The War in Afghanistan Is Only the Beginning

[poncho]

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Something has gone terribly wrong in Afghanistan. The heaviest fighting there since the 2001 U.S. invasion has recently erupted. Many Americans, who were then assured by neocons and their media trumpets that their nation had triumphantly won the war in Afghanistan and crushed the Taliban, are dismayed and bewildered.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] In 2001, unable to withstand high-tech U.S. forces, Taliban’s leader, Mullah Omar, ordered his men, who had been fighting the Afghan Communists and pro-Russian Tajiks, to disband, exchange their black turbans for white ones, and blend into the civilian population.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] At the time, this writer, who covered the 1980’s Great Jihad in Afghanistan and ensuing birth of Taliban, warned war would resume in about four years, just as it did after the 1979 Soviet invasion. This prediction was greeted with jeers, and accusations of idiocy and lack of patriotism.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Now, as predicted, Taliban forces have taken the offensive against U.S. and NATO troops, often employing deadly new tactics, like roadside and suicide bombs, learned from Iraq’s resistance. Casualties are mounting on both sides.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Significantly for an independent-minded people unused to cooperation of any kind, the Taliban movement has been joined by many other political and tribal groups to form a national resistance against foreign occupation. Prominent among them: Hisbi Islami, led by former CIA protégé Gulbadin Hekmatyar, the most effective guerilla leader in the 1980’s anti-Soviet jihad, and renowned mujahidin leader, Jallaludin Haqqani.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Small numbers of foreign jihadis have also come to fight. Most important, growing numbers of "khels," or clans of the Pashtun (Pathan) tribe – the world’s largest tribal group, numbering 40 million – have joined the resistance. Pashtuns comprise half Afghanistan’s 30 million population. Another 28 million Pushtuns live just across the border, known as the Durand Line, in Pakistan. The Durand Line is an artificial border created, like so many others in Africa and Asia, by British imperialists. Most Afghans reject the legality of the line, which sunders their people.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The U.S./NATO campaign is increasingly directed against warlike Pashtun tribes like the Afridi and Orokzai, and their civilians, rather than against so-called "Taliban terrorists." However, distinguishing between "Taliban militants" and ordinary farmers or merchants is extremely difficult from fast-flying fighter aircraft and attack helicopters. The U.S./NATO policy seems to be shoot or bomb first, then label the casualties as "terrorists" or "collateral damage caused by Taliban hiding in civilian homes."[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Until recently, million of dollars in monthly cash bribes from CIA to Afghan warlords kept key areas under nominal authority of the U.S.-installed Karzai regime. The writ of this long-time CIA "asset" barely extends beyond the capitol, Kabul. Only Western bayonets keep him in office.
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[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]SOURCE[/FONT]


[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]History repeating itself?
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[Phillip]

Copyright violation

Poncho, you are potentially committing Copyright violation by quoting from that website. Your entire post is no more than a clip and paste of the columnists website with the exception of the link and last line. Don't do this any more. Just provide a link.

Now, to the debate. A lot of the information there appears quite contrary to the information you are posting. Bits and pieces are true, but it is not nearly as much of a problem as you think it is. With the Army's new Assymetrical warfighters on the ground I think you will see a much more lethal armed force.

As to your bomb first and then name the casulaties terrorists, you could not be farther from the truth. The bottom line is that the warfighters determine their targets very well before the bombs are dropped. Are there mistakes? Sure, anytime you drop explosives there will be some mistakes, but they are much less than what you lead people to believe. The Air Force works very hard with intelligence sources on the ground to identify and designate the targets.

The warfighter of today is far superior to what you would even guess.

 

[Revmitchell]

And Neocons never get dismayed, only temporarily disoriented.:laugh:

 

[poncho]

Poncho, you are potentially committing Copyright violation by quoting from that website. Your entire post is no more than a clip and paste of the columnists website with the exception of the link and last line. Don't do this any more. Just provide a link.

Now, to the debate. A lot of the information there appears quite contrary to the information you are posting. Bits and pieces are true, but it is not nearly as much of a problem as you think it is. With the Army's new Assymetrical warfighters on the ground I think you will see a much more lethal armed force.

As to your bomb first and then name the casulaties terrorists, you could not be farther from the truth. The bottom line is that the warfighters determine their targets very well before the bombs are dropped. Are there mistakes? Sure, anytime you drop explosives there will be some mistakes, but they are much less than what you lead people to believe. The Air Force works very hard with intelligence sources on the ground to identify and designate the targets.

The warfighter of today is far superior to what you would even guess.

The question was...is history repeating itself? You gave answers to questions I never asked, and okay I'll only post a link to this site from now on.

 

[Brother James]

[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif][/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Hegemonic Tyrant Courts Doom[/FONT]

[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif][/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]by Paul Craig Roberts
[/FONT]by Paul Craig Roberts
​

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Finding itself in Republican sights and with no Democratic power center to offer protection, National Public Radio is turning into an upscale version of Fox "News." Nevertheless, information still gets out if the listener is sufficiently attentive.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]On July 5, NPR’s "All Things Considered" interviewed two warmongers for their views on the North Korean missile test. One was Ashton Carter, a Clinton administration Assistant Secretary of Defense, now at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The other was Ambassador Christopher Hill, an Assistant Secretary of State in the Bush regime.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]The Clinton DOD assistant secretary is coauthor of a recent article advocating a unilateral US military attack on North Korea. His first pitch on NPR was that the whole region, not just the US, is threatened by North Korea and that everyone should gang up on North Korea to make them behave. The NPR interviewer asked Carter to reconcile his multilateralism with his own recommendation for the US to unilaterally attack North Korea. Carter replied that North Korea’s missile was developed to attack us, so we had to protect ourselves.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]When the NPR interviewer asked Carter why deterrence would fail with North Korea when deterrence succeeded in the case of the more powerful Soviet Union, Carter agreed that North Korea was not sufficiently insane to launch an attack on the US. So, if the US is not in danger of being attacked by North Korea, why does Carter want to attack North Korea?[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]The answer is, well, you see, if we permit North Korea to develop any weapon with which they might be able to stand up to us on some issue critical to North Korea, well, they might not do as we want them to do. Carter could not conceive of a world in which any country existed that might be able to behave differently than the US dictates.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Ambassador Hill agreed, but he came at it in a different way. Hill’s view is that it is China’s, Japan’s, and South Korea’s responsibility to make North Korea behave as the US wants it to behave. Both Hill and Carter agreed that no country, with the exception of Israel, has a right to any interests of its own unless it is an interest that coincides with US interests. No other interest is legitimate.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Listening to the pair of hegemonic maniacs, I realized that the US is the new Rome – there is no legitimate power but us. Any other power is a potential threat to our interests and must be eliminated before it gets any independent ideas. The US, however, is far more dangerous than Rome. Rome saw its world as the Mediterranean and, for a while, Northern Europe, but the US thinks the whole world is its oyster. The Bush regime is busy trying to marginalize Russia, and neocons are preparing war plans to attack China before that country can achieve military parity with the US. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Gentle reader, consider what it means when our government believes other countries have no right to their own interests unless they coincide with US interests. It means that we are the tyrant country. We cannot be the tyrant country without being perceived as the tyrant country. Consequently, the rest of the world unites against us. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]How is the US, which has spent three years proving that it cannot successfully occupy Iraq, a small country of only 25 million people, going to control India, China, Russia, Europe, Africa and South America? [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]It’s not going to happen. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]What it does mean is that the US government in its hubris and delusion is going to continue starting wars and attacking other countries until a coalition of greater forces smashes us. Even among our European allies we are already perceived as the greatest threat to world peace and stability. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/076152553X/lewrockwell/Our power is not what it once was. We are weak in manufacturing and dependent on China for advanced technology products. We are dependent on China to finance our wars, our budget and trade deficits. How long will China accommodate us when China reads about Bush’s plans to prevent China from achieving military parity?[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]The Bush regime thinks that it can have every country under its thumb. Neocons are fond of proclaiming that it is a unipolar world in which the US is supreme. This is a fantasy, and it is rapidly becoming a nightmare.[/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]July 7, 2006[/FONT]​

[FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif][/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Dr. Roberts [send him mail] [/FONT][FONT=Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif][/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]is Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com[/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Paul Craig Roberts Archives [/FONT]​

Find this article at:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts168.html

 

[emeraldctyangel]

Its likely that we are once again getting close to a strong hold the remaining taliban dont want disturbed. Why dont you just wait and see what happens?

 

[poncho]

Its likely that we are once again getting close to a strong hold the remaining taliban dont want disturbed. Why dont you just wait and see what happens?

So, in other words...trust us we're the government, we'll eventually get around to telling you what to think.