Well now that you bring it up, how much support is there for the Taliban? Do you know? Talks of knowing what the people want is speculation without facts to back it up (unless you do have some resources, which I personally would be interested in seeing. I can't find much on the opinions of the Afghan people's actual thoughts on the Taliban).
I had the same problem finding articles discussing the opinions of Afghanis too, but even without evidence to determine exactly what's what it's still a valid question to ask.
mf said:
However here is a very interesting report that I'd suggest anyone read
http://abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1083a1Afghanistan2009.pdf
I'm not surprised at all that support for the occupying forces are dropping amongst the Afghans, the US particularly but also its allies have been doing an absolutely piss-poor job of the whole "hearts and minds" bit pretty much since day one.
It's worth pointing out though that the report you posted states that over half (55%) of the Afghans surveyed think that the biggest threat to their nation is from the Taliban, and only 8% think that it's from the US.
mf said:
My apologies, I could be mistaken on this. A recent guest speaker at my university talked about the US's support of Osama Bin Landen in the late 80's and early 90's. I don't have any sources at the moment to cite this (but I'm searching through my notes).
The US has been heavily specuated to fund terrorist groups and cells around the world (I say heavily speculated because we have yet to actually admit to it). A current hot topic being wether or not the US is funding terrorist groups in Iran
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1543798/US-funds-terror-groups-to-sow-chaos-in-Iran.html
While I very well may be wrong about the US supporting and backing Al Qaeda and indirectly the Taliban, our blotched history hardly makes it inconcievable. We play "nation sports" all the time, pitting groups and sects against governments we don't like. We have delcared a "War on Terror" and paradoxily have supported and may continue to covertly support terrorism throughout the world.
You're not "wrong" about the US backing Al-Qaeda and the Taliban indirectly, it's just that they weren't actually Al-Qaeda or the Taliban at the time, they were just Mujahideen rebels fighting off a Soviet invasion, rebels that the US provided with weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_qaeda#Jihad_in_Afghanistan
mf said:
Well if we're going to argue that we're going after Al Qaeda, check this out. It's estimated that fewer then 100 Al Qaeda remain in Afghanistan and the Taliban appear to be distancing themselves from Al Qaeda
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/10/AR2009111019644.html
The article also says that most of what's left of the Al-Qaeda operatives previously based in Afghanistan have hopped the border to Pakistan (hence the recent increase in terrorist attacks in that country), and that the recent shift in dynamics between the two groups may be leading to closer relations between Al-Qaeda and certain factions of the Taliban:
The Haqqani-led faction, which is blamed for many of the deadliest attacks on U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan, works so closely with al-Qaeda that distinctions between the groups may be irrelevant, officials said.
...
Despite its weakened state, there is little doubt that al-Qaeda remains a potent international force, and there is reason to believe that cooperation with Pakistani Taliban groups is deepening.
mf said:
And as I stated before, I don't believe that this war has done anything to make our nation safer. We aren't fighting a conventional war, we are fighting against an ideal. The "War on Terror" easily has the potential to span on for decades and decades to come. There is no clear view of the end of this "war".
When are our troops going to come home? When we've set up a mock USA in Afghanistan? When we kill Bin Laden? When we destory Al-Qaeda? And what about after that? Is that really the end of terror? Will we allow terrorism to exist in other parts of the world and call it even? Can we even fight terrorism? What about terrorists that are still to be born?
When fighting a war, two or more sides face off against eachother (overwhelmingly commonly being two nation-states), and yet here we are fighting ideas/ideals. Can Al Qaede actually be destroyed when it's free and seperate from any national government?
The "War on Terror" is as misleading a sound-bite as the "War on Drugs", to borrow a quote from The Wire:
"They can't even call this sh*t a war."
"Why not?"
"Wars end."
Wars need clearly defined and achievable objectives, but there'll always be terrorism just like there'll always be drug-related crime, which leaves the "warfare" mentality as a particularly ill-suited tool to deal with either problem.
Like I said before I don't disagree with you when it comes to the over-reliance on military tactics, a far more effective strategy would have been and still is to beat the ideas in the arena of public debate (which naturally necessitates giving people a chance to voice their frustrations) and to treat Al-Qaeda itself as a criminal organisation.
While I think there's a place for the military in all of this I do think that treating Al-Qaeda almost exclusively as a military target actually made them stronger by giving them more credibility, which increased their level of support.
I do have a problem though with the "mock USA" part. The US has said numerous times that the style of democracy in Afghanistan will have to be suited to the particular cultural requirements there or it won't stick, and they've also made no secret of the fact that the main objective in Afghanistan is to stabilise the country to prevent terrorists from using it as a base of operations in the future.
That's part of the reason why they haven't been up in arms about the corruption during the recent elections (along with the fact that this was Afghanistan's first
ever true democratic election, so anyone thinking that it was going to be as clean as your typical election in the West was deluding themselves), sure they'd prefer it if the government wasn't so corrupt, but they'll settle for it if it means a stable country that doesn't support terrorism.
mf said:
If we really want national security, we need to change our world posture. By attacking and invading groups of people inside of soverign nations, I fail to understand how we're moving towards security.
To quote Howard Zinn in Terrorism and War (Seven Stories Press, 2002) "According to a 1997 Defense Science Board report, "Historical data show strong correlations between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States" I can give you the reference he is quoting if you so desire.
There is a reason these people are pissed at us, and it's not simply for existing. Al Qaeda is angered towards the US because of our involvement in Saudi Arabia being close to holy sites. Our troop stations and deployments across the globe (and especially in the Middle East) make people mad and in response they attack us through terrorism. So what's our answer to make ourselves safer? We do the exact same thing, over and over again.
I agree that we had to do something in response to 9/11, but when you decide "we have to do something, and fast" it leads to more violence and war. If you want to do something right, you take the time and think it through. We invaded Afghanistan less then one month after 9/11.
I agree that the West has brought a lot of the heat it gets on itself with it's foreign policies in the Middle-East, and some of its attitudes towards Muslims domestically, but don't forget that the invasion of Afghanistan was fully supported in every way by the UN and it's member nations, and that includes the Muslim nations of the Middle-East. The US was
completely justified in going in there.
If you want to blame anybody blame the Taliban for not following international law and giving up the Al-Qaeda members behind the 9/11 attacks when again,
the UN, told them they had to. If they'd just handed them over the US and their allies (which included NATO don't forget) would never have needed to go into Afghanistan in the first place.
mf said:
Before you try and discredit me, I'd recommend you do a simple Wikipedia search.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bombing
Read the last sentence of the Later Theories section. We've carpet bombed mountainous regions of Afghanistan.
Discredit you? Who's trying to discredit anyone? I've got no problem admitting that I was wrong when I said that "nothing they've done in Afghanistan qualifies as such", but equally you have to admit that you were wrong when you said that the military were "carpet bombing cities", because as the article you yourself posted says:
During Operation Enduring Freedom carpet bombing was used as a means to destroy hardened targets in unpopulated areas, such as Taliban and Al-Qaeda positions in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan.
mf said:
And while on the subject of bombing (be it carpet bombing or not) it was estimated in December of 2001 that our bombing operations had killed over 3,700 civilians. That's in two months! (source: pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/Afghanistan.doc if that doesn't work, it's in Zinn's book again)
Is terrorising people of a nation the correct response to terrorism?
Already covered this in my earlier post, the way they've chosen to go about things in Afghanistan has been deeply flawed. But don't forget that they're fighting an enemy that doesn't wear uniforms and doesn't fight in the conventional style, they hide amongst civilians and use them as human shields. In a conflict like that it's inevitable that innocents are going to get killed, it's the nature of warfare, especially modern urban warfare.
I've got absolutely no problem with people criticising the occupying forces when they've done wrong, but equally if you're going to do that you have to point the finger of blame at their opponents as well, for putting those forces in the position of having to make those choices in the first place.
mf said:
Furthermore, let's discuss the idea of these "smart bombs" we use in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pinpoint bombing is far from pinpoint bombing. When you bomb from high altitudes to avoid flack, how do you know that your bombs are actually hitting their mark?
The US used smart bombs during the first gulf war. It was later discovered that 93% of the so called smart bombs killed or injured civilians and 70% missed their mark. Also near the end of the operation, it was reported that the US was bombing to destroy things beside military targets in order to gain "leverage" over post-war Iraq. (paraphrased from Zinn).
It's been almost 20 years since the first Gulf conflict and technology has come a long way. I have absolutely no doubt that the smart bombs they use today aren't nearly as accurate as is commonly believed, nor that the military are too quick to use them, but comparing the weapons used then to what's been used now is like comparing apples to oranges.
In other words if you're going to post stats then, obviously, you have to post stats that are relevant to what's being discussed.
mf said:
Also, does targeting military targets make it alright to kill civilians? It's something to think about. Is innocent human life really just collateral damage in order to "secure" the lives of Americans half way around the world?
As of 2002, the United States openly admitted to targeting Red Cross stations inside of Afghanistan. They didn't do it just once, but twice. Two times we bombed Red Cross stations, justified by military targets. The military apologized in the New York Times and then targeted another Red Cross station. This time however they missed and hit a residential neighborhood.
[
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/27/n...bombing-us-planes-bomb-a-red-cross-site.html]
Lietenant Colonel Lapan has admitted the following in asking if civilians have been killed in Afghanistan (January 2002) "Possibly. If they were killed, it was because they were in the vicinity of a military target". (Zinn sourcing an article from the Boston Globe titled 'Bombed Village Is Testimony to Risks to Civilians').
It doesn't make it all right, but it does makes it inevitable. We'd all like to live in a world where it doesn't happen but in reality it's an unavoidable consequence of fighting an enemy that uses civilian urban environments to conduct and organise their operations.
As for the red cross stations, I've already said that the occupying forces have been too indiscriminate with their use of force.
mf said:
TL;DR
I refuse to believe that this continued "war" has contributed to our national security or that we have the Afghan people's interests at heart. 40,000 (low estimate) to 80,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan alone since October 7th, 2001. That's 5,000-10,000 people dying a year.
This can hardly be justified as in the interest of human rights or in national security. I doubt that these deaths and our international involvement will do anything to diminish terrorism. Terrorism is an ideal and our actions only flame the fires. If we honestly and seriously want to combat terrorism, we have to give the people who are angry a voice, not try to silence it.
Has there been an Afghanistan based terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11? No. So the objective in Afghanistan is being met, the US and the West are being made safer.
Outside of Afghanistan however, many of the actions taken by the US and other Western nations have undermined those efforts (the spectacular mishandling of the Iraq situation being the most obvious example, but also Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary renditioning, etc.). But that doesn't mean that the Afghan situation
itself has been a failure. They haven't conducted it nearly as well as they should have, and I don't doubt for a second that the causality rates (both civilian and military) are much higher than they could have and should have been. But on its own merits the mission in Afghanistan
is working, it
is making the West safer from international terrorism.
(Oh, and it's semantics I know, but terrorism itself isn't an ideal, it's a method used to try to
bring about an ideal).
