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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2009 10:21 am Post subject: |
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| Koveras wrote: |
| ddeubel wrote: |
| more grist for the argument that America is ruled by a warrior/military elite. |
????????? |
Koveras, they get this from "the military-industrial complex" left, best articulated today in Chalmers Johnson's "blowback" trilogy. The Republic has fallen and the military and its business allies rule us and the world, they shrilly allege... |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 6:19 am Post subject: |
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Here's someone who knows something about Afghanistan (I'm comfortable saying none of us here know half what's necessary to make a decent assessment).
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It turned out to be a tough learning process and it bears testimony to Obama's extraordinary intellect and character that he grasped the essence of the problem, honestly assessed what went wrong, had the clarity of mind not to be distracted and showed the sincerity of purpose to adopt a whole new approach.
He threw out of the window altogether the entire baggage of "regional initiatives", international conferences and "grand bargains" and zeroed in on the heart of the matter, namely, that the Afghan people are starting to view the Americans as occupiers and it is time to consider an exit strategy. |
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asylum seeker
Joined: 22 Jul 2007
Location: On your computer screen.
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 6:21 am Post subject: |
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| visitorq wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| asylum seeker wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
| youtuber wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. |
Obama's first mistake is believing that the mission can be "won". |
The "mission" already has been won. The troops are literally sent to guard the poppy production, and the CIA gets to launder huge amounts of money each year from smack smuggled into the US. The drug trade is now worth a cool $500 billion. That's mission accomplished. |
Wow. Is there any conspiracy theory which you do not believe? |
Wow. Do you ever actually investigate anything you call a "conspiracy theory," or are you one of those whose mind stops as soon as he hears that epithet?
You mean to say you have never heard of Iran-Contra? Look it up. It was in all the papers. 
The former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Judge Robert Bonner, told Mike Wallace on CBS' nationally syndicated 60 Minutes that the CIA smuggled a ton of cocaine into the country and was among the biggest drug runners in the country. OK, that may be wrong. That is all that the joint DEA-CIA undercover operation uncovered. Other investigators have claimed a total of 27 tons, or half of all US cocaine consumption.
So now CBS and the DEA are conspiracy theorists, too? You can't get much more mainstream than that. Have the inmates now taken over the asylum, seeker? |
Come now, poppy production has 'only' increased a few hundred percent since US troops started guarding it (surely a mere coincidence)... and the CIA has never been involved in illicit activities around the world. Everybody knows that. |
I'd be interested to know what Gopher and the other conservatives here think of these allegations. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 6:34 am Post subject: |
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| asylum seeker wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| asylum seeker wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
| youtuber wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. |
Obama's first mistake is believing that the mission can be "won". |
The "mission" already has been won. The troops are literally sent to guard the poppy production, and the CIA gets to launder huge amounts of money each year from smack smuggled into the US. The drug trade is now worth a cool $500 billion. That's mission accomplished. |
Wow. Is there any conspiracy theory which you do not believe? |
Wow. Do you ever actually investigate anything you call a "conspiracy theory," or are you one of those whose mind stops as soon as he hears that epithet?
You mean to say you have never heard of Iran-Contra? Look it up. It was in all the papers.
The former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Judge Robert Bonner, told Mike Wallace on CBS' nationally syndicated 60 Minutes that the CIA smuggled a ton of cocaine into the country and was among the biggest drug runners in the country. OK, that may be wrong. That is all that the joint DEA-CIA undercover operation uncovered. Other investigators have claimed a total of 27 tons, or half of all US cocaine consumption.
So now CBS and the DEA are conspiracy theorists, too? You can't get much more mainstream than that. Have the inmates now taken over the asylum, seeker? |
Come now, poppy production has 'only' increased a few hundred percent since US troops started guarding it (surely a mere coincidence)... and the CIA has never been involved in illicit activities around the world. Everybody knows that. |
I'd be interested to know what Gopher and the other conservatives here think of these allegations. |
The fact that you've never even heard of this shows that you need to open up a bit more...
I realize wikipedia isn't a 'proper' source, but it's one place to start...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking
Here's some better links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/11/24/cia-heroin-still-rule-day-in-afghanistan.html |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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| asylum seeker wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| asylum seeker wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
| youtuber wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. |
Obama's first mistake is believing that the mission can be "won". |
The "mission" already has been won. The troops are literally sent to guard the poppy production, and the CIA gets to launder huge amounts of money each year from smack smuggled into the US. The drug trade is now worth a cool $500 billion. That's mission accomplished. |
Wow. Is there any conspiracy theory which you do not believe? |
Wow. Do you ever actually investigate anything you call a "conspiracy theory," or are you one of those whose mind stops as soon as he hears that epithet?
You mean to say you have never heard of Iran-Contra? Look it up. It was in all the papers.
The former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Judge Robert Bonner, told Mike Wallace on CBS' nationally syndicated 60 Minutes that the CIA smuggled a ton of cocaine into the country and was among the biggest drug runners in the country. OK, that may be wrong. That is all that the joint DEA-CIA undercover operation uncovered. Other investigators have claimed a total of 27 tons, or half of all US cocaine consumption.
So now CBS and the DEA are conspiracy theorists, too? You can't get much more mainstream than that. Have the inmates now taken over the asylum, seeker? |
Come now, poppy production has 'only' increased a few hundred percent since US troops started guarding it (surely a mere coincidence)... and the CIA has never been involved in illicit activities around the world. Everybody knows that. |
I'd be interested to know what Gopher and the other conservatives here think of these allegations. |
Funny, you didn't have to check with Gopher before hurling the "conspiracy theory" epithet.
But you haven't yet told us what YOU think of them and Iran-Contra is hardly an "allegation." And you can watch Judge Bonner speaking on the clip yourself.
You have a mind of your own, as you proved with the CT thing. What do YOU think? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 2:59 pm Post subject: |
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Asylum, people on the far right blamed Moscow for every single problem they recognized in world affairs, especially during the Reagan administration. Bacasper represents the mirror image of this: not the Soviets but rather the Americans. Further, the Soviets disappear and become the Americans' deception operation...
Simple minds seek and create simplistic, and quite rigidly so, worldviews. You will get nowhere exchanging views with any of them.
Check out this excerpt from a former MI6 operator, CM Woodhouse, stationed in Iran in the early-1950s. Here he describes a highly-placed, well-educated Iranian asset's politics...
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| Like most Iranians, even men as highly educated as himself, he believed that nothing happened in Iran except at the will of the British. He once told me that everyone in Tehran assumed that we had deliberately brought Musaddiq to power because we had found that the Abadan refinery was uneconomic; so we wanted to have it nationalized in order to claim compensation. He presented this merely as a view widely held by informed people, but he said nothing to make me think he doubted it himself. |
I dated an Iranian woman, a well-educated Iranian woman here on a Fulbright, in fact, who went on and on about how the Americans had placed Khomeini in power and caused the revolution to occur and all that followed because they were displeased with the Shah and they needed to create a plausible "out."
C'est la vie on our planet. Cheers, in any case. |
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asylum seeker
Joined: 22 Jul 2007
Location: On your computer screen.
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 9:04 pm Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| asylum seeker wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| asylum seeker wrote: |
| visitorq wrote: |
| youtuber wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. |
Obama's first mistake is believing that the mission can be "won". |
The "mission" already has been won. The troops are literally sent to guard the poppy production, and the CIA gets to launder huge amounts of money each year from smack smuggled into the US. The drug trade is now worth a cool $500 billion. That's mission accomplished. |
Wow. Is there any conspiracy theory which you do not believe? |
Wow. Do you ever actually investigate anything you call a "conspiracy theory," or are you one of those whose mind stops as soon as he hears that epithet?
You mean to say you have never heard of Iran-Contra? Look it up. It was in all the papers.
The former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Judge Robert Bonner, told Mike Wallace on CBS' nationally syndicated 60 Minutes that the CIA smuggled a ton of cocaine into the country and was among the biggest drug runners in the country. OK, that may be wrong. That is all that the joint DEA-CIA undercover operation uncovered. Other investigators have claimed a total of 27 tons, or half of all US cocaine consumption.
So now CBS and the DEA are conspiracy theorists, too? You can't get much more mainstream than that. Have the inmates now taken over the asylum, seeker? |
Come now, poppy production has 'only' increased a few hundred percent since US troops started guarding it (surely a mere coincidence)... and the CIA has never been involved in illicit activities around the world. Everybody knows that. |
I'd be interested to know what Gopher and the other conservatives here think of these allegations. |
Funny, you didn't have to check with Gopher before hurling the "conspiracy theory" epithet.
But you haven't yet told us what YOU think of them and Iran-Contra is hardly an "allegation." And you can watch Judge Bonner speaking on the clip yourself.
You have a mind of your own, as you proved with the CT thing. What do YOU think? |
I didn't deny that Iran-contra happened, when I used the word allegation I was referring only to the original point.
I still haven't heard of any evidence about the CIA-Afghanistan drug-running theory, so I'm still not really convinced, hence my 'conpiracy theory epithet'. My gut instinct is that it is fairly implausible because there are too many international journalists, soldiers etc in Afghanistan and even if the CIA had a motive to do such a thing there would be too much risk of exposure.
I didn't trust the Bush's administrations reasons for going to war with Iraq as there did seem to be a clear motivation to secure oil resources and of course the phony intelligence data about WMDs, but as for Afghanistan I think the stated reason of retaliation for 9/11 does seem the most likely (Occam's razor and all).
I'm not denying the US government sometimes does shady things but I think we need to be careful in assuming that this is always the case. |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 9:49 pm Post subject: |
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Bush junior didn't go to war in Iraq simply because of oil. That was one reason out of many. One, there were troops in Saudi Arabia, and there was pressure to remove them. The excuse for having the troops in Saudi Arabia was Iraq. Two, there is oil in Iraq. Yes, that's one reason. Three, pro-Israeli neo-cons with ties to the Likud thought it would be good for the U.S.'s ally, Israel. Four, troops in Iraq and Afghanistan would have the US surrounding Iran and near Syria. That's a possible fourth reason.
Iraq is a country that's easier to secure when compared to a place like Afghanistan. Iraq is a modern country and the people are educated.
About 20% of Iraq includes Kurds and Christians who are not going to make trouble. The Shiites of Basra can handle themselves. The different groups have to bargain with each other to function. Iraq is mostly flat; it's easier, thus, with man-power to turn things around.
It's possible to win in Afghanistan, but it's very, very difficult without a large Pashtun Afghan army and backing from the locals to do so. I don't want the Taliban taking over, but I am not sure America can really financially afford this war. America has been there for 8 years already.
At least, America needs to reduce its presence in Iraq relatively soon.
NATO doesn't really want to take part in this war that much. Canada is leaving soon. Turkey doesn't want to take part anymore. Some of the Europeans do, but their contribution is not large.
I don't feel comfortable this war. It could be won, but at a high price. I wouldn't want to spend the money and use the man power. I understand the idea that one wouldn't want to abandon the Afghan people. However, it's hard to get them organized to defend their own land. If they can quickly train cops and troops so there is less pressure on American troops, then NATO has a chance. Otherwise, get out of there. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 10:33 pm Post subject: |
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Frankly, I don't think people on this board appear to understand Obama's policy. Its not a double down on an unpopular war. Its a phased withdrawal with a two-year surge.
Obama the Realist
| Zakaria wrote: |
| If you take just one sentence out, Barack Obama's speech on Afghanistan last week was all about focusing and limiting the scope of America's mission in that country. His goal, he said, was "narrowly defined." The objectives he detailed were exclusively military�to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven, reverse the Taliban's momentum, and strengthen the Kabul government's security forces. He said almost nothing about broader goals like spreading democracy, protecting human rights, or assisting in women's education. The nation that he was interested in building, he explained, was America. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 10:44 pm Post subject: |
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I understand it exactly, Kuros. I understand it, I think, better than you. You are missing the hypocrisy which surrounds it, and in more than one way, too.
| Quote: |
| The objectives he detailed were exclusively military�to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven, reverse the Taliban's momentum, and strengthen the Kabul government's security forces. He said almost nothing about broader goals like spreading democracy, protecting human rights, or assisting in women's education. The nation that he was interested in building, he explained, was America. |
I heard H. Clinton articulate the exact same policy two weeks or so ago. I neither agree nor disagree with it at this time; I am not here to attack the Obama adminstration, which I strongly support on foreign relations.
I cannot believe that the same people who lambasted the Reagan and H.W. Bush adminstrations for treating Afghanistan the same way when they were using it it in strictly military terms to fight the Soviets, and then walked away without investing in it, developing it, maintaining a longer presence in it, and that this negligence caused 9/11, etc., are now supporting the Obama administration for adopting the exact same position.
What the hell? Then when George W. Bush did this in Iraq he was lambasted for it, and unrelentingly so, for five years. Now Obama has taken us back to where Reagan and H.W. Bush were in the 1980s and early-1990s. How many different times can people flip and flop their positions on Afghanistan and the Near East?
Where will it eventually end? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 10:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
I understand it exactly, Kuros. I understand it, I think, better than you. You are missing the hypocrisy which surrounds it, and in more than one way, too.
| Quote: |
| The objectives he detailed were exclusively military�to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven, reverse the Taliban's momentum, and strengthen the Kabul government's security forces. He said almost nothing about broader goals like spreading democracy, protecting human rights, or assisting in women's education. The nation that he was interested in building, he explained, was America. |
I heard H. Clinton articulate the exact same policy two weeks or so ago. I neither agree nor disagree with it at this time; I am not here to attack the Obama adminstration, which I strongly support on foreign relations.
I cannot believe that the same people who lambasted the Reagan and H.W. Bush adminstrations for treating Afghanistan the same way when they were using it it in strictly military terms to fight the Soviets, and then walked away without investing in it, developing it, maintaining a longer presence in it, and that this negligence caused 9/11, etc., are now supporting the Obama administration for adopting the exact same position.
What the hell? Then when George W. Bush did this in Iraq he was lambasted for it, and unrelentingly so, for five years. Now Obama has taken us back to where Reagan and H.W. Bush were in the 1980s and early-1990s. How many different times can people flip and flop their positions on Afghanistan and the Near East?
Where will it eventually end? |
I'm too young to have been part of the conversation since the first Iraq War. I was just starting middle school then.
I think you understand what the policy is, but a lot of people are suggesting that Obama is (my words) doubling down in Afghanistan. Its just not true.
America can't afford this war, Obama has come to that conclusion. Obama also has come to the conclusion that this war was necessary, and that he'll finish it. People here are arguing that Obama wants to nation-build, and he's definitely not willing to do that. He wants to get out. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 11:13 pm Post subject: |
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I believe you, Kuros. I also believe that, sooner or later, they will follow us back home after we leave, after they regroup.
If so, it may be time to treat Afghanistan as the Romans treated Carthage, at least as I understand it, which only comes from Polybius and a few conversations with specialists, after the third Punic war: Nix it. |
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ReeseDog
Joined: 05 Apr 2008
Location: Classified
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| Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 11:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Frankly, I don't think people on this board appear to understand Obama's policy. Its not a double down on an unpopular war. Its a phased withdrawal with a two-year surge. |
...and ending just about in time for reelection, right? |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 1:05 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
I believe you, Kuros. I also believe that, sooner or later, they will follow us back home after we leave, after they regroup.
If so, it may be time to treat Afghanistan as the Romans treated Carthage, at least as I understand it, which only comes from Polybius and a few conversations with specialists, after the third Punic war: Nix it. |
Are you kidding? You're seriously worried that Al CIAeda is going to follow us home?? There never was any threat from these countries. None whatsoever. It's our own government that's gone rogue criminal. It's been about a decade - haven't you figured out the lies yet?
As for your Punic War reference - we've already done that. We've literally destroyed that country and turned it into a full-on narco state. What do you mean by "nix it"? Kill 'em all? (or do you mean annexation)? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 7:55 pm Post subject: |
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| ReeseDog wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Frankly, I don't think people on this board appear to understand Obama's policy. Its not a double down on an unpopular war. Its a phased withdrawal with a two-year surge. |
...and ending just about in time for reelection, right? |
Withdrawal will begin in 2011, it won't end then. Its an allied expedition. Obama can't just turn the whole thing off without straining relations.
| visitorq wrote: |
| We've literally destroyed that country and turned it into a full-on narco state. |
Destroyed what country? It never had anything to destroy in the first place. That's kinda the problem. |
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