Is there anyone here that truly believes we have something to fear from

[Winterblues]

anyone living in Afghanistan? Is the USA really being threatened? Which do you personally fear more, an outlaw motorcycle gang or a gang of Al Qaeda? For you personally, which has the greatest liklihood of causing you actual harm? I do not believe there is truly any justification for the USA being in either Iraq or Afghanistan. I do not recognize any real threat from either Iraqis or Afghans. I do recognize a real threat from Criminals living here in the USA, yet police forces are being cut and jails are letting out prisoners because we can't afford to keep them. I just wonder if anyone here can actually really justify our occupations of both countries.

[ZombieHorde]

1. I fear for the women of Afghanistan. I don't think our war is the best way to help them,

but I hope we can do something for them. I wish I had a solution to the world's civil rights problems.

[uncommon]

15. Seconded.

Our actions are making life worse for them, which is very sad.

Unfortunately worldwide civil rights movements need to be started by the citizens of the countries in which those rights are denied - as much as we wish we could export the best of America, we can't. Not without exporting the worst as well, and not without stepping on the toes of citizens of other countries.

[dmallind]

2. At this point the justification is not on risk however

It's more of a "we broke it, we need to at least try and fix it" thing. We are getting closer, but not there, in Iraq to that goal, but there's a ways to go in Afghanistan.

Question - what would happen if we left Afghansitan today? To the Afghans that is?

[Stinky The Clown]

3. "Question - what would happen if we left Afghansitan today? To the Afghans that is? "

They would go back to doing what they have been doing for millenia - living a fundamental life and maintain their tribal societal structures.

Yes, they kill their women for adultering.

Yes, they violate our standards of human rights.

Yes, they support themselves with poppy crops and the product that can be used to make.

Yes, they tend not to like our democratic ways.

NONE of that is our business, really.

We can change NONE of that.

[jdlh8894]

6. Just like "we" couldn't change Hitler's views towards the Jews?

[lame54]

9. we never changed his view

[jdlh8894]

13. No, "we" put a STOP to it! n/t

[Edweird]

21. Afghanistan = Vietnam. Afghanistan /= WWII.

[jdlh8894]

26. Sorry , I thought we were equating social injustice-

not comparing "occupations".

[DebJ]

14. I disagree, because educating women has an enormous

impact. If by they, you mean men, then, okay. When you educate the women, mortality declines, literacy increases exponentially, values begin to change.

Yes, we can change that....with education.

On edit: you change the men by changing/empowering the women who raise them.

[uncommon]

18. Amen.

[uncommon]

17. Every human being has a vested interest in the life of every other human being.

"It's none of our business" is moral relativism and it's garbage.

What we can't do is simply run in and force people to change. But we can certainly encourage social change around the world.

We can certainly give a crap about human rights for ALL humans, not just the ones who happen to live near us.

[Winterblues]

20. But at the point of a gun?

:shrug: Do we need a hundred thousand troops to help them educate their women and build their roads?

[uncommon]

24. Of course not. I didn't say that.

That's not the way. It's never been the right way.

[John Q. Citizen]

4. What will happen to them (the Afghanis) if we stay?

[dmallind]

Depends on how good a job we do

of establishing and training a capable army and police force and helping them establish a workable and secure governmental infrastructure.

[Dr.Phool]

19. We trained that army real good.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/26/afghan_national_police_pot_before_patrol/?ref=fpblg

A member of the 82nd Airborne Division recorded this clip of Afghan National Police puffing on a marijuana pipe before going out on patrol

[Andy823]

11. The same thing that happened in Iraq

The people will continue to be in the middle of the war, dying, wounded, starving, and getting madder and madder at the U.S. involvement in their country. The government will remain corrupt as it has been for centuries, and the politicians and war lords will continue to exploit the people while being paid billions from the U.S. government. None of that money will be use do help the people who need it! It's a mess over there, and we can NEVER win the war, never! We need to leave, stop giving money to Karzai and his drug dealing family, and let the people of that country take care of their problems, the ones we put in place when we let people like Karzai and his brother take control of the country!

[JustAnotherGen]

5. It will go back to circa 1992-1194

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) Overview of What Happened to Afghanistan women 1992-1994

[Edweird]

16. Whether we leave tomorrow or 100 years from now the end result will be the same.

It's just a question of how many lives and how much money we are going to throw into it before we leave. After we leave they will return to doing as they have always done. Afghanistan is where empires go to die.

[Winterblues]

23. Actually I heard Ambassador Holbrook say we are there because of National Security

We are there to PROTECT America from Al Qaeda. I do not buy that, since I don't feel we need protecting from Al Qaeda. In the very same interview he said there were not more than a hundred actual Al Qaeda in Afghanistan..

[upi402]

7. There was but we let them escape to Pakistan - our new BFF n/t

[zipplewrath]

8. Don't kid yourself

A nation run by the Taliban, or any other similar cast of marginal characters will be the base for various nonstate actors to foment violence around the world.

However, occupation is not the best strategy to address that problem. Occasional intevention is a superior strategy, and been proposed more than once from both sides of the aisle. Greater engagement of Pakistan is also important, and really was the strategy that Obama campaigned upon.

[Winterblues]

28. Even if ten thousand Al Qaeda all armed with their box cutters

were to occupy Afghanistan I would not fear them..IMO it is irrational.

[zipplewrath]

31. Armed with plane tickets

You're bigger concern should be if they start using the diplomatic pouches of the government to ship equipment to violent actors abroad. They were doing that before 9/11. I suspect they would begin to do it again. There's money in doing it, and the Taliban likes money.

[Winterblues]

33. But you see, that is not my concern

I don't believe it is a feasable argument for the USA to have a hundred thousand troops occupying another country. My concern is more with local criminals than with foreign criminals and in reality that is what Al Qaeda is. They are not uniformed soldiers nor do they follow rules of warfare, so they are nothing more than criminals and have very little chance of effecting me personally. I will not shake and tremble at the mention of Al Qaeda.

[zipplewrath]

36. Well, you should be concerned

I agree, and said as much, that although there is a threat here, the proper response to the threat is not military occupation of the country.

I'd like to see us "wage law enforcement" for a while. It was, in my mind, one of the larger failings of the Bush Administration. After 9/11, we had literally the whole world "behind us". They were ready to "join us" in fighting these nongovernment actors. Virtually every government on the planet doesn't like them, although they aren't oppose to pointing them in another direction. We could have gotten every government to cooperate on finding and apprehending terrorists from around the world. We could have arrange trials all over the planet. It could have potentially ushered in the greatest period of "respect for the law" the world ever say, and created a level of cooperation between the civil governments of the world that we've ever known. It would have provided a major context for confronting a nation like North Korea for their "lawlessness".

Instead we acted like the biggest, dumbest, bully on the planet. And now Obama wants to keep it going for another decade or so.

[gratuitous]

10. Gosh, so many problems

And none of them have yielded to a military solution. The obvious answer is more troops, more money, more tanks, more bombs, more land mines, more artillery, more snipers, more fighter jets, and more contractors. Lots more contractors. Not to mention more clustering and harder fucking.

[Silent3]

12. Even if the occasional hijacking or bombing in the US...

...is somehow prevented by our actions (which is questionable), the cost/benefit ratio for Afghanistan isn't worth it. We could save far more lives putting the same money into health care, environmental protection, safety measures, etc.

The risk of nuclear terrorism is the biggest problem -- that's one where substantial prevention effort could well be justified. Millions could be killed in one attack, and tremendous economic damage would follow. But even there, I'd think there are better ways to lower those risks that the war in Afghanistan.

When it comes to a conventional terrorist attack, I know my personal odds a very low -- I face much bigger risks from automobile accidents. Nuclear terrorism -- that's harder to evaluate. I'd still be unlikely to be directly affected, but the odds might be higher -- if a million people are killed or injured in one incident, and there are roughly 300 million people in the US, odds are 1:300 per such incident for each individual in the US (above that for people in major urban centers, lower for people in more rural areas).

Even if not directly affected, I'd be hugely affected emotionally, and not to be too crass, economically too. I think a major economic depression would likely follow such an attack.

Now how likely is nuclear terrorism at all? I have no way to evaluate that. I'm actually pleasantly surprised that such an attack hasn't ever happened yet: there's a lot of unsecured nuclear material out there, the knowledge for making nuclear bombs isn't all that hard to come by, and there are certainly enough people with the desire to set one off in the US. I don't understand what has prevented a nuclear terrorist attack from happening so far, so I have no idea how to evaluate the likelihood for our luck to continue.

[WinkyDink]

22. No. Nor Iraq, nor even Iran. If the USSR didn't attack us, these places won't.

These "wars" (illegal slaughters) are to:


1. Grab Middle East/Asian land, treasures, and resources;

2. Establish a New American Empire, complete with gigantic embassy compounds and permanent military bases;

3. Support our main industry: producing war materiel;

4. Give employment to young people (where would these soldiers work, back here?)(deaths do not matter when there is more fodder available);

5. Promote fear and therefore spying on civilians through the increased use of cameras/RFID chips/GPS;

6. Install American Fascism.

[DirkGently]

25. That's the problem. Afghanistan felt like it made sense

after 9/11, when the Taliban was openly sheltering Bin Laden and (we were told) refused to cooperate or "give him up," if it even had the power to do so, which seems questionable.

But now we've converted to the Vietnam Paradigm, trying to make the world safe for U.S. interests by nation building at gunpoint. The Taliban are bad. Yes, yes they are. And we could oppose it, help its enemies covertly, help Afghanistan build infrastructure, etc. All without this escalating military committment. Even the Pentagon can't describe what a "victory" will look like here. There's this amorphous idea that we'll stay until somehow a "stable, responsible" (e.g., U.S. friendly) government arises.

Can't be done. Not this way, anyway. Military force is great for killing enemies. Doesn't work to "impose democracy" or fight another country's civil war. What the American public in support of the war seems to think is that it's okay to be fighting a vague war against "Islamic Extremism" wherever it can be found, or whatever, which is ridiculous. You can't win a war with an ideology. Like, say, Communism.

And you can't kill people into liking you. It actually works the other way. The not killing them is what people like.

Crazy, right?

[earth mom]

27. Nothing to fear at all. And it's disgusting to see how people justify the genocide

when it's really their own religious prejudice and ignorance that is fueling support for the wars. :puke:

[polly7]

29. 'Viagra lure' for Afghan warlords

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7800549.stm

This invasion and occupation had nothing to do with helping the women of Afghanistan. Many of these 'younger' brides are children, sold like cattle and used as sex-slaves by their elderly 'husbands'. Supplying them with Viagra was a really scummy thing to do.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

30. Not until they complete the Aircraft Carrier being built in the caves of Tora Bora.

The Pentagon is not telling us about this threat until they demand more money for "national security".

[Oregone]

32. Not a risk that justifies the cost

The same amount of people die of drunk driving *each year* in Florida than died on 9/11. For a fraction of the war's cost, we could have preserved many of those lives (as well as lives nationwide) with prevention, counseling, late night check points, etc. A fraction of those funds could be used to screen for breast cancer and treatment, etc, etc, etc....

We could have promoted massive life and well being domestically if those funds were allocated properly. And after doing so, let the scary terrorist chips fall where they may.

Dollar for dollar, life for life, no. Risk in the US that is much cheaper to address was ignored. Risk is not the reason for being there

[treestar]

34. No, at this point I don't think there is much to fear

What I would fear more is Al Qaeda getting away with any other terror attack, during a Republican administration/Congress - that small chance is always there. Then they will use it as they did 911 to make inroads on the Bill of Rights.

[Papagoose]

35. My Republican friends do

some of them also think Iraq and Iran jointly directed the 9/11 attacks though...