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What has really changed in Afghanistan?
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Summer Wine

Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River

Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:07 pm Post subject: What has really changed in Afghanistan?

Quote:

Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without � say his friends and family � being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death. He was not represented by a lawyer at the trial, which was held in secret. This sentence has also been supported by the upper house of the Afghan parliament.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0803/S00114.htm

Who was driven out of Afghanistan? I thought the taliban were the ones who liked this stuff.

Almost 7 years in Afghanistan and it seems not a dent in the extreme positions held in that country. I have had a friend from that country for over 20 years and followed the happenings there, but I really do dispair for it at times.

You would hope that the Afghanis could learn to be more flexible. Sometimes it feels like it might be easier to just wall off the countries who hold extreme views and let them fall back into the stone aqe, while we move on.

yawarakaijin

Joined: 08 Aug 2006

Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:39 pm Post subject:

Afghanistan was just a stage show. There was no way to go into Iraq without at least appearing to be worried about where Al Qaeda were ACTUALLY based. Now its up to British, Dutch, Canadians and others to die for appearances sake.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:07 am Post subject:

yawarakaijin wrote:

Afghanistan was just a stage show. There was no way to go into Iraq without at least appearing to be worried about where Al Qaeda were ACTUALLY based. Now its up to British, Dutch, Canadians and others to die for appearances sake.

You mean Afghanistan was the only place Al Qaeda was?

You do know that exactly ZERO of the 9-11 hijackers were from Afghanistan.

yawarakaijin

Joined: 08 Aug 2006

Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:32 am Post subject:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

yawarakaijin wrote:

You mean Afghanistan was the only place Al Qaeda was?

You do know that exactly ZERO of the 9-11 hijackers were from Afghanistan.

Did I say that Afghanistan was the ONLY place Al-Qaeda was? At the time Bin Laden was in Afghanistan was he not? America couldn't really invade Iraq while Bin Laden was laying back sipping tea in Afghanistan could they?

I might occasionally take issue with your black and white view but I don't dispute the fact that Al Qaeda needs to be dealt with. If you think that America is really giving Afghanistan/Bin Laden the attention it/he deserves....well thats your right.

Personally I don't think they should be dealt with any differently than any other number of terrorist cells that operate around the world. Intelligence gathering, special forces, good solid police work.

I've noticed you are very good at finding links to suppourt your claims. Please locate as many links as possible that suppourt the idea that military campaigns are effective against those who have resorted to terrorist operations.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 9:57 am Post subject:

yawarakaijin wrote:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

yawarakaijin wrote:

You mean Afghanistan was the only place Al Qaeda was?

You do know that exactly ZERO of the 9-11 hijackers were from Afghanistan.

I guess I could show links about an how another mideast regime is celebrating its 30th or even longer anniversary in power. I guess now you are wondering what I mean. Okay mideast regimes are very good at crushing any group that opposes them. They have all been quite successful. That would seem to beis proof that force can in fact work against guerrilla groups.

Mideast regimes are police states they have total control over what happens within there borders. Not only that one of the reasons that there are terrorists is that mideast regimes and elites incite violence and teach hate often as a military tactic.

Mideast regimes if they choose too can destroy Al Qaeda and other terror groups within there own borders. They day they decide to they can find Al Qaeda and the rest and lop off their heads. All the US needs to do is persuade them to do so.

yawarakaijin

Joined: 08 Aug 2006

Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 8:14 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Mideast regimes if they choose too can destroy Al Qaeda and other terror groups within there own borders. They day they decide to they can find Al Qaeda and the rest and lop off their heads. All the US needs to do is persuade them to do so.

And just how do you suppose we persuade them?

Option A: Invade their country, killing countless innocent civilians in the process. Install a "friendly" prime minister. These civilians by the way have no moral right to hold a grudge against us because we were just trying to kill the people that were trying to kill us. They should just forget about the slaughter of their family members and move on with their lives.

Option B: Suppourt any thuggish regime with financial and military backing in the hopes that in their expansive security sweeps they actually capture a few Al Qaeda. All those tortured, murdered, disappeared by said regime actively suppourted by us...come on! Can't you just take one for the team?

It isn't as glamourous as you Americans like it, but the only effective measure in fighting terrorism is political, backed up by aggressive tactical pinpoint operations and good old fashioned police work. Unless you plan on wiping out the ENTIRE population. Cue wackjob racist "kill em all" response. ( Not directed at you Joo )

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 8:28 pm Post subject:

Please look at this:

Quote:

Arabia 'real reason' for Iraq war
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,9177354%255E1702,00.html
03apr04

FORGET Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The real reason the United States invaded Iraq was Saudi Arabia, according to a US intelligence analyst.

Dr George Friedman, chairman of the United States private sector intelligence company Stratfor, said the US had settled on WMD as a simple justification for the war and one which it expected the public would readily accept.
Dr Friedman, in Australia on a business trip, said the US administration never wanted to explain the complex reasons for invading Iraq, keeping them from both the public and their closest supporters.

"That, primarily, was the fact that Saudi Arabia was facilitating the transfer of funds to al-Qaeda, was refusing to cooperate with the US and believed in its heart of hearts that the US would never take any action against them," he said.

Dr Friedman said the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US prompted the strategy to hunt down al-Qaeda wherever it was to be found. But that proved exceedingly difficult.

"The US was desperate. There were no good policy choices," he said.

"Then the US turned to the question - we can't find al-Qaeda so how can we stop the enablers of al-Qaeda."

He said those enablers, the financiers and recruiters, existed in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

But the Saudi government variously took the view that this wasn't true or that they lacked the ability and strength to act, he said.

Dr Friedman said in March last year, the Saudis responded to US pressure by asking the US to remove all its forces and bases from their territory. To their immense surprise, the US did just that, relocating to Qatar.

He said Saudi Arabia and al-Qaeda shared a number of beliefs including that the US could not fight and win a war in the region and was casualty averse. There was a need to change that perception.

But close by was Iraq, the most strategically located nation in the Middle East, bordering Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey and Iran.

"If we held Iraq we felt first there would be dramatic changes of behaviour from the Saudis," he said. "We could also manipulate the Iranians into a change of policy and finally also lean on the Syrians.

"It wasn't a great policy. It happened to be the only policy available."

Dr Friedman said US President George W Bush faced the difficulty of explaining this policy, particularly to the Saudis. Moves to link Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda failed completely.

"They then fell on WMD for two reasons," he said.

"Nobody could object to WMD and it was the one thing that every intelligence agency knew was true.

"We knew we were going to find them. And we would never have to reveal the real reasons.

"The massive intelligence failure was that everybody including Saddam thought he had WMD. He behaved as if he had WMD. He was conned by his own people."

Because We Could
Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times Op-Ed Columnist
Wednesday, June 4, 2003 Posted: 7:02 AM EDT (1102 GMT)

Quote:

The failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.'s) in Iraq is becoming a big, big story. But is it the real story we should be concerned with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and it's the wrong issue now.

Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason.

The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough because a terrorism bubble had built up over there ?a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured. This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K., having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having state-run newspapers call people who did such things "martyrs" was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such "martyrs" was O.K. Not only was all this seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die.

The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world. And don't believe the nonsense that this had no effect. Every neighboring government ?and 98 percent of terrorism is about what governments let happen ?got the message. If you talk to U.S. soldiers in Iraq they will tell you this is what the war was about.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/06/04/nyt.friedman/

I would like to see the US try these things.

1) Bring back the Clinton mideast plan. ( In fact make Bill Clinton US envoy to the middle east. That way he won't make trouble back home. )

2) Don't attack Iran- not now anyway.

3) Talk to Iran and Syria.

4) Tax imported oil , raise the gas tax

5) Invest in alternative energy , clean coal , nuclear power, better exploration methods with the same effort that the US put in to winning WW II.

6) Pressure the Europeans to , in fact apply horrible pressure to Europe to list Hezzbollah as a terror group.

7) Make the Patriot act permanent.

8 ) Introduce a national ID card like Korea has

9) Set up permanent US military bases in the Kurdish areas.

10) End the CIA ban on assassinations. From now on anyone of note who calls for holy war against the US is legitmate target for assassination. Anyone of note who funds Al Qaeda is a legitmate target for assassination.

11) announce that the US will withdraw from the NPT treaty if Iran tests a nuclear bomb.

12) Do NOT agree to any treaty that limits the deployment of space weapons.

13 ) Fully invest in the next generation of weapon systems.

If the US were to do the above what would the results be? I would bet you all that the US would be in a much better strategic situation than now.

Maybe more would need to be done later - in the end it has to be whatever it takes - but the above would be a start.

Adventurer

Joined: 28 Jan 2006

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 7:22 am Post subject:

Afghanistan has Karzai controlling 30% of Afghanistan. He controlled less in the past. I would say pointing to this unfortunate incident as evidence that nothing has changed in Afghanistan is kind of a stretch even though it is horrible. It is horrible. However, Afghanistan was not better under the Taliban, and there are women who are going to school, there are many people who are enjoying more freedoms. Afghanistan has a long way to go, but the majority of the people are glad that the Taliban are gone. As far as Al Qaeda and repressing them, Saudi Arabia decided to repress them when they were going out of control. Jordan has been hunting down Al Qaeda and sharing information with the CIA and helped the US train Iraqi police. I think that is missing in these posts when all the regimes including allies are painted exactly the same way. It was not only the Arab regimes that once supported Al Qaeda by the way.

Captain Corea

Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Location: Seoul

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 8:03 am Post subject:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

yawarakaijin wrote:

You mean Afghanistan was the only place Al Qaeda was?

You do know that exactly ZERO of the 9-11 hijackers were from Afghanistan.

How many were from Iraq?

yawarakaijin

Joined: 08 Aug 2006

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:14 am Post subject:

If everything in the articles Joo pointed are taken as the gospel than I am sickened even more. Don't think for a second there weren't people in this administration that knew exactly what would happen in Iraq after the downfall of Saddam Hussein. So now we are left with an administration that had calculated the deaths of up to 600,000 innocent Iraqis as acceptable in order to acheive it's strategic and political goals more easily. I just love how when something is done to save/protect our skin it's, strategic, in our national interests. No matter how vile. Do you not wonder why Bush's "real" reasons for the war weren't given? It's because the American public wouldn't buy it. And here we have people telling us "well we couldn't really come out and say what we had to do, so we lied and conspired and misdirected, and thats a good thing because Americans wouldn't accept it otherwise." Does this strike you as the way democracies should work?

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 12:15 pm Post subject:

Captain Corea wrote:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

yawarakaijin wrote:

You mean Afghanistan was the only place Al Qaeda was?

You do know that exactly ZERO of the 9-11 hijackers were from Afghanistan.

How many were from Iraq?

The US never invaded Iraq to invade Iraq the US invaded Iraq to invade the middle east.

The reason for terror is that mideast regimes and elites incite violence and teach hate.

The way to stop terror is to effect a either a change in behavior by mideast regimes and elites or to change the strategic situation in the mideast.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 12:27 pm Post subject:

yawarakaijin wrote:

If everything in the articles Joo pointed are taken as the gospel than I am sickened even more. Don't think for a second there weren't people in this administration that knew exactly what would happen in Iraq after the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

So now we are left with an administration that had calculated the deaths of up to 600,000 innocent Iraqis as acceptable in order to acheive it's strategic and political goals more easily.

I just love how when something is done to save/protect our skin it's, strategic, in our national interests. No matter how vile. Do you not wonder why Bush's "real" reasons for the war weren't given? It's because the American public wouldn't buy it.

And here we have people telling us "well we couldn't really come out and say what we had to do, so we lied and conspired and misdirected, and thats a good thing because Americans wouldn't accept it otherwise."

Does this strike you as the way democracies should work?

The number 600,000 wasn't done honestly. Besides you are charging the US for anyone Iraqi insurgents or Al Qaeda in Iraq kills. The insurgency could have been stopped anytime if all of Iraq surrendered to the insurgents or Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Besides what would Saddam do if he got free. I mean Saddam had it in mind to go after Kurds, re invade Kuwait and in the long run engage in nuclear war with Israel.

While one can oppose the Iraq war for strategic reasons there is no way to honestly oppose the Iraq war on moral grounds.

Saddam was a greater killer than Idi Amin . Saddam killed 300,000 Iraqis and more than a million overall and he would have done far worse if he had been alllowed to go free. You didn't consider that in your calculations. Lives saved because of US actions count too.

The number you put up are like charging the US for all the deaths on both sides during the Korean war. I mean much of the killing during the Korean war could have been stopped if the US had just let Kim Il Sung conquer South Korea. Good idea?

The reason the real reasons for the war were not given was more than anything to decive public opinion in the mideast not the US. If the US had said its real reasons for taking down Saddam Hussein then anytime a mideast regime took action against Al Qaeda or a similar group it would seem as if that regime was giving in to the US. Stating the true reasons for the war would have made it harder for mideast regimes to go after Al Qaeda and similar groups. Some things are best left unsaid.

War to steal oil from another nation is not justified, war to force the enemy to quit its war is.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:11 pm Post subject:

Adventurer wrote:

Afghanistan has Karzai controlling 30% of Afghanistan. He controlled less in the past. I would say pointing to this unfortunate incident as evidence that nothing has changed in Afghanistan is kind of a stretch even though it is horrible. It is horrible. However, Afghanistan was not better under the Taliban, and there are women who are going to school, there are many people who are enjoying more freedoms. Afghanistan has a long way to go, but the majority of the people are glad that the Taliban are gone.

As far as Al Qaeda and repressing them, Saudi Arabia decided to repress them when they were going out of control. Jordan has been hunting down Al Qaeda and sharing information with the CIA and helped the US train Iraqi police. I think that is missing in these posts when all the regimes including allies are painted exactly the same way. It was not only the Arab regimes that once supported Al Qaeda by the way.

Well even regimes that don't much support Al Qaeda ( like Iran) teach hate and incite violence as a military tactic. If they stop they will have no problem.

An Al Qaedist , a Khomeni follower or a Bathist is the moral equilvent of a Klansman.

Government by Ali Khamani is basicially government by the grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan.

Adventurer

Joined: 28 Jan 2006

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 6:06 pm Post subject:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

Captain Corea wrote:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

yawarakaijin wrote:

You mean Afghanistan was the only place Al Qaeda was?

You do know that exactly ZERO of the 9-11 hijackers were from Afghanistan.

How many were from Iraq?

You don't actually believe in that do you? The terrorists were once supported by the US Government. Iraq was not invaded over terrorism. I don't understand how you are going off on a tangent on this one. Iraq was a dictatorship, and there was little terrorism coming out from it, only inside it vis-a-vis its own people. Iraq was invaded for several reasons. One reason was that it would place many of the troops in Saudi Arabia in Iraq, they could be withdrawn to Iraq and the rationale for the troops in Saudi was the threat of Iraq to the region, so it was not about terrorism. You also had the oil factor which was part of it. Then, there were those among some pro-Israeli hawks on the right who thought it would be a good idea for both the US and Israel. It was not really about terrorism in the region.

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee

Joined: 25 May 2003

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 6:16 pm Post subject:

[quote="Adventurer"]

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

Captain Corea wrote:

Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

yawarakaijin wrote:

You mean Afghanistan was the only place Al Qaeda was?

You do know that exactly ZERO of the 9-11 hijackers were from Afghanistan.

How many were from Iraq?

Quote:

You don't actually believe in that do you?

yes I do.

Adv

Quote:

The terrorists were once supported by the US Government

.

Not really.

Quote:

Whether the al-Qaeda attacks are "blowback" from the American CIA's Operation Cyclone to help the Afghan mujahideen is a matter of some debate. Robin Cook, former member of the British House of Commons and Foreign Secretary from 1997-2001, has written that al-Qaeda and Bin Laden were, "a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies" and that the mujahideen that formed al-Qaeda were "originally ... recruited and trained with help from the CIA".[52]

However, CNN journalist Peter Bergen, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, calls the idea "that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden ... a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. ... Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. ... The real story here is the CIA didn't really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him."[53] Bergen and others maintain the U.S. aid was given out by the Pakistan government, that it went to Afghan not foreign mujahideen, and that there was no contact between the Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) and the CIA or other American officials, let alone, arming, training, coaching or indoctrination

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda

Quote:

Iraq was not invaded over terrorism.

Not directly.

Though Iraq did support terror.

Quote:

I don't understand how you are going off on a tangent on this one. Iraq was a dictatorship, and there was little terrorism coming out from it, only inside it vis-a-vis its own people.

But Iraq was a supporter of terrorism. That much is clear

Quote:

That this�his pro-American moment�was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna* and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled�Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more�the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported�and the David Kay report had established�that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to

http://www.slate.com/id/2102723/

Quote:

Iraq was invaded for several reasons. One reason was that it would place many of the troops in Saudi Arabia in Iraq, they could be withdrawn to Iraq and the rationale for the troops in Saudi was the threat of Iraq to the region, so it was not about terrorism.

Indirectly it was.

And Iraq did support terror , it did not have any signifigant working relationship with Al Qaeda but it did support terror.

Quote:

You also had the oil factor which was part of it. Then, there were those among some pro-Israeli hawks on the right who thought it would be a good idea for both the US and Israel. It was not really about terrorism in the region.

It was about terror.

150,000 troops in Iraq could be used to intimidate mideast regimes into going those who support Al Qaeda.

Iraq is right between Iran , Syria and Saudi Arabia. Bases in Iraq could be used to threaten them. It was also a warning that the US will take down regimes in response to 9-11. Last than that it was to take away the joy of those who enjoyed 9-11 by doing something deeply offensive to their pride.

Because We Could
Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times Op-Ed Columnist
Wednesday, June 4, 2003 Posted: 7:02 AM EDT (1102 GMT)

Quote:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/06/04/nyt.friedman/

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