Afghanistan: yes or no?

[PurityOfEssence]

What should we do?

Should we continue as our President is doing: assessing information and finding the way that's the most agreeable to the most people to accomplish whatever the fuck we're doing there that we can't even seem to define?

Should we withdraw completely?

Should we reduce our presence to a UN mission to safeguard the "government" in Kabul?

Should we marginally increase our troop strength so we can huff and puff and intimidate absolute fanatics who are on a supernatural frenzied quest to purify the land for their big sky chief?

Should we pour massive resources into a full-on war to squash the resistance?

Should we go for the full stupid and attack Pakistan?

What are your thoughts?

[gleaner]

1. I think we should simply ....

withdraw. There is no purpose to our involvement in Afghanistan. It is very much like Viet Nam where nothing is as it seems and nothing is being accomplished except death to our military and an increase in carnage and suffering to the civilians of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is like every other country. It has the right to determine what type of government it wants without being occupied by foreign troops who are serving interests which do not necessarily benefit the people of Afghanistan. After all the years of fighting in Viet Nam and all the death and destruction it ended with a whimper in a disorganized and abrupt pullout which left the civilians who had helped the US at risk and in peril. Afghanistan will end the same way. The only question is how many years do we prolong everyone's suffering before we pull out as we should have done long ago.

The terrorists are not in Afghanistan any longer. Would you stay where you were being hunted, or would you try to find safety in some other place. I believe that many if not most of the terrorists who were left alive in Afghanistan after the first and most intense attacks there under Bush simply fled to Pakistan. Pakistan has nuclear weapons which it has shown no compunction about wanting to use. You're right about being crazy to go in there, even if there was a good reason to do so.

The 9/11 attacks were heinous, but what similar acts of terror have we experienced since? How many of the terrorist "threats" that Bush treated us to ever panned out? Other than that guy who was going to destroy the Brooklyn bridge with a welding torch by himself I can't think of any. I wasn't too worried about that one. I think someone would have noticed him dismantling the bridge before it actually fell down.

[PhD]

7. Bizarre logic

"After all the years of fighting in Viet Nam and all the death and destruction it ended with a whimper in a disorganized and abrupt pullout which left the civilians who had helped the US at risk and in peril. Afghanistan will end the same way. The only question is how many years do we prolong everyone's suffering before we pull out as we should have done long ago."

So your argument is that the good people in Afghanistan are going to be brutalized anyway, so let's just get it over with sooner?

"The terrorists are not in Afghanistan any longer."

So if we leave, you think they just won't come back?

"The 9/11 attacks were heinous, but what similar acts of terror have we experienced since?"

So invading the country did nothing to prevent another attack? How do you make that leap of logic?

[gleaner]

12. I don't know what you thought y you ...

were reading, but I don't think you understood what you read in my post at all. My position is that it is never right to kill, maim, destroy and obliterate someone else's country. Afghanistan has the same right to self government that any other nation has. I think the war should stop period. Does that clarify what I meant for you? If not I can make it even more basic than this, though I think what I wrote in the first place was perfectly clear. Maybe your comprehension of what I wrote is not as precise as you think it is.

Again, why would they come back? They are safe, protected and well armed. In Pakistan where even George Bush said they were fleeing to along the "porous" border, they even have nukes. There are no US troops there and none likely to be allowed to enter. That is why Obama is using drones to such an extent. Do you think he is sailing them over Pakistan because he is frustrated in a secret desire to play with model airplanes that was nipped in the bud when he was a child? No? Neither do I. I think he is taking a considerable risk that the Pakistanis in their eagerness to avoid the same fate as Iraq and Afghanistan will get really, really testy and lob a nuclear missile back. They have the capability, and if it hasn't escaped your notice they are not reacting well to what they consider threats from the US government.

See if you can see the fallacy in your own last line. It is no leap of logic. The US rushed into Afghanistan with all of the allies George Bush could muster. They pounded crap out of all of the places the terrorists were hiding. If the terrorists survived they had a choice. Wait to be pounded again, or cross the border into Pakistan to seek safe haven. Let's see what would I have done. On the one hand being bombed into mincemeat has a certain allure, but I think escaping with my life to fight another day would have seemed the better alternative. What do you think? Blasted into paste, or alive and well. Maybe you could take your own "leap of logic" and come up with your own answer. Maybe you could explain to me how rushing into Afghanistan, killing everything that moved and then abandoning it abruptly in favor of fighting in Iraq, the one place which did not harbor Al Qaeda kept the terrorists from attacking again? It is sure a puzzle.

I don't think killing people ever teaches them anything about peace or abandoning terrorism. For one thing the ones who die are not capable of taking away any pithy lessons and the ones who live, like people everywhere, want to determine how they live and be safe and out of danger. Most of the people in Afghanistan are not terrorists, they simply no longer had the ability to stop them or run them out. They had been brutalized and decimated for close to ten years by the Russians and then savaged even more by the Taliban. I would suggest that you read a bit of history about the area and see what you can draw from it.

I also see that you have very few posts. A leap of logic tells me that this means you must be new here. Welcome to DU.

[PhD]

20. In case you haven't noticed

The terrorists are not safe and cushy in Pakistan. They're being decimated both by American air strikes and the Pakistani army. Being squeezed on all sides, being forced into hiding, and having many key leaders killed is probably the single greatest reason there have been no attacks on the US since 9/11.

I've been here for years. I just go months at a time without posting.

[gleaner]

25. Answered your second post....

before I got this one. I was going only by the post count. I posted here once before too in 2004, but my MS got so bad I had to stop. They kept my old user name and I hear that they keep them forever. I forgot what it was so I re-registered with a new one and they let me keep it. If you are changing user names every few months your post count stays low and again, unless you tell me I have no way of knowing your posting habits. But back to the post.

I never said the terrorists were "cushy" in Pakistan. They are still being hunted, but decimated? I doubt it. To decimate their numbers the whole country of Pakistan would have to be decimated as well. Al Quada is known for having its operatives in very small cells or groups. Sometimes one operative will only know one other. They spread out and hide far apart and take action in small groups or individually. No one has proven that their leaders are all dead. Bush kept claiming that he had killed the same second in command. He said it about 12 times. Since none of the lower echelon operatives know who the leaders are, and take instructions only from people known to them, how would this be a deterrant? Besides, if they are extant and surviving do you think they would not replace leaders or recruit new members? Before they made their attack on 9/11 they produced a notorious recruitment tape and even a handbook on how to commit terrorist acts that was posted on the internet. Anyone could access it. It had a great attraction to people of like mind.

Besides, the more people are brutalized, the more likely they are to bore in and try to attack those who they think are responsible for it. They have operatives all over the world. There have been terror attacks attributed to them all over the world which took place during and after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and still continue. So what did the wars stop in reality? And why, after all of those attacks abroad did nothing more happen here?

I can tell that you believe deeply in the efficacy of the action taken by George Bush in Afghanistan, but I don't. It solved nothing. The subsequent attacks abroad increased, not decreased, but nothing happened here. There was and is a procedure in place for the President to deal with attacks exactly like those which took place here. It involved protocols using the military and following procedures to remove the attackers from the sky. George Bush did not follow those protocols. Instead he sat in an elementary school in Florida after he had been apprised of the situation reading from a book called "My Pet Goat." Dick Cheney promptly went so deeply into hiding that virtually no one knew where he was. Immediately after the attacks, Bush saw to it that the Bin Laden family was flown out of the country before they could be interviewed by the FBI. Does any of this suggest anything to you? At best I question Bush and Cheney and their motives for inaction. Bush had previous intelligence warning him of hijacked planes that were to be flown into buildings, but he didn't even alert airport security so that they could be on the lookout.

The CIA official who delivered the prior intelligence to him reported that all Bush said after he had read it was a thank you and then, "You can go now. You've covered your ass." Could the Bush administration have been complicit? We will probably never know. Bush suppressed the information coming out of the 9/11 hearings and nothing ever came of them. The Bush administration made no secret that they wanted a war in the mid east, especially in Iraq. The attack triggered the war in Afghanistan, Bush followed up with the war in Iraq, made a serious attempt to attack Iran and then his second term was up an McCain was defeated.

One thing I have understood about the terrorists and about people who are not terrorists but who are occupied by a large military presence from another country which they want gone, is that they are eager to fight. They have nothing more to lose, and someone with nothing to lose fights harder than anyone. If someone attacked you for something you had done, would you run away and return no more, or would you fight as if your life depended on it? And what would you take away? Memories of the ideas of your attacker or simply that you had been attacked and injured? It is basic human psychology. Fear and brutality never teach anyone anything but how to escalate brutality in return.

As for the terrorists being squeezed by the Pakistani army, you shouldn't count on it as a means to obliterate them. What they are doing is fighting the Pakistani army to take over the Pakistani government. Much of the population of Pakistan is sympathetic to them and agree with their actions. Why would they ever want to go back to Afghanistan? Even the caves they hid in were bombed into dust. Guess that really taught them a lesson. Just ask the people of Pakistan who don't agree with them, but may come to do so if Obama continues to pound them with drones. The more things change the more they stay the same. I still suggest you do a bit more study both of these engagements and the war in Viet Nam. I am old enough to have lived through that too, and the similarities are eye popping.

[PurityOfEssence]

9. Interesting: so if we leave Afghanistan, will Pakistan stabilize?

Much as this other poster thinks you're addle-headed, I'd say you have a good grip on the situation.

Reading your post made it dawn on me for the first time that if we leave Afghanistan, perhaps the nutcases who have snuck over to Pakistan to avoid the occupation might be so tied up consolidating their hold on Afghanistan that it would take their attention away from mischief in Pakistan.

Hmmm...

[gleaner]

11. As I understood the situation ....

Musharriff the former president of Pakistan who is now a private citizen, was disliked intensely by the religious fundamentalists in his country, and the population at large.

He made an alliance with Bush to keep power, but it was unstable at best and as soon as there was an election he was removed from office and a new government comprised of mainstream Muslims won the government. The Taliban entered Pakistan partly to escape the US in Afghanistan but in large part to take over the government and seize power from the moderates. The two factions are fighting each other, and the Taliban is firmly entrenched there.

Pakistan was the country which had madrasas to train fundamentalists which Musharriff was never able to close or effectively counter. Those schools spawned a lot of the more militant Moslems who fought in Afghanistan, and were not above performing acts of terrorism all over the world. I don't think the Taliban which shares that philosophy and some of whom may have attended the madrasas have any more interest in Afghanistan. I think they are bent on taking down the moderate government in Pakistan the way they helped bring down the government in Afghanistan after they went into Afghanistan following the Russian occupation. Occupation of a nation by a foreign country always leaves a vacuum which is filled by the more extreme and militant power seekers either from the occupied nation itself or from a neighboring country.

Afghanistan is shattered. There is really no central government left. I remember reading during the early days of the US occupation that government there had been reduced to the tribal level. Donald Rumsfeld said the same thing when he was showing a video of US troops fighting along side Afghanian troops on horse back with sabers. There is nothing left in Afghanistan. The Russians did a lot of damage and killed a lot of the population. The Taliban followed suit afterwords even destroying the ancient Buddha statues carved into the mountainsides which were about 1800 years old.

The Taliban will continue to be a force in Pakistan. The US is not allowed free access there anymore. They are safe, they are protected by a large part of the population which has seen the damage that was done by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are hated in that part of the world. It is not our say so there. We are outnumbered and we are fighting in an alien environment as we were in Viet Nam. I don't think Afghanistan is desirable to the terrorists anymore. Why go back when they have a safe haven in Pakistan with superior weapons, a greater degree of public support and the resources to rebuild what they lost and possibly become a force for worldwide terror again?

It makes no sense to keep looking for terrorists in a place you know they are no longer present, while what is left of an enraged and injured population tries to kill your troops and take back their country. That is why occupation does not work. It serves to unify opposition, not to overcome it.

And I probably am addle headed. Most Quakers are. I think it happens when we see the results of wars of attrition repeat themselves over and over again with no one ever seeming to learn that if you perform the same act you will get the same results.

[PurityOfEssence]

13. No, you are not addle-headed; that was a reply to the poster who slagged you

I'm in accord with your assessment and wish more saw it the way you do.

[gleaner]

19. Thank you ...

I didn't think you were calling me "addle headed." I was making a slightly lame attempt at humor there. I probably should have put an emoticon. Sometimes it it is hard to tell from the bare bones of a post what tone is being offered.

The poster who slagged me got his own answer, but I haven't heard back from him. If only he knew how lonely I get when people who distort my posts do not reply to my clarifications.:rofl:

Quakers also love to debate. It is one of the things we are encouraged to do. Thinking, assessing, questioning, and discussing. How else does anyone learn new things, or get a better perspective on a perplexing situation?

[PhD]

21. For the record, I'm a she

And I actually have a job, so I can't post here all day long.

[gleaner]

22. Sorry about that ....

It is really difficult to tell who you are posting to unless they tell you. Anyhow, if you ever want a good debate post me when you can, and I'll do my best to give you one.

I hope you enjoy posting here, and really, welcome to DU.;)

[lefty369]

15. All the women and children will get killed. We need to send many more

troops to help get back the area. The way things are going we obviously need more troops ASAP to prevent the situation from getting out of hand.

[Flaneur]

18. You're joking, right?

It's not our area to "get back."

All the women and children will not get killed. Why would you say that?

The situation is already well out of hand.

"Lefty" must refer to which hand you write with.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

2. Get out as though there was a 5 alarm

fire in your house. Except of course there are probably business interests that will fight that thinking. War is a racket.........

[David Zephyr]

3. I'm with George McGovern.

There's nothing to win, nothing to gain by continuing Bush's folly.

The Taliban are evil. But no more than the Saudi dictators.

Karzai is a Bush/Cheney plant and puppet and he knows what happens to Bush family puppets who stray (Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Chalabi...) so he will be a pipeline to Cheney and continue to undermine our troops there as he lines his and his family's pockets with taxpayer money while our troops bleed.

There's no easy solution, but propping up corrupt governments and participating in guerilla wars is a guarantee to more grief.

It's Bush's war. Obama needs to pull out.

Just his "dithering" has already gotten NATO allies now wanting to get more involved. Funny how that works, isn't it?

I'm glad you asked the questions. It's more important than most of the nonsense we talk about here.

It is the real issue.

I think we need to leave.

If the fake tough guy Ronald Reagan can pull out of Lebanon after he put us there, then certainly Obama can pull out of Bush's war.

Kerry had it right. It's a police action against Al Queda. They are in Somalia and other countries, too. Do we invade them, too.

And being in Afghanistan to keep Pakistan's nuclear weapons from extremists is as logical as invading Iraq because of 9/11.

We need to leave Iraq and Afghanistan.

And if Obama doesn't do it for the right reasons, then let him ponder his ambition against the midterms next year. Americans are sick of these wars.

[Horse with no Name]

4. Leave.

Let our soldiers come home and start getting their lives back together.

[dysfunctional press]

5. in the words of the amityville horror house...

GET...

...OUT!!

[optimator]

6. there is no threat to the physical usa

from a bunch of dirt poor Pakistanis and war isn't necessary to protect their nukes from extremists

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. We lost (again). Get out. Get over it. Now, it's just poltical CYA to stay.

[PurityOfEssence]

10. It really is more that than anything else, isn't it?

Gotta be all tough and manly. The very idea of trying to out-macho a bunch of primitive fundamentalists doesn't make a lick of sense. Hell, Iraqis are positively first-world in comparison to these guys.

[spanone]

14. get. out. now. thank. you.

[branders seine]

16. Military out of Afghanistan immediately. Tomorrow. Right now.

civilian assistance to Afghanistan drastically increased immediately.

[Mari333]

17. get OUT!

[Greyhound]

23. No more blood for oil (or natural gas).

No more empire in the name of corporatism.

[excess_3]

24. get out now.