have bought off the Taliban to help "liberate" the Afghan people from the perceived Northern Alliance terrorists.

Baloney.

Speculative revisionist history at it's finest.

The Northern Alliance was already in control of roughly 40 percent of Afghanistan. The only way your speculative fiction could be tested would be if they had been in control of the parts of Afghanistan where OBL resided, and had refused to turn him over. That was not the case - the Taliban fell into that groove, and we see what happened in the real world, not some alternate universe.

Alternate universe?

The US planned to spread out its forces throughout the middle east years before 9/11. Afghanistan was the insertion destination for the strategy. My point is that it doesn't really matter who was in charge of Afghanistan because if they refused to bend over for the US and its "coalition" friends, then they were going to get invaded anyways. Afghanistan was the weakest link of nations in the region in terms of political stability so obviously it would be both an easy place to conquer (the political structure anyways) and use as a patsy for nationalist propaganda (like using "9/11" to justify who the perceived enemy is).

I mean, I find it offensive when somebody describes how it was such a great thing that we liberated Afghans from the Taliban. It's as if they are too ignorant to pick up a book on modern geostrategy and research some terms like PNAC. The Afghan mission has nothing to do with helping these people, unless helping them provides us with popular support within the larger theatre of operations. Such a notion of "democracy" and "free elections" is even more offensive, because it was a complete sham. Karzai was practically a CIA asset, and his family was big within the warlord class; it's not like he was Joe Afghan of the people.

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

Alternate universe?

Yes. Alternate Universe. I didn't stutter. Your scenario is plausible in no real world, given the facts on the ground of the Northern Alliance vs. the AQ - Taliban axis in Afghanistan. There is no real world situation in which your scenario would have come to pass of the Northern Alliance refusing to hand over bin Laden had it been within their power to do so.

A-L-T-E-R-N-A-T-E U-N-I-V-E-R-S-E.

The US planned to spread out its forces throughout the middle east years before 9/11. Afghanistan was the insertion destination for the strategy. My point is that it doesn't really matter who was in charge of Afghanistan because if they refused to bend over for the US and its "coalition" friends, then they were going to get invaded anyways. Afghanistan was the weakest link of nations in the region in terms of political stability so obviously it would be both an easy place to conquer (the political structure anyways) and use as a patsy for nationalist propaganda (like using "9/11" to justify who the perceived enemy is).

uh huh. I'm sure you must have some sources or evidence to back that assertion up, right? You know, Pentagon planning documents or something, anything, other than trying to back ONE speculation up with another... right?

I mean, I find it offensive when somebody describes how it was such a great thing that we liberated Afghans from the Taliban. It's as if they are too ignorant to pick up a book on modern geostrategy and research some terms like PNAC. The Afghan mission has nothing to do with helping these people, unless helping them provides us with popular support within the larger theatre of operations. Such a notion of "democracy" and "free elections" is even more offensive, because it was a complete sham. Karzai was practically a CIA asset, and his family was big within the warlord class; it's not like he was Joe Afghan of the people.

Indeed, some people make that claim, I presume in an effort to appeal to bleeding heart humanists, but I have to agree, "helping Afghans" was never the objective - it was just a fringe benefit of accomplishing the objective - if that were ever to get accomplished, that is.

"Regime change" may have been an ancillary objective (removing the Taliban from the face of the planet would necessitate some changes, one would think), but I agree if that were in the cards, they went about it all wrong. Afghanistan never has been, nor ever will be, ripe for "democracy", and the new regime should have been something palateble to them, rather than installed by us - just like Najibullah should not have been installed by the Soviets - we see what that led to, same as we see what this led to.

I am absolutely against democracy - and all other forms of socialism - and will fight them to my last breath. Democracy is incompatible with individual freedom.

Karzai was more than "practically" a CIA asset - he WAS a CIA asset at one point, and a troublesome one at that. His political ambitions were inconsistent with maintaining the low profile required of intelligence assets. It's hard to stay incognito while constantly drawing attention to ones self. He wasn't "Joe Afghan", but it wouldn't be expected that a leader ever will be "Joe Nationality" any where. The US has certainly never had a man of the people rise to leadership, nor has any other country of which I am aware. The average "man of the People" doesn't have the wherewithal to rise to leadership. Being leader material automatically sets him apart from the people.

The Soviet Union made two major mistakes in Afghanistan that the US should have learned from, and did not. One was installation of a government into a culture you have no understanding of, and thinking that will be acceptable. It won't be. Ever. That is the fault of politicians with no understanding pf political or cultural realities or the relationships between the two.

The other was throwing a massive ground invasion into a guerrilla theater. that has never worked. It seems the Soviets should have understood that, given their proclivity for sparking guerrilla wars around the globe during the Cold War, but somehow they seem to have thought they would never face the same thing, or that they were immune. They weren't. In the case of the US, that bone-headed move lies squarely at the feet of the Generals, who for the most part have no concept of how guerrilla warfare works, despite their over-education.

We actually had the war won just a few weeks in, and the conventional generals ran in and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Dumbasses.