Have We Won in Afghanistan? - Afghanistan is fucked
73 replies, posted
posted in other section but I think it'd be better suited here.
What a wonderful waste of 13 years.
[quote]Ben Anderson went to Afghanistan in 2007 to make a film about the vicious fighting between underequipped British forces and the Taliban in Helmand, the country's most violent province. He didn't plan on staying for six years. But we're glad he did, because now we have This Is What Winning Looks Like, a disturbing new documentary about the ineptitude, drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and dishonesty of the Afghan government and its security forces as well as the role of the US Marines during the troop withdrawal.[/quote]
[url]http://www.vice.com/en_ca/vice-news/this-is-what-winning-looks-like-trailer[/url]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swFborUCW5Y[/media]
Once again, the terms "pointless" and "Idiotic" apply to everything done in this goddamned war. This only supports that idea. A waste 13 years, millions of dollars, and countless lives. And still, everything there is going terrible, no matter what the general media tries to tell people. You sugar coat destruction and desolation, it's still desolation and destruction, no matter how many Political figures say "We did our best."
Look you can justify the Iraq war because we took that piece of shit Hussein out of power, but apparently we didn't learn our lesson back in the 'Nam. We should have left the Taliban alone, 9/11 or no.
I do agree that Hussein had to be taken down, but after that was done, the US for some reason deemed it necessary to stick around in the middle east for years longer, resulting in even more pointless death. At first, it seemed like a necessary action. But staying stationed in a place, continuing to wage a war for at least half a decade longer than they needed to be isn't justified. It should've ended much sooner than it did.
[QUOTE=Wealth + Taste;40618629]Look you can justify the Iraq war because we took that piece of shit Hussein out of power, but apparently we didn't learn our lesson back in the 'Nam. We should have left the Taliban alone, 9/11 or no.[/QUOTE]
Uuuh, Afghanistan was far more justified than Iraq. Hussein was not a problem in 2003.
[QUOTE=Wealth + Taste;40618629]Look you can justify the Iraq war because we took that piece of shit Hussein out of power, but apparently we didn't learn our lesson back in the 'Nam. We should have left the Taliban alone, 9/11 or no.[/QUOTE]
Theres two sides to everything. There are reasons why moving troops to Afghanistan was a bad idea, and also reasons why it was a good Idea.
-SNIP-
Sorry, had a stick up my ass yesterday, and happened to forget everything about the war on terror that I knew, and made an incredibly retarded post. Sorry.
[QUOTE=CAPT Opp4;40618524]...millions of dollars...[/QUOTE]
lol
[QUOTE=CAPT Opp4;40618794]No. Hussein carried out gas attacks on innocent people, and committed abominable war crimes against civilians. Occupying Afghanistan and taking down the Taliban was merely a side objective the US decided to accomplish, basically while they were "in the neighborhood". If anyone truly NEEDED to be taken down, it was Hussein.[/QUOTE]
You have it all messed up, where were you when all this was happening? The US invaded Afghanistan first, due to solid intel that Al-Qaeda was in-country and the Afghan government( Taliban at the time ) refused to give them up. Whilst the US was there, a few politicians declared on false intel that Iraq had WMDs, so we then invaded them.
[QUOTE=CAPT Opp4;40618794]No. Hussein carried out gas attacks on innocent people, and committed abominable war crimes against civilians. Occupying Afghanistan and taking down the Taliban was merely a side objective the US decided to accomplish, basically while they were "in the neighborhood". If anyone truly NEEDED to be taken down, it was Hussein.[/QUOTE]
First of all, as stated above, you're reading your history timeline upside down or something because Iraq happened afterward.
Second of all, who tossed Saddam those chemical weapons again?
[QUOTE=Kaabii;40618929]
Second of all, who tossed Saddam those chemical weapons again?[/QUOTE]
The wonderful country whose name rhymes with Untied States of America?
I think that strategically you need to have a goal before you start fighting. With a defined goat it's easy to know when you've 'won' and can withdraw your forces.
I never heard anyone of note in the US government define our goals. Maybe chasing after Bin Laden, maybe chasing out the Taliban, maybe creating a 'democracy' there, maybe installing a puppet government, maybe making a deal with the Taliban, maybe getting Pakistan to help stamp out the Taliban...who the fuck knows?
All I know is after it has all been said and done, I don't see how we can call it a win. A tie maybe, assuming that after we leave it all doesn't immediately devolve into a civil war.
[QUOTE=Amokov;40618948]The wonderful country whose name rhymes with Untied States of America?[/QUOTE]
You mean like how France and Italy gave them nuclear materials and the UK almost gave them nuclear fire triggers for the Iraqi Super Arty piece? Stop trying to pin the entire blame on the US, its a cheap way of trying to duck the point.
Can we say that Vietnam war has repeated itself?
This entire discussion is redundant. There are no winners in war. People with no vested interest in the power-struggles of the greedy and power-hungry die at the behest of soulless interests which they have no control over or benefit in supporting. The idea that you can win a war makes quite a few false assumptions.
[QUOTE=CAPT Opp4;40618794]No. Hussein carried out gas attacks on innocent people, and committed abominable war crimes against civilians. Occupying Afghanistan and taking down the Taliban was merely a side objective the US decided to accomplish, basically while they were "in the neighborhood". If anyone truly NEEDED to be taken down, it was Hussein.[/QUOTE]
There were no WMDs in Iraq.
Who got rich from all of this?
[QUOTE=Amokov;40618948]The wonderful country whose name rhymes with Untied States of America?[/QUOTE]The US government is comprised of a bunch of gigantic hypocrites.
[QUOTE=Dark RaveN;40619050]Can we say that Vietnam war has repeated itself?[/QUOTE]
Nothing and I mean nothing like the vietnam war.
People who say that shit are dumb really.
It's the United States' fault Afghanistan is fucked up today, if they had of just let the soviets beat out the Islamists, today we might have had a relatively stable Afghanistan.
I feel like there were other things we could have done about the issues in Afghanistan rather than just invade. But when a good chunk of a country is run by extremist terrorists, it's hard to just impose sanctions and hope that that'll make them renounce their faith and go about treating people fairly. In their eyes, we are, and always will be, the wrongdoers.
Shit's a lot worse than I thought. Thanks again to Vice for bringing me up to speed.
[editline]12th May 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=laserguided;40619308]It's the United States' fault Afghanistan is fucked up today, if they had of just let the soviets beat out the Islamists, today we might have had a relatively stable Afghanistan.[/QUOTE]
Except Russia had no business in Afghanistan. You're saying the same thing as "If only America had beat out the extremists we could have a relatively stable Afghanistan!" You're just trading one foreign intervention for another, and with your history of defending Russia's every move it's pretty obvious why.
Bin Laden died exactly the way he should have died in 2001, only a decade late. We never should have launched a full scale invasion, never should have declared war on the Taliban, and sure as shit never should have gone into Iraq. What we should have done was paid off the Taliban, gotten them to sell out Bin Laden, and launched one mission to go in and eliminate him.
But no, Bush wanted his wars so bad that he declared the Taliban to be the enemy, deliberately or through ineptitude allowed Bin Laden to escape into Pakistan, and was stupid enough to think the Afghans would welcome a foreign power invading their country and setting up a puppet government.
Yeah, like that ever worked before.
The Bush administration is the worst thing to ever happen to this country, don't ever allow that to be forgotten and whitewashed by Republicans and Fox News. Of course, with Texas somehow dictating textbook standards to the rest of the country, our children will probably be taught that there were WMDs in Iraq all the time, we were welcomed as liberators, the civil war definitely never happened, and both Afghanistan and Iraq are better off because we "helped" them.
[QUOTE=laserguided;40619308]It's the United States' fault Afghanistan is fucked up today, if they had of just let the soviets beat out the Islamists, today we might have had a relatively stable Afghanistan.[/QUOTE]
It's the West's fault that every single problem nation in the Middle East is the way it is.
The pre-WW2 colonialism and restructuring post-WW2 by the U.N. caused most of this shit.
[QUOTE=Truckasaurus1;40619352]Shit's a lot worse than I thought. Thanks again to Vice for bringing me up to speed.
[editline]12th May 2013[/editline]
Except Russia had no business in Afghanistan. You're saying the same thing as "If only America had beat out the extremists we could have a relatively stable Afghanistan!" You're just trading one foreign intervention for another, and with your history of defending Russia's every move it's pretty obvious why.[/QUOTE]
Oh yeah? I'm pretty sure Afghanistan asked for military assistance, and the Soviet Union had supported the socialist government in Afghanistan since the 50's so yes they did have business in Afghanistan. Plus, Afghanistan bordered the Soviet Union and it was and still is a major drug smuggling route, infact the CIA allegedly supported this drug smuggling into the USSR.
[QUOTE]"In most cases, the CIA's role involved various forms of complicity, tolerance or studied ignorance about the trade, not any direct culpability in the actual trafficking ... [t]he CIA did not handle heroin, but it did provide its drug lord allies with transport, arms, and political protection. In sum, the CIA's role in the Southeast Asian heroin trade involved indirect complicity rather than direct culpability."[/QUOTE]
It directly affected them. And by the way, since when did I 'defend Russia's every move'.
I don't support the war in Afghanistan, but to say that it was a 100% complete waste of time is a bit overkill, no?
-Education has gone up since 2001 dramatically, far better than it did under the Taliban.
-They actually have a legal system, whereas under the Taliban a lot of "justice" was merely vendetta killings. Now Afghanistan has a more impartial police and judiciary service
-The Taliban were dead set on eradicating tribal culture and replacing it with the culture of leaders outside the country (ie Osama bin Laden). Anything that didn't match their cultural ideal was destroyed or defiled, which is heartwrenching in such an ancient and culturally diverse country, and other Islamic leaders were appalled at what they were doing. Since 2001 tribes and citizens in Afghanistan have been free to not only retain their individuality, but also to express it. [url=http://www.rawa.org/statues.htm]lookie here[/url]
From a BBC News article:
[quote]
•54% of Afghans say they are more prosperous now than in 2001.
•Those without access to electricity form only 33% of the population, which is an improvement on the previous 42%.
•In 2000 only 35% of the population was immunised against Measles. Now it stands at 70%.
•Literacy rates have improved to 52%, up from a previous 37%
•In Helmand there are now 93 schools, an improvement from a previous 34.
•52% of children are enrolled in schools, up from 37%. Around one million in 2001 (none of whom were girls) to over six million today, one third (or over two million) of whom are girls.
•A significant increase in the availability of basic health services, which were available to less than 10 per cent of the population under the former Taliban regime, but are now extended to around 85 per cent of people.
•The identification and management of over 39,000 community-based infrastructure projects - such as wells, clinics and roads – in over 22,000 communities throughout Afghanistan, through the Afghan-led National Solidarity Program.
•The rehabilitation of almost 10,000 km of rural roads, supporting the employment of hundreds of thousands of local workers, through the National Rural Access Program.
•The telecommunications industry has created about 100,000 jobs since 2001
•10 million Afghans today have access to telecommunications, compared to only 20,000 in 2001.
•The Taliban suppressed free speech. Afghan people now have access to over 400 print media publications, 150 FM radio stations and 26 television channels. These give Afghans an outlet to discuss publicly issues that were previously off-limits, such as human rights abuses and women's rights.[/quote]
[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8377393.stm]source[/url]
[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12599726]another article on cultural heritage and how the Taliban nearly fucked it all over[/url]
[url=www.defence.gov.au/defencenews/articles/1017/files/6_Progress%20in%20Afghanistan%20since%202001%20Fact%20Sheet%206.pdf]And this is a pdf from the Australian government on progress in Afghanistan since 2001[/url]
No, I am not saying that we've completely and utterly won and everything's fine and dandy over there. I'm just trying to point out that there were good things to come of this, so it wasn't completely and utterly pointless. The current Afghan Government is rife with corruption, and much of the police force is inept, but it's much, much better than the Taliban regime ever was.
we should stick around to the governments stable.
or you know, maybe we can just leave and let the country go back to being run by the taliban and say how shit the country is when gays, christians and women are beheaded.
I spent 4 years in Afghanistan, and I always said, " Ya know lads, even if we get this place on track, it's gonna flop."
It was pretty shitty, it was hard to tell exactly who was or wasn't an insurgent until the shooting started.
But I'm glad I went, and you know what, if I could, I'd go back. I helped others, and I bettered myself.
Why isn't the current situation like the Vietnam War?
The way I see it (probably wrong, unless you inform me correctly), is that the purpose of Afghan + Iraqi War was to curtail terrorism, which gives it the name "The War on Terror". Vietnam was partly about curtailing Communism in that area of the world.
Plus, the fact that combat is and/or was mostly asymmetrical, fighting against insurgents & guerrillas laying traps and explosives.
Not to mention the local population being hostile to Western Forces.
If I'm wrong, I'm wrong... but please explain why and how?
There's another factor that is the incredibly corrupt and criminal Afghan Security Forces, supplied by NATO/UNO, and of course, America
[IMG]http://assets.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/9424d2a51b264bd1e9819f6a0bb001b1.jpg[/IMG]
[I]An Afghan police officer so high on heroin that he can barely stand or tie sandbags.[/I]
[QUOTE=hl2conscript;40620262]There's another factor that is the incredibly corrupt and criminal Afghan Security Forces, supplied by NATO/UNO, and of course, America
[IMG]http://assets.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/9424d2a51b264bd1e9819f6a0bb001b1.jpg[/IMG]
[I]An Afghan police officer so high on heroin that he can barely stand or tie sandbags.[/I][/QUOTE]
[video=youtube;l8J5f4juWFc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8J5f4juWFc[/video]
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