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| Is the Afghan Mission a lost cause? |
| Yes |
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46% |
[ 6 ] |
| No |
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38% |
[ 5 ] |
| Uncertain |
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15% |
[ 2 ] |
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| Total Votes : 13 |
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Alias
Joined: 24 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 11:58 am Post subject: Poll: Is the Afghan mission a lost cause? |
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The article is about a poll done in Canada but I wouldn't mind hearing the opinions of others. US, Britain, and Australia also have troops in Afghanistan (don't know about the Kiwis.)
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OTTAWA � A clear majority of Canadians consider the mission in Afghanistan a lost cause, according to an extensive survey that hints at deep public skepticism about the war on terror.
Decima Research polled more than 2,000 Canadians last month just as Prime Minister Stephen Harper stepped up his efforts to promote the mission.
Fifty-nine per cent of respondents agreed Canadian soldiers "are dying for a cause we cannot win," while just 34 per cent disagreed with that statement.
An even larger majority said they would never fight in Afghanistan themselves under any circumstances � not even if they were forced to in some military draft.
The online survey of 2,038 people was conducted Sept. 8-18 and is considered accurate to within 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The doubts of respondents about Canada's chances in Afghanistan paled in comparison to their downright dismissal of the overall U.S.-led war on terror.
Almost three-quarters said the Bush administration had made the world more dangerous, 76 per cent said American policy had contributed to a rise in terrorism, and 68 per cent predicted the U.S. will eventually abandon Iraq without success.
"I think the reason the Afghan mission is coming under such scrutiny has less to do with Canada's position," said Decima pollster Bruce Anderson.
"It has more to do with doubts about the leadership of the Bush administration in the war on terror than (with) decisions made by the Liberals or the Conservatives to participate in Afghanistan."
This public skepticism could have deep implications for Canada, both politically and militarily.
Kandahar now threatens to become the centre of Canada's political universe, just nine months after a federal election that saw almost no discussion of international issues.
In the last month alone, the NDP called for a quick pullout, while the prime minister launched a media blitz to promote the mission and suggested troops could even remain beyond the currently scheduled end to the deployment in 2009.
Harper has been ubiquitous in his defence of the Canadian mission to Afghanistan over the last few weeks. It was at the heart of his address to Canadians on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The prime minister admitted, in recent television interviews, that the fighting has been more difficult than he anticipated. But he exorted other leaders � and Canadians watching at home � to stay the course in Afghanistan during an address at the United Nations. The same message was driven home by Afghan President Hamid Karzai during his visit to Canada just over a week ago.
Twenty-eight per cent of respondents in the Decima poll said they would fight in Afghanistan if they were of fighting age and were called upon in a military draft.
No politician of any stripe has proposed conscription. But Anderson said the military could take a glass-half-full approach in interpreting the numbers.
He pointed out, for example, that the Canadian Forces could fill their ranks several times over if 28 per cent of adult Canadians agreed to take up arms. Among those aged 18-34, 20 per cent indicated that they would be willing to fight.
The military has in fact been surpassing its recent recruitment targets, despite the fact that 37 soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the mission began in 2002.
Anderson urged caution in trying to read too much into the number of respondents who said they would refuse to serve in Afghanistan if drafted.
"We should assume that some people don't know what a draft is, whether or not there is one currently, and the implications of refusing a draft. In large measure they're reacting on the basis of `I don't want to go and put my life at risk.' "
However, it's also true that people are considerably more likely to say they would fight in Afghanistan if they believe the cause will be successful, and half as likely if they doubt it.
The results were generally similar across the country, although there were some differences. At one end of the spectrum, 14 per cent of Quebecers said they would fight while, at the other end, 38 per cent of Albertans said the same.
Anderson said Canadians may start demanding a middle alternative � something that keeps our soldiers in Afghanistan, but with some changes to the current mission.
"If people come increasingly to the view that this is not going to succeed, and that these lives will be lost in vain, they're going to want another solution," he said.
"They might not be able to articulate what it is, or how it should come about, but they are going to be asking their political leadership for an alternative to lives being lost in vain." |
Kind of odd that the question of a draft was brought up since it has no chance of happening. |
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W.T.Carl
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 2:02 pm Post subject: |
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| The Taliban are making use of the fact that the tribal areas of Pakistan are basically no go territory for the Pakistani government. The only way to stop them would be to go in clean house. That may happen shortly. |
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happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 3:45 pm Post subject: |
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| W.T.Carl wrote: |
| The Taliban are making use of the fact that the tribal areas of Pakistan are basically no go territory for the Pakistani government. The only way to stop them would be to go in clean house. That may happen shortly. |
Not while U.S Forces are being kept busy in Iraq they won't.
It's not exactly clear what the questions are in this poll, making it hard to know what those polled are responding too.
Is the "cause" an end to terror, or installing democracy/ regime change?
No amount of military action can possibly achieve an end to terrorism, and, like the 76% of Canadians polled who seem to recognise this, going in to "clean house" has only created more terror and increased the threats faced by the west.
If it's to deny terrorists safe haven and create democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq, then it's an achievable goal that has yet to be reached.
Personally I don't think going in guns blazing was the best way to achieve either of these goals- but one thing I'm sure of is this - now that they have and their engaged in a war with the array of islamic militants who've flocked to Iraq to play jihad, America has no alternative but to stay until they've achieved a victory. To give up and go home a'la Vietnam is not an option anymore. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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| I think Afghanistan has a lot more hope than Iraq. I also think the Western forces would be a lot more successful right now had the US not diverted so much to Iraq. |
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Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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If the mission continues to be fought the way it has been then yes we will lose. Why?
1. We have done almost nothing to stop the poppy trade. By stopping I don't mean eradicating the poppy and the farmers, cause this is impossible. We need a comprehensive plan in place to legitimize and buy the crop from people so the money isn't going into the hands of the Taliban or other private militia's.
2. We cannot invade Pakistan that could not, should not and will not ever happen. But we can do is seal the border. Bring in hundreds or attack helicopters and UCAV Drones and bombers and tell everyone the border is closed. Kill any living human that you find crossing the border. Why is it that the LAPD can find a guy from a copter in the bushes at night but we cannot find 5 guys who just fired rockets????
3. The US and NATO Need at least another 30,000 troops in country and hundred and hundreds of special forces as well.
4. Get out of Iraq. |
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Boodleheimer
Joined: 10 Mar 2006
Location: working undercover for the Man
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 3:59 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| I think Afghanistan has a lot more hope than Iraq. I also think the Western forces would be a lot more successful right now had the US not diverted so much to Iraq. |
i completely agree. we had already changed things quite a bit in Afghanistan -- issuing radios (90% of the population is illiterate), bringing back educated expats to their homes, changing for good. but we got side-tracked on Iraq. now the Brits want to pull their forces out of Iraq to RE-stabilise Afghanistan, but the US forces are trying to keep them in Iraq. |
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Alias
Joined: 24 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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| The Conservatives extended the mission earlier this year to 2009. I will guarentee you now that there is no way the mission will be extended by Parliament again. Canadian troops will be coming home. Canada will have fulfilled its mandate. |
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manlyboy
Joined: 01 Aug 2004
Location: Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 7:34 pm Post subject: |
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I'm a huge fan of Steven Pressfield, author of The Afghan Campaign, based on Alexander the Great's war in that region. That book has put the current wars we're fighting in those regions into a whole new perspective for me. Pressfield points out why in this interview:
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RH: What are the contemporary parallels in The Afghan Campaign?
SP: It's an absolute prototype for the wars we're fighting today in the Middle East -- and for the conflicts we're likely to get involved in, in other places, for the rest of this century.
RH: Can you elaborate?
SP: When Alexander invaded the Afghan kingdoms in 330 B.C., his army was the lone superpower of its day, fresh from the conquest of the Persian Empire, the mightiest in history. Alexander was the consummate Westerner. His tutor was Aristotle, literally, which is about as Western as it gets. And he was at the peak of his power and self-confidence. Just like us before we invaded Iraq. Alexander believed he'd pacify this primitive place, this motley collection of tribes, in one summer. Instead he was stuck there for three long, brutal years. Longer in combat time than it took him to knock off the entire Persian empire.
RH: He underestimated how hard it would be.
SP: Exactly! He had a huge technological edge. His guys were the toughest, best-trained, best-equipped fighters the world had ever seen. He thought they'd be greeted like liberators. And they were, for about two minutes. Then the enemy found a new way to fight. More massacres of Macedonian troops happened in those three years than in all of Alexander and his father's Philip's other campaigns combined. Alexander simply didn't have an answer for the enemy's tactics. His guys were getting killed in greater numbers even than in huge conventional battles of the past, and he -- the supreme military genius in history, with unlimited wealth and arms at his disposal -- couldn't figure out how to overcome it.
RH: What was the problem?
SP: His army, just like ours, was designed to fight stand-up, head-banging conventional battles. And it was invincible at that. But the enemy in this new campaign wouldn't face him in a straight-up fight. They used guerrilla tactics, insurgency tactics. They used terror. Massacres. Their combatants hid among the civilian population. They used villages and tribal communities to conceal themselves; they got supplied and protected by civilians. They employed cross-border sanctuaries. Fighters flooded in from adjacent territories. They dispersed their forces across the entire region and wouldn't let Alexander come to grips with them. Wherever Alexander wasn't, that's where they'd hit. And they had a spectacular guerrilla commander, named Spitamenes, who fought Alexander to a standstill.
RH: Was this Islamic?
SP: That's the fascinating thing: it was pre-Islamic and pre-Christian. Yet the dynamics of the clash were exactly like what we see today. I mean the "feel" of it. You could beam one of Alexander's infantrymen into the present and he'd say, "Holy shit, nothing's changed! This is just the way it was!" The same essence of East versus West. Rational versus emotional. Technological versus primitive.
And most important of all, "national" versus tribal.
RH: I know you have a theory about Islam and tribalism.
SP: I do. I think the genius of Islam is that it incorporates tribalism and gives it a medium in which to flourish in the contemporary world.
And I believe that the essence of the enemy we're fighting today is not religious but tribal. It's tribalism expressed in religious terms. But underneath it all, it's tribalism.
RH: What is tribalism? And what does it mean for our guys today fighting it?
SP: That's what The Afghan Campaign is trying to get at. This interview has been a little misleading so far, in that it sounds like Alexander is the primary character in this book. He isn't. The book is told from the point of view of a young infantryman in Alexander's army. It's an on-the-ground perspective, as this young guy arrives in the war and starts to realize what he's gotten himself into. He relates to the enemy -- civilians and combatants -- as individuals. He has to because he deals with them every day, up-close and personal. And the primary characteristic that they possess (and that makes them so alien and hard to understand) is that they're tribal. They see the world through tribal eyes. They fight like tribesmen have always fought. And they're as stubborn and defiant and implacable and cunning and duplicitous and cruel and formidable as tribal fighters have always been.
RH: When you say "tribe" and "tribal," I'm not sure what you mean. Can you give me an example?
SP: Think Geronimo. These guys are Apaches, in the past and the present. The enemy that Alexander was fighting (and that our guys are fighting today) has more in common with the Sicilian Mafia or with a prison gang of Bloods or Crips than with a conventional enemy like the Russians or any "national" foe.
RH: Tell us about nangwali.
SP: Nangwali is an Afghan tribal code of honor. Its tenets are nang, pride; badal: revenge, and melmastia, hospitality. But it could be any tribal code from any era of history. They all share those precepts, whether it's the Lakota Sioux or a tribe of head-hunters from the Amazon. You can't fight a tribe like you fight a nation.
RH: What's the difference?
SP: The tribe is primitive. It has evolved out of the hunting band mentality. Its fundamental imperative is survival. The tribe's mindset is that of warrior pride. That's why the tribe subjugates women and limits their role to physical labor and child-bearing. In the tribe, women are nothing. Warrior pride is all. The tribe has an admirable sense of justice within the tribe, but none at all outside. Non-tribesmen are infidels, gentiles, devils. Tribes are notoriously and hideously cruel to captives. Beheadings on video ... that's nothing compared to what tribes all over the world have always done. The tribe values cohesiveness far above individual freedom. It despises individual freedom. The tribe picks a leader and follows him no matter what. That's its code. That's how it survives. The tribe respects power. Saddam Hussein understood this.
RH: What about democracy and freedom? What are their chances in contemporary Iraq?
SP: In my view, zero. The tribe will never accept individual freedom. The only way Western-style democracy will take root in the Middle East, in my opinion, is if societies are broken down to absolute zero and built up from scratch, and even then it won't work. It'll never happen. The tribal memory is thousands of years. It's ineradicable. When you see photos on the news of Iraqi or Afghan men and women showing off their ink-stained fingers from the voting booth, that's not democracy. Their tribal leader told them how to vote and that's what they've done.
RH: If this is true, if we really are fighting a predominantly tribal enemy today, what can we learn from Alexander? How did Alexander overcome them?
SP: If we could beam Alexander into this room and ask him that question, I think he would laugh. He would say, "Beat them? I barely got out of there in one piece -- and I had to use every trick in the book to do it!"
RH: What tricks did he use?
SP: First, he pounded the hell out of the enemy militarily. Worse than anything a contemporary army would dare. He leveled cities, depopulated entire regions. And it still didn't work. Tribal fighters are united on the deepest levels to the land. They would rather die than yield. Still, Alexander softened them up a little by wiping out so many of them. He at least made their lives so miserable that they were, on some level, amenable to an understanding.
Second, he denied them sanctuary. He closed the borders. He burned out all their regions of supply. He established strong garrison towns. And he used his vast wealth (gained from acquiring the treasury of the Persian empire) to enlist many of them in his own army for pay. In other words, he bought the country. In the end, he even killed his rival, Spitamenes. And the amazing thing is this still didn't win the war for him.
RH: What did?
SP: Alexander's supreme stroke was political: he married the daughter of his worst enemy.
RH: Roxane.
SP: She was the daughter of Oxyartes, the most powerful warlord of the foe. The key to fighting tribal enemies is their warrior pride. Imagine you're facing Geronimo or Crazy Horse and you want to reach an accommodation. You have to show tremendous respect, you have to understand the passion and implacability of tribal pride. It's not one aspect, it's everything. You have to give the enemy a credible way to convince his people that he won, that he beat you. Otherwise his own people will eat him alive.
That's what Alexander did. He brought in Oxyartes and treated him with great honor. What could be more honorable, after all, than joining the families in marriage? Oxyartes was no longer Alexander's enemy, he was his father-in-law. He sat next to him at the seat of honor and rode at his side in public before the troops. His grandchildren, when they came, would be of Alexander's blood and, as his heirs, would one day rule the world. That was a deal Oxyartes' pride could accept--and that his people could accept.
It worked. Alexander and Roxane were married in a spectacular ceremonial wedding, to which all combatants of both sides were invited and feted with great gifts and clemency. Then Alexander packed up and got the hell out of there.
RH: Sounds great. Do you think we can pull the same trick in Iraq today?
SP: I'll leave that to Karl Rove. I'm sure he can come up with something. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 8:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Alias wrote: |
| The Conservatives extended the mission earlier this year to 2009. I will guarentee you now that there is no way the mission will be extended by Parliament again. Canadian troops will be coming home. Canada will have fulfilled its mandate. |
I love how america gets bashed for not getting involved in a number of affairs and yet the west fails repetedly to help bring peace to other regions of the world. (Israel/Lebanon and darfur being the most recent examples) |
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Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 10:18 pm Post subject: |
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| No we bash when America gets into unjust/unfair/unethical/boondogglish affairs of empire/etc. The fight in Afghanistan is righteous as would be sending troops to Sudan or Liberia (yes I know there were some US Troops there). Leftist anger is twofold: The US neglects the important fights (afghanistan and sudan) and the US backs the dictators it likes (Equitorial Guinea) while proclaiming to be against evil. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 10:44 pm Post subject: |
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| The fight in Afghanistan is righteous as would be sending troops to Sudan or Liberia (yes I know there were some US Troops there). |
Octavius Hite:
Would you be prepared to accept civilian casualties as a price to be paid for doing whatever you think needs to be done in Sudan or Liberia? That is, if civilians were killed as a result of the US actions that you recommend, would you still publically defend those actions?
Because my own, admittedly amateur, inkling is that any military action is going to involve at least some cvilian deaths, especially if air power is employed. And I just have this idea that when those civilian deaths do occur, the liberal/soft-left types who were hollering the loudest for intervention will be the first ones to take a torch to Old Glory in protest.
(For the record, I have nothing against burning the American flag, or that of any other country. I just used it to symbolize anti-Americanism.) |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 11:07 pm Post subject: |
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All of the talk about right and wrong and "democracy," "freedom," and especially "evil" really misses the fundamental dynamic of what is going on...
| bucheon bum wrote: |
| I love how america gets bashed for not getting involved in a number of affairs and yet the west fails repetedly to help bring peace to other regions of the world. (Israel/Lebanon and darfur being the most recent examples) |
Old pattern, Bucheon.
I'll take this time to recommend reading Jeff Frieden's "Sectoral Conflict and Foreign Economic Policy, 1914-1940," International Organization 42 (1988): 59-90.
You can get it through JSTOR, but I cannot link it.
Here is the relevant excerpt...
| Frieden wrote: |
| [After the First World War]...the center of world finance had shifted from London to New York. The United States clearly had the military, industrial, and financial capacity to impose its will on Europe. Yet after World War I the United States, in the current arcane iconography of the field, did not play the part of the international economic hegemon, arbiter, and bankroller of the world economic order. The United States was capable of hegemonic action, and President Woodrow Wilson had hegemonic plans, but they were defeated. The problem was not in Europe, for although the British and the French were stronger in 1919 than they would be in 1946, they could hardly have stood in the way of American hegemony. Indeed, European complaints about the United States after World War I were in much the opposite direction: the Europeans bitterly protested America's refusal [emphasis in original] to accept the responsibilities of leadership. The Europeans charged that the United States was stingy...hostile...scandalous...unwilling to get involved in overseeing and smoothing Europe's squabbles. The British and the French tried for years to entice and cajole a reluctant America into leadership. America would not be budged, at least until 1940... |
What had happened in the aftermath of the First World War that caused such a shift in global finance and politics?
| Frieden wrote: |
| The gradual expansion of American overseas investment, especially overseas lending, was given a tremendous shove by World War I. The war forced several belligerent countries to borrow heavily from the United States, and previous borrowers from European capital markets now turned to the United States to satisfy their needs for capital...Foreign direct investment also grew rapidly, as European preoccupation with war and reconstruction cleared the way for many American corporations to expand further into the Third World and, after the war ended, in Europe itself... |
And do not forget that after the Second World War, this trend was geometrically larger by multiple factors. The United States, as is well known, possessed more than half of the entire world's gold reserves by the end of that conflict.
Don't blame us, then, for having our act together and for being well-organized at home. Don't blame us for not being taken down by the Europeans and their historic and self-destructive bickering with one another. Don't blame us for being slow to come out and lead. And don't blame us for wanting to promote, encourage, or enforce stability in the global market where we had invested so much and had so much at stake once we did come out.
For even if we have many faults in our leadership (in places from the Caribbean Basin to Southeast Asia to Somalia to Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, which this thread treats), and there are indeed faults to consider, we have done a better job as hegemons than the Europeans did before us...we have done far better in Europe and East Asia than Hitler and Imperial Japan were planning on treating those parts of the world...we have done better for Eastern Europe (and yes, the former Yugoslavia, too), than what the Soviets did for it...and we have done an infinitely better job than some other power like China might behave were they global hegemons at present. Idiots like Chavez would be totally lost in their own chaos and disorder were they to succeed in their wild fantasy of bringing us down and replacing us with -- nothing.
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Oct 01, 2006 11:25 pm; edited 7 times in total |
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Boodleheimer
Joined: 10 Mar 2006
Location: working undercover for the Man
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| Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 11:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Octavius Hite wrote: |
| No we bash when America gets into unjust/unfair/unethical/boondogglish affairs of empire/etc. The fight in Afghanistan is righteous as would be sending troops to Sudan or Liberia (yes I know there were some US Troops there). Leftist anger is twofold: The US neglects the important fights (afghanistan and sudan) and the US backs the dictators it likes (Equitorial Guinea) while proclaiming to be against evil. |
you hit the nail squarely on the head. three cheers for Octavius! |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2006 9:28 am Post subject: |
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| Octavius Hite wrote: |
| NThe US neglects the important fights (afghanistan and sudan) and the US backs the dictators it likes (Equitorial Guinea) while proclaiming to be against evil. |
But THAT is my point: the ENTIRE west neglects the important fights. The USA is the biggest contributer of troops in Afghanistan; a few NATO members refuse to send troops there. Canadians want to bring their troops home. It is completely hypocritical if you ask me.
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| Because my own, admittedly amateur, inkling is that any military action is going to involve at least some cvilian deaths, especially if air power is employed. And I just have this idea that when those civilian deaths do occur, the liberal/soft-left types who were hollering the loudest for intervention will be the first ones to take a torch to Old Glory in protest. |
Well I wouldn't go as far as to say there would be flag burning, but yes, there will be a lot of hollering going around. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:20 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
Quote:
Because my own, admittedly amateur, inkling is that any military action is going to involve at least some cvilian deaths, especially if air power is employed. And I just have this idea that when those civilian deaths do occur, the liberal/soft-left types who were hollering the loudest for intervention will be the first ones to take a torch to Old Glory in protest.
Well I wouldn't go as far as to say there would be flag burning, but yes, there will be a lot of hollering going around.
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I guess I was defining "soft left" to include anyone who thinks that burning a flag is an effective and intelligent way to register dissent.
But yeah. The Mother Jones crowd probably wouldn't be burning the flag. |
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