If anything than turning Afghanistan into a perfect little peaceful progressive democracy counts as defeat, then the war was lost before it began.
If the goal was kicking Taleban and al-Qaida ass, it seems to be going pretty well. The more of them we kill the happier I will be, and the better a place the world will be. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
If the goal was kicking Taleban and al-Qaida ass, it seems to be going pretty well.
No. It's not going pretty well even in this limited sense and it cannot go well until there is a stable, competent and somewhat legitimate government functioning everywhere in Afghanistan. Plus there is the issue of Pakistan northwest frontier that also requires a stable, competent and somewhat legitimate government functioning over there.
The more of them we kill the happier I will be, and the better a place the world will be.
May be satisfying at a primal level but perfectly useless and counterproductive if doing that spawns more of them and they keep coming back.
Anyway, there cannot be any type of success in the region until Saudi Arabia is dealt with one way or the other. Facts, selfish little bastards. They don't even care about your feelings.
Then maybe maybe an Afghan state, or several ones, will eventually reform. But the more we meddle with their domestic affairs, the smaller is the chance that will happen.
Keeping al-Qaida and the Taliban down is the best we can hope for. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
But the more we meddle with their domestic affairs, the smaller is the chance that will happen.
Starvid:
Keeping al-Qaida and the Taliban down is the best we can hope for.
Aren't these two statements contradictory? Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
Why? What did the Taleban ever do to you? (Please don't say '911', as they had nothing to do with it and even offered to hand over the suspects upon the production of evidence against them.)
The world is full of people who are just as vile as the Taleban, who are in fact even worse. I don't see you calling for their heads on a plate. And it really isn't up to you, is it. Plenty of people in Afghanistan actually prefer the Taleban to the available options.
The US has done much greater harm to peoples across the world than the Taleban has ever managed. Shall I admit to my desire to cheer every time a US soldier gets blown to pieces, and not meet a chorus of boos and revulsion here on ET?
But I suppose it's OK to exterminate the Taleban, they must be just raghead vermin or something, and the ultimate evil, by definition. Otherwise it just wouldn't make sense.
What makes my answer and yours different? Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
Too bad the Americans are our friends and Osama is not. But I actually prefer it that way around. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Well, that was sad, sure. But it was about revenge.
So you're arguing that it would similarly be legitimate for the Afghani populace to inflict casualties inside America, after all it's about revenge. Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
Or really, the queation does not make sense. This is international relations so the concept "legitimate" does not exist, except as a propaganda tool. Which is why having the UN on your side is a good thing. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
(...)
Aside of being morally questionable, your thinking is also rather inaccurate. People have a sense of justice. If wars are fought without legitimacy that has consequences for how people react. Like, say, the infractions against their sense of justice might lead them to become insurgents and start blowing stuff up.
On the question of LEGITIMACY:
But what about the UN mandate? Doesn't a UN mandate count for anything? Doesn't it confer legitimacy, say on the intervention by member nations of NATO in Afghanistan? Let us not forget that it was the govt in Kabul that sought that intervention.
When the US invaded Afghanistan to get back at the Taleban, Al-Qaeda and at every possible old and young Afghan leader, to me quite frankly, their act was not justifiable -- it was not a reason for invasion. I personally was opposed to the outright destruction of Afghanistan being perpetuated cowboy-like by America without so much as a thought for the civilians, children who would get caught in the crossfire. If NATO, which unfortunately counts the United States as one of its major members, fails in Afghanistan (and it may fail), in my opinion it will largely be on account of the conduct of the Afghanistan war that was waged from the time the United States invaded Afghanistan armed with the wrong purpose and deploying the wrong tactics, i.e., purely punitive measures, bomb and awe, destruction and revenge, etc.
However, once the Afghan govt obtained a UN mandate for the UN to intervene and NATO was appointed to execute that mission on behalf of the United Nations, that to me was conferring legitimacy on the said NATO intervention in Afghanistan, America notwithstading.
If, on the other hand, we cannot and don't want to accept that the particular UN mandate was legitimate in itself, then of course, that gives a totally different legitimacy color to the NATO member nations' intervention in Afghanistan. Sadly, this is where I differ with my highly-esteemed fellow 'diarists' -- either we accept a UN mandate as legitimate or not but we cannot accuse NATO of intervening in Afghanistan illegally. In that, we either support the United Nations or not. The UN is, in my humble opinion, one of the avenues we can take towards clarifying, or at the very least, towards helping sort out a political and sometimes moral dilemma that most nations and peoples face when the lives of millions of human beings are at stake.
If we believe we that our govts shouldn't or cannot trust the UN or should only support it halfway when the said intl body decides to confer a mission on an agency or another institution, on another nation or nations, groups of peoples, then I suppose we should be prepared to face more debacles in the future. At the moment, it is realistically the only international body that we can rightly call upon in the most legitimate manner to help nations resolve some of the most difficult political and security conflicts they face.
I accept that there is a strong chance that NATO might fail in Afghanistan and there is a plethora of reasons, beginning with lack of meaningful public support because of costs, moral dilemma, political ideologies, personal beliefs, and more, etc., etc., etc. Unfortunately, the United States has been on the ground much ahead of EU-NATO member nations, doing what they've always known best (harsh punitive measures, bomb and awe, destruction and revenge) so, if we all truly believe EU member nations are incapable of providing the necessary balance to slow down America's ardour for war and counterbalance the United States' supremacist doctrine, if we all believe these EU nations in NATO are not up to the task of reversing the tide of horror in Afghanistan, then I must agree with all of you, these EU member nations should pull out of Afghanistan illico and perhaps, Europeans should demand that their govts disband or withdraw NATO altogether immediately afterwards. (I believe in following up what a man, or woman for that matter, strongly believes with determined actions.)
Meanwhile, I think it is fair to ask those who are deeply concerned for Afghanistan to call on, nay, demand of the United Nations via their governments to apply international pressure on the government of Pres Hamid Karzai in Kabul and to require the Afghan govt to do more than what they are doing today in order to help alleviate very worried and concerned Europeans of their moral (and financial) burden and so that the European NGOs and military personnel stationed in Afghanistan can come back home soon!
For him it is OK, when NATO does not help Afghanis, but just kills the Taleban and he clearly justifies the invasion, not just the nation building part. Of course the NATO mission has other goals than those which Starvid stated.
And to you comment, I think one can be in a way critical to the UN without blasting it. Maybe an intervention can be argued as legal, if it has UN support, but that doesn't mean, that we can't think it is wrong, and we don't have to support it, just because it is legal. I haven't seen too much people here demanding all the govs and MPs which have voted in their respective countries for the NATO mission to go to jail. Gemach, gemach
Sorry, been busy in other threads and elsewhere -- haven't really checked this thread, part of the reason is it's become too long and tires my eyes scanning the posts.
Yes, I've just read some of his comments. I'd say his view on killing all the Taleban and never mind the rest was a bit extreme. To adopt that sort of strategy would be no more no less adopting the American way of doing things which was something I believe the majority here rejected outright -- me included and to think that my view on the matter may already be considered far too "rightish" for the sensitivities of most here (although I may be wrong.)
To set the record straight, it is my belief that every single decision, or at least the major ones to which the general public have direct access, made by any institution in the name of the citizens of a republic, a union or a federation of states, international or regional, national or local should be scrutinised and if warranted, criticised -- and this goes very much so for the UN. However, just to remind you, the tenor of my earlier post does pertain to the notion of not criticising the UN but rather to the legitimacy of the NATO intervention in Afghanistan.
Al Quaeda? We could always have shown the evidence we had to the Taleban, and allowed a trial in a neutral country. After all if we're sop convinced we're right it wouldn't have hurt. Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
or is it just that you think there's nowhere sufficiently neutral? Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
Like law matters an ounce in international relations! Like anyone would trust the verdict! Like al-Qaida wouldn't fight to the death against anyone who tried to arrest them! Like you could turn over evidence without compromising vast amounts of intelligence! Like the Americans would put their indepence in the hands of some international organization, whithout any kind of that precious legitimacy!
Et cetera ad infinitum. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Like law matters an ounce in international relations!
The core of the matter. Might makes right.
On this basis, terrorism, genocide and anything the fuck else you like is legal.
Insanity consists of doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results.
Vicious idiots and arrogant fools.
t! Like al-Qaida wouldn't fight to the death against anyone who tried to arrest them!
Like you could turn over evidence without compromising vast amounts of intelligence!
Step one might be to stop doing all the stuff that enables them to recruit new members. Like feeding the House of Saud jillions of dollars so they can run a reactionary government and harbor a huge population of unemployable young men. Like not arming and funding the Taliban in the first place as part of a previous crackpot plan to kick the Russians out of Afghanistan. Like not subsidizing western agriculture to the point where the third world farmers have to sell drugs to us to make any money. Like not invading a country because the ruler "tried to kill my daddy" despite the pleas of practically every other country.
With the current strategy, we're creating enemy soldiers faster than we can kill them.
But in top of that, after 9/11 some people needed killing. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
so whenever there was an IRA attack in the UK, it needed the RAF to drop a large bomb somewhere near the houses of supporters of NORAID? Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
This is a pretty interesting comment. First off, the whole revenge thing is not exactly, you know, whatever. Secondly, if you want to kill people in revenge, you could choose between the perps, or their families, or maybe the (Saudi) government that provided their inspiration. But the U.S. decided to go after Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11.
Thirdly, there is a question of appropriate levels of response. In 9/11 there were about 3000 American fatalities, some of them more awful than others, and all televised (repeatedly). In Iraq so far we have killed over 3000 American soldiers, and wounded about 10,000 (and "wounded" in modern language essentially means "killed" because the minor sort of flesh wounds that used to pump up the casualty figures are mostly avoided because of the widespread use of body armor, the current wounded have no arms, legs, or faces), and we don't count mental wounds or long-term health problems among the casualties. So the true American total casualty figures are certainly over 20,000 people. And then we have killed somewhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqis, depending on whose numbers you want to use. So the current response ratio to 9/11 is around, say, using 600,000:3000, about 200:1.
Is that enough revenge killing yet?
Migeru:
"The war is wrong" "3,000 Americans died on 9/11" At that time, the body count in Iraq was reported to be 30,000. "10 times more people have already died in Iraq. Is that not enough for you?" "Whatever it takes to make America safe"
"The war is wrong"
"3,000 Americans died on 9/11"
At that time, the body count in Iraq was reported to be 30,000.
"10 times more people have already died in Iraq. Is that not enough for you?"
"Whatever it takes to make America safe"
I won't mourn the Taliban, any more than I'll mourn the troops that die in this mindlessly stupid "war", but I'm not happy when they die. I'm not even convinced they were notably unpleasant in the general scheme of things.
The whole thing is a tragic fuck-up as far as I'm concerned, caused precisely by the sort of world view that can write "The more of them we kill the happier I will be, and the better a place the world will be".
Al Qaeda, Afghanistan and the Good War The U.S. war in Afghanistan often is seen as a "good war" even by those who oppose the U.S. involvement in Iraq. The Afghan war is in trouble, however. Whether that matters depends upon the status of al Qaeda.
