A Crude War Of Revenge

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

By Mike Whitney | Dec 4 2007 - 7:28am |

The United States is on its way to losing the war in Afghanistan. The eventual defeat will be political not military. Public sentiment is shifting in Europe. The people have had enough. They want to get out. When European troops withdrawal from Afghanistan; NATO will gradually unravel and the Transatlantic Alliance will collapse. That will be a disaster for America. The US will again be isolated by two great oceans. But not by choice. America's days as an empire will be over.

That's why the US perseveres in Afghanistan even though there is nothing to gain. Pipelines corridors will continue to be blocked by enemy fighters for the foreseeable future. The guerrilla war will intensify. American fatalities will mount. Political opposition at home will grow.

The Taliban can't be beaten. They've already taken over more than half the country and they are steadily advancing on the Capital. By next spring, there'll be fighting in the neighborhoods of Kabul, just like there is now in Baghdad. American troops will be barricaded in little Greenzones spread across the countryside. Karzai will be locked away in the Presidential Palace surrounded by American mercenaries. There'll be no more foolish talk about "democracy" and "women's rights". The air war will escalate causing more and more civilian casualties. Protests will break out in the cities and tribal leaders will call for an end to the occupation. Politicians in Germany and France will demand a timetable for withdrawal. Most of these things are already happening.

There's no policy in Afghanistan and there never has been. Reconstruction is a myth and security is non-existent. The country is a failed, narco-state governed by warlords and drug kingpins. Women are nearly as bad off as under the Taliban.

"Every month dozens of women commit self-immolation to end their desolation," says Afghan Parliament member, Malalai Joya. Bush didn't invade Afghanistan to liberate women anyway. It was all a hoax. Bush believed that Taliban would recognize America's superior firepower and run for the hills. They did. But now they're back. And the tide has turned. The Taliban have regrouped, filled their ranks with new recruits, and now they're stronger than ever. Morale is high. The world's best-equipped, high-tech war machine is being beaten by a ragtag collection of medieval-minded fundamentalists armed with muskets and sabers. It's a bigger fiasco than Iraq.

The war in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, is a failure of ideology. The Bush Doctrine, the National Security Strategy, and the New World Order are all in ruins. The apologists for "preemption" on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal have suddenly fallen silent. They've lost their voice. The bravado and chest-thumping has stopped. The Afghan resistance has succeeded where Congress, the UN and 10 million protesters failed. They stopped Bush's army in its tracks. In time, the Americans will leave as did the Russians before them. The war is lost.

Democracy doesn't come from the barrel of an M-16 and it can't be dropped from 30,000 ft like a Daisy Cutter. The Bush war in Afghanistan has brought only suffering and devastation. Thousands have been killed or displaced. Vast swathes of the countryside have been contaminated with radioactive dust that collects in clouds and sweeps across the interior-plains poisoning the groundwater and spreading cancer; another tragic memento of the US occupation that will last for decades.

Afghanistan was supposed to be "the Good War". Originally, 95% of the American people supported the invasion as the proper response to the attacks of September 11. Liberals and conservatives alike joined the rush to war. The world needed to see America's iron-fisted wrath. It was "payback time".

Tariq Ali called it, "A crude war of revenge". He was right.

The buildup to the war was all glitz and showmanship; a real public relations extravaganza. The media unfurled the flags and pounded the war drums every day until the Bombay-doors opened and the plumes of black smoke began rising everywhere across Afghanistan.

Bush promised to bring them back "Dead or Alive". We were going to "smoke them out of their caves".

No one talks about caves anymore-or smoke. The pre-war zeal is gone. Vanished. The "hearts and minds" campaign is lost, too.

"The American war on terror is a mockery and so is the US support of the present government in Afghanistan which is dominated by Northern Alliance terrorists," says Malalai Joya.

"Far more civilians have been killed by the US military in Afghanistan than were killed in the US in the tragedy of September 11. More Afghan civilians have been killed by the US than were ever killed by the Taliban.....The US should withdrawal as soon as possible. We need liberation not occupation." ("The War on Terror is a Mockery", Elsa Rassbach, Z Magazine Nov 2007)

The Bush administration has reneged on every commitment it made to the Afghan people. There was never any attempt to provide security beyond the capital. Never. The US handed over the countryside to the warlords who run their fiefdoms like Mafia Dons. There's no freedom. There's no safety. There's no rule of law. It's all a fabrication---another made-for-TV invasion that's 99% fiction.

Last week the Senlis Council released a report saying that, "Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian crisis in which millions face severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa". The vast majority of Afghans are still living in grinding poverty exacerbated by the constant threat of violence. Civilian casualties are soaring and the "The security situation has reached crisis proportion."

The Senlis Report adds that the Taliban are "gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change."

The US has worn out its welcome. A number of independent journalists confirm that the Taliban has garnered substantial support in the South from disenchanted Afghans who're tired of the broken promises, the lack of employment and reconstruction, and the random bombing of innocent civilians.

Last year,there were four times as many air strikes by international forces in Afghanistan than in Iraq. The rising death toll has shocked the public and turned the people against the occupying army. On Monday, 14 engineers and laborers were killed by NATO air strikes in Nuristan Province. The workers, WHO WERE HIRED BY THE US MILITARY TO BUILD A ROAD THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS WERE SLEEPING IN THEIR TENTS WHEN THEY WERE KILLED.

"All of our workers have been killed", said Sayed Jalili. (UK Guardian)

And so it goes. The US is steadily losing its grip while the tidal wave of resistance continues to grow. Another year of frustration, and the European allies will "pack it in". NATO be damned.

Tariq Ali explained why the United States would eventually fail in Afghanistan in a recent interview with Sherry Wolf of the Socialist Worker:

"Far from being a "good war", Afghanistan is turning out to be a nasty, unpleasant war, and there's no way the US or other Western forces are going to be able to stay there for too long....The situation is a total mess. The US can never win that war, and the main reason is that the Afghans don't like being occupied. They kicked out the British in the 19th century, the Russians in the 20th century, and , now, they're fighting against the US and its NATO allies." ("Afghanistan Today: six years of a war on Terror, Sherry Wolf, znet)

Yes, "they don't like being occupied". It's time to leave.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11358

[baja]

The life that Americans enjoyed in America will be a distant memory by 2009

[Rohirrim]

If this is all true (and I wonder, given that he's quoting the Socialist Worker) then it's a shame that the Bush cabal has f'ed this up so miserably. The Taliban are the worst little collection of ignorant, nasty, brutish thugs on Earth. If I were to give them a mythological exemplar, I'd have to go with Orcs. Who can forget their policy of not allowing unaccompanied women to walk the streets. Of course, unmarried women who were forced by starvation to try and seek out food were grabbed off the street, taken to the soccer field, and shot in the head for all to see. This POS writer seems to be celebrating the fact that Bush has, once again, f'ed it up. If true, it's a tragedy. But, maybe over at the Socialist Worker, it's reason to celebrate?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

If this is all true (and I wonder, given that he's quoting the Socialist Worker) then it's a shame that the Bush cabal has f'ed this up so miserably. The Taliban are the worst little collection of ignorant, nasty, brutish thugs on Earth. If I were to give them a mythological exemplar, I'd have to go with Orcs. Who can forget their policy of not allowing unaccompanied women to walk the streets. Of course, unmarried women who were forced by starvation to try and seek out food were grabbed off the street, taken to the soccer field, and shot in the head for all to see. This POS writer seems to be celebrating the fact that Bush has, once again, f'ed it up. If true, it's a tragedy. But, maybe over at the Socialist Worker, it's reason to celebrate?

Whitney doesn't sugar coat anything - which often elicits a "shoot the messenger" response. Most of his facts re: Afghanistan can be verified via additional sources.

+1 on the Taliban chracterization - which makes it all the more ironic that Bush and Co. were still doing business with them as recently as this:

Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban

Robert Scheer

Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-US terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush Administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.

That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the United States the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.

Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998.

CONTINUED BELOW
Sadly, the Bush Administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at US insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.

The war on drugs has become our own fanatics' obsession and easily trumps all other concerns. How else could we come to reward the Taliban, who has subjected the female half of the Afghan population to a continual reign of terror in a country once considered enlightened in its treatment of women?

At no point in modern history have women and girls been more systematically abused than in Afghanistan where, in the name of madness masquerading as Islam, the government in Kabul obliterates their fundamental human rights. Women may not appear in public without being covered from head to toe with the oppressive shroud called the burkha , and they may not leave the house without being accompanied by a male family member. They've not been permitted to attend school or be treated by male doctors, yet women have been banned from practicing medicine or any profession for that matter.

The lot of males is better if they blindly accept the laws of an extreme religious theocracy that prescribes strict rules governing all behavior, from a ban on shaving to what crops may be grown. It is this last power that has captured the enthusiasm of the Bush White House.

The Taliban fanatics, economically and diplomatically isolated, are at the breaking point, and so, in return for a pittance of legitimacy and cash from the Bush Administration, they have been willing to appear to reverse themselves on the growing of opium. That a totalitarian country can effectively crack down on its farmers is not surprising. But it is grotesque for a US official, James P. Callahan, director of the State Department's Asian anti-drug program, to describe the Taliban's special methods in the language of representative democracy: "The Taliban used a system of consensus-building," Callahan said after a visit with the Taliban, adding that the Taliban justified the ban on drugs "in very religious terms."

Of course, Callahan also reported, those who didn't obey the theocratic edict would be sent to prison.

In a country where those who break minor rules are simply beaten on the spot by religious police and others are stoned to death, it's understandable that the government's "religious" argument might be compelling. Even if it means, as Callahan concedes, that most of the farmers who grew the poppies will now confront starvation. That's because the Afghan economy has been ruined by the religious extremism of the Taliban, making the attraction of opium as a previously tolerated quick cash crop overwhelming.

For that reason, the opium ban will not last unless the United States is willing to pour far larger amounts of money into underwriting the Afghan economy.

As the Drug Enforcement Administration's Steven Casteel admitted, "The bad side of the ban is that it's bringing their country--or certain regions of their country--to economic ruin." Nor did he hold out much hope for Afghan farmers growing other crops such as wheat, which require a vast infrastructure to supply water and fertilizer that no longer exists in that devastated country. There's little doubt that the Taliban will turn once again to the easily taxed cash crop of opium in order to stay in power.

The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our own war drug war zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly failure. Our long sad history of signing up dictators in the war on drugs demonstrates the futility of building a foreign policy on a domestic obsession.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010604/20010522

[Rohirrim]

I'm not shooting the messenger. I'm shooting the apparent glee with which he presents the message, as if a victory by the Taliban will be a good thing. It won't. The backing of Bin Ladin started with Brezinski during the Carter administration and was continued by the Raygunites. Both parties have screwed the pooch on foreign entanglements too many times to contemplate. This is just another example of why we should adopt the foreign policy ideas of Ron Paul. Every time we entangle ourselves in some foreign intrigue, we come out with **** on our faces.

Somehow, the American psyche has to accept the revolutionary idea that we don't have a military for the purpose of foreign intervention to protect the interests of corporations. The British already tried that with the East India Company and lost their empire because of it. The simple lesson is: Empires cannot be sustained. Period. Are we so stupid that we can't look at history and learn something from it? We have to keep doing the same, stupid things over and over again, ad infinitum? Perhaps we should just look within and realize, "Hey, we're a bunch of greedy mofos." We are 6.3% of the world's population and control over 60% of the world's resources. What are we doing internationally to sustain that ratio? Let's ask ourselves that.

Anyway, the reason we went into Afghanistan was to get Bin Laden. Bushco f'ed that up beyond all recognition. The only empire builder that ever succeeded in Afghanistan was Alexander and he did it by marrying the most powerful warlord's daughter, Roxanne. There's a myth about Alexander that when he was on his death bed (in Persepolis, or wherever the hell he was) he had a stone-cutter brought to his bed and gave him instructions to carve two stones to place in his hands as we was carried to his pyre. On one stone it was carved, "Alexander the Great, who conquered the known world." On the other stone was carved, "Came into the world empty handed and now leaves the same way."

That's the lesson we all need to learn.

[W*GS]

The issue isn't primarily the Bush administration. The issue is the US' insane "War on Drugs". See

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3556

[The Lone Bolt]

Ah yes, good ol' Mikey Whitney. If there's one internet idiot I can comfortably ignore it's this twit.

[alkemical]

you know...if congress would make legislation that all cars would have to be made under the "flex fuel" guidelines - would could then move to creating competition in the automobile fuel market - and make "Big Oil" have to compete with alternatives.

[snowspot66]

Afghanistan was the war everybody supported. It was the one we could have and should have won in a year or two's time. But we went off to Iraq, now we'll be lucky if one of them turns out half right.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by The Lone Bolt

Ah yes, good ol' Mikey Whitney. If there's one internet idiot I can comfortably ignore it's this twit.

I guess ignoring him is your last refuge when you can't dispute his facts.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Anyway, the reason we went into Afghanistan was to get Bin Laden.

BushCo certainly did an excellent job of making Americans believe getting Bin Laden was the real reason they wanted to go into Afghanistan.

[W*GS]

$5 says LABF brings up UNOCAL at some point in this thread.

[The Lone Bolt]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

I guess ignoring him is your last refuge when you can't dispute his facts.

Hahahahah!! What BS! This clown takes his facts out of context, and ignores all other relevant evidence that doesn't fit his extremist views!! Saying that I "can't dispute his facts" is a joke!

He plays the same twisted BS game you do:

1) Cherry-pick evidence that supports his paranoia

2) Ignore and downplay all conflicting evidence (or call it all lies)

3) Put the worst possible spin on the fact he does attend to.

It's like saying that a fire in your neighborhood was set by you LABF because you have matches in your possession. Nevermind that you were miles away at the time. We don't need to bring up that lie. Let's just focus on the matches.

So I cherry-pick that fact you have matches in your possession and ignore other evidence or dismiss it as "lies". Well, if you did in fact have matches in your possession then you must be guilty! After all, you "can't dispute my facts!"

Mikey is a bullsh-t artist just like you.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by The Lone Bolt

Hahahahah!! What BS! This clown takes his facts out of context, and ignores all other relevant evidence that doesn't fit his extremist views!! Saying that I "can't dispute his facts" is a joke!

He plays the same twisted BS game you do:

1) Cherry-pick evidence that supports his paranoia

2) Ignore and downplay all conflicting evidence (or call it all lies)

3) Put the worst possible spin on the fact he does attend to.

You provide no examples of how the author has done any of these things in his article.

Please provide some actual facts or an actual counterargument to back up the above accusations.

You have yet to dispute one single fact presented in the article.

You are merely distinguishing yourself as an ill-tempered buffoon who foams at the mouth when confronted with inconvenient facts or uncomfortable realities about the consequences of Bush's ill-conceived and disastrous foreign policy.

[The Lone Bolt]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

You provide no examples of how the author has done any of these things in his article.

Please provide some actual facts or an actual counterargument to back up the above accusations.

You have yet to dispute one single fact presented in the article.

You are merely distinguishing yourself as an ill-tempered buffoon who foams at the mouth when confronted with inconvenient facts or uncomfortable realities about the consequences of Bush's ill-conceived and disastrous foreign policy.

But I did present evidence of him doing this previously. Your counterargument was that my facts were all lies. So why should I waste my time again it that's going to be your standard counterargument?

I have better things to do with my time.

And name calling?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by The Lone Bolt

But I did present evidence of him doing this previously.

Even if true, you are merely "poisoning the well" insofar as the previous discussion has no bearing on this one.

Originally Posted by The Lone Bolt

I have better things to do with my time.

Translation:

"I can't actually refute the author's facts, so my only recourse is to engage in the usual smear tactics and poisoning of the well."

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Dueling Quotes

Originally Posted by The Lone Bolt

And name calling?

Originally Posted by The Lone Bolt

Mikey is a bullsh-t artist just like you.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by The Lone Bolt

I have better things to do with my time.

You certainly seem to have time to spare when it comes to repeatedly making a fool of yourself on this thread.

[The Lone Bolt]

Hehe, OK I did call you a BSer. But I think that's a little better than "ill-tempered buffoon".

But seriously, debating you is largely a waste of time. Any evidence that you present is "indesputable fact". Any evidence I present is a "bunch of lies". And I've already demonstrated (Downing Street Memo) how you tend to fill in the blanks with your own imagination and call it "proof" while apparently completely oblivious to the fact that you do so.

Your beliefs are impossible to disprove so it's a big waste of my time attempting it.

And W*GS, you're an intelligent guy, but you waste much of your time disputing LABF and Gaffney's paranoid rantings and propaganda. Trust me, the vast majority of people have the good sense to ignore it. I suggest you do the same.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by The Lone Bolt

Hehe, OK I did call you a BSer. But I think that's a little better than "ill-tempered buffoon".

But seriously, debating you is largely a waste of time. Any evidence that you present is "indesputable fact". Any evidence I present is a "bunch of lies". And I've already demonstrated (Downing Street Memo) how you tend to fill in the blanks with your own imagination and call it "proof" while apparently completely oblivious to the fact that you do so.

Your beliefs are impossible to disprove so it's a big waste of my time attempting it.

And W*GS, you're an intelligent guy, but you waste much of your time disputing LABF and Gaffney's paranoid rantings and propaganda. Trust me, the vast majority of people have the good sense to ignore it. I suggest you do the same.

More dodge ball and hot air from the last of the Bush bandwagoners.

Wake me up if/when you finish giving W*GS a reach-around and actually challenge something from the article.

[The Lone Bolt]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

More dodge ball and hot air from the last of the Bush bandwagoners.

Wake me up if/when you finish giving W*GS a reach-around and actually challenge something from the article.

Dude that first article is 99% opinion and spin. Take a look at the first few paragraphs. He makes all sorts of gloom-and-doom predictions and charcterizations of the situations and back them up with absolutely nothing. And as in the last article he cites other far-left sources or people who apparently have no qualifications whatsoever. Hell last time he cited a "professor" something-or-another who I could find no info at all on! Was this "professor" just an invention of Mikey? Who knows?

Please, there articles are a joke.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by The Lone Bolt

Dude that first article is 99% opinion and spin. Take a look at the first few paragraphs. He makes all sorts of gloom-and-doom predicitions and charcterizations of the situations and back them up with absolutely nothing. And as in the last article he cites other far-left sources or people who apparently have no qualifications whatsoever. Hell last time he cited a "professor" something-or-another who I could find no info at all on! Was this "professor" just an invention of Mikey? Who knows?

Please, there(sic) articles are a joke.

And yet, thousands of words and numerous logical fallacies later, you have yet to challenge even one of his factual assertions.

Like I said, wake me up when you get around to this.

[The Lone Bolt]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

And yet, thousands of words and numerous logical fallacies later, you have yet to challenge even one of his factual assertions.

Like I said, wake me up when you get around to this.

Like I said, the few facts he does cite are questionable (e.g. the sources are far-left, unknown, or taken out of context) and the rest is opinion and spin. That constitutes 99% of these articles. Challenging me to "dispute his facts" is a red herring.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by The Lone Bolt

Like I said, the few facts he does cite are questionable...

Which facts are you talking about? Be specific.

And please offer something to disconfirm said facts - don't just pretend that simply calling them "questionable" or attempting to impugn the source is the same thing as refuting them.

[W*GS]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

And please offer something to disconfirm said facts - don't just pretend that simply calling them "questionable" or attempting to impugn the source is the same thing as refuting them.

You do exactly those things all the time; why the double standard? Really, it's just hypocrisy on your part.