Dietxanadu

Why is Gods name are we still in Afghanistan?

It seems that we are supporting the Afghanistan government, and there president Karzai has said he would back Pakistan in a war against America.

It has become all most normal for an Afghanistan soldier to kill America or UN soldiers. But if an America soldier kills an Afghanistan, oh boy the stuff hits the fan.

Now it appears that we have been looking the other way as the Karzai family (big time drug dealers) move “H” into euro countries.

So why are we still there? Why are we letting American soldiers get killed or shot up, for folks that want to blow us up so they can get a nice spot in paradise?

Long pass the time we should have packed up and gone home.

I don’t give a rat’s ass about Afghanistan, do you?

Diet

gmcase Loc: Galt's Gulch

We should have been gone roughly ten years ago. Nation building in countries where individual liberty is not a priority is a total waste of every resource imaginable including American lives first and foremost.

14kphotog Loc: Marietta, Ohio

Total agreement with the statement. Get out of that s-_t hole and stop sending our young men to places they are not wanted. Trade wheat for oil on an even bases, and if they don't like it send the B-52s with a strong message of our disaproval.

bull drink water Loc: pontiac mi.

we seem to have a problem saying,oops time to go.or is it that some people are making so much money while we stay there?

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

Nope. let them kill each other not our boys, Bob.

sudzmonn Loc: here , there , everywhere

I don’t give a rat’s ass about Afghanistan

gmcase Loc: Galt's Gulch

Neither does God, obviously.
:-D

rfbccb Loc: Central Mississippi

The only war I could be for now is with a country who has or is getting ready to do the USA harm. Then fight it with all we have to win it.

Pepper Loc: Planet Earth Country USA

We no longer fight wars to win them, we’re far too concerned with our global image and collateral damage.

Lancer W/A Canon Loc: atlanta

Dumb politicians . Common sense tells you, that if the russians couldn't control anything in ten years, why would anyone think we could, especially with our rules and self righteousness.
The taliban etc. walk into a village, kill the elder, and say, do it our way or we will be back. We go into same village, tell people, do it our way and we will leave.
Go figure.

stevenelson Loc: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma

I talked with a friend in the army about this and all he said was that he would rather be fighting with them on their soil instead of ours. God Bless Them All!

PNagy Loc: Missouri City, Texas

Be serious: No one in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or for that matter, Iraq has the capacity to invade the US. We are not fighting people with inferior weapons in order to protect ourselves.

The real reason for American militarism is control of other countries and their resources. In Iraq it was control of a major oil capacity. That is why Bush I sent the American military might against Iraq in the First Gulf War. First he goaded Saddam into attacking Kuwait by having Ambassador April Glaspie tell Sadam and Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Azziz that the "US would not be concerned about a minor gulf war," and that we do not have a defense alliance with Kuwait. Of course when Saddam did what he was told would be all right, he became the "Adolf Hitler of the Middle East."

Clinton continued the neo-imperialism with his sanctions and selective bombing, which reqaped the lives of some one and a half million Iraqis.

Not to be outdone, Baby Bush actually conquered Iraq for a shifting array of purported reasons, all of them false. Saddam had been complicit in the 911 crime, said all the liars of the Bush administration. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, they said, despite conclusive evidence from the UN inspections and Hans Blix' IAEA that he couldn't defeat a desert caravan. Saddam was a bad man; a vicious dictator.

Well, that last one is true, but some client rulers who were economiclally more cooperative with us were far worse, i.e, the Saudi Roylaty. Besides, in 1984 and 1985 it was Donald Rumsfeld himself who sold Saddam the chemicals with which he gassed the Kurds to promote the American geopolitical goal of preserving a chance to control Turkey, Iran, and Iraq by not allowing a Kurdish state to rise in their midst.

Control of oil as casus belli goes back to the original publication of a White Paper under the auspices of Project for a New American Century. Its authors and signatorees were some two score neocons, nearly all of whom later tookk senior positions in the George W. Bush administration. The paper called for the outrigtht conqust of Iraq as means of controlling its oil. It warned that this would not be politically acceptable, but for a "catalyzing event, like new Pearl Harbor." The New Pearl Harbor was 911. Severl other versions of this policy paper appeared, the last one in 2,000. Cummulatively, it is nothing less than the neocon MEIN KAMPF.

It is time to scrap the idea that altruism drives US foreign policy. If that is the case, why does the US give more to Israel, a wealthy nation the sizze of New Jersey, than it does to all of impoverished and overpopulated SubSaharan Africa? No nation will waste a billion dollars a day to prosecute a war in order to bring democracy, human rights, or a better life to others. Nor will it invest just to help them build a more cohesive nation.

The proof of the latter point lies in the case of Iraq. Although Saddam did not allow anyone to supplant him or challenge him in political power, under him Iraq had more expansive human rights for women than any other Arab nation, a greater middle class, and a larger percentage of college educated and those with advanced degrees than any neighboring contry, but Israel. The puppet government installed by the US has thrown Iraqi women under a veil. Iraq is now also a chaotic mess, with oil production far lowere than it had been under Saddam. About two to three million Iraqis are dead because of US policies and another 1-2 million have entered the diaspora.

Altruistic motives for fighting wars are the distraction politicians throw to the people in order to gain their support for dying for the personal gain of the politicians and their corporate clients. The real reasons for the war are of more sinister cloth. They do not even serve the national interest; only the interest of a narrow clique whose money has given them access to the politicians. It is for these reasons that though my younger and more naive incarnation supported foreign wars, there seems to be no war, but a war of abject self defense that I can support now.

Sdaupanner Loc: South Dakota /New England

Me thinks that the people have grown old and fat ... What in the hell do you mean that none of the Muslim people with a little bit of help could attack the US of A Look at the World Trade Centers they just fell of their own accord many people have been on both sides of the war effort but I think that we should be taking care of our own first then taking care of those that need our help after but many have forgot the WTC and until we remember what went on in the past then can we make a real statement about the future. Wake up people I do think we are a safer nation than any other nation but if anyone thinks we got what we have for free we had to pay for it with our blood and if necessary we will all fight to the last man if a war broke out here on ours but lets keep it over seas if we can and not invite it home for supper. I am a Veteran of Vietnam USAF 42 Bomb Wing so I have served my country how many that are giving their thoughts are ex-veterans?

PNagy Loc: Missouri City, Texas

Being a veteran does not make you an expert on policy. It only means you were the unwitting stooge for those who craft the policy. You have not addressed a single aspect of my post on its merits, but issued conclusions of your own, equally unsupported. Your only pretense to counter anything I wrote was to invoke 911 as evidence of the Muslim danger in America. That is a totally different matter, and based on you comments about it, utterly beytond your comprehension. I would explain it to you, but your present post indicates that you navigate public affairs with an unexamined Fourth of July patriotism and simplicity. In debate substance wins, that is information logically anlayzed. Disembodied conclusions have no merit and ad hominem garbage, such as speculating about the age and adiposity of your opponent have even less.

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

At the risk of adding fuel to the fire:
#1 They can hurt us, as has been demonstrated!
#2 They want to hurt us, as has been demonstrated!
#3 They hate us and our way of life!
#4 We will never make them love us!

WAKE UP

any more and I will be building the fire so that's enough.

BTW Veteran USN

Bob.