For the defeatist wimps who said "it will be another Vietnam!"...

[Kropotkin]

We haven't seen the end of this. The 'war' is far from over. It have good chances of turning into anyother Somalia if the US govt decides to go in and make Afghanistan save for democracy.

[Urban Ranger]

Nah, the US won't be sending ground troops in to maintain peace.

It looks like there's going to be another civil war before long.

[Giancarlo]

Originally posted by Kropotkin
We haven't seen the end of this. The 'war' is far from over. It have good chances of turning into anyother Somalia if the US govt decides to go in and make Afghanistan save for democracy.

Somalia is a dramatic overstatement of what could happen. Anyways, there is a government that is forming and in the days to come all the issues will be settled. Dostum, the Uzbek Commander, is threatening to boycott the new government and so he will get more say in it.

[Kropotkin]

Somalia is a dramatic overstatement of what could happen.

Not if the US tries to make a serious commitment by helping the new intermin government out. There's some similarities in the way Afghanistan and Somalia works. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Dostum for example is a pretty awful guy who at a number of occasions have tied up people to tank-tracks. making people like that give up their old ways is the real problem in Afghanistan. I'm doubting that US will do anything about that. Gunboat diplomacy is probably the way the govt will chose.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
For what should they apologize? Having an opinion at varience with your own? Refusing to following the imperial march?

How about for being terminally clueless, and simply repeating a little blurb of leftist cant that has been thoroughly discredited time and again. There will never be another Viet Nam (at least not as fought by the US), just like there will never be another World War 1. In fact, Vietnam is just as irrelevant to modern warfighting against conventional or unconventional forces as World War 1.

carrying that Americans might spend years wasting their lives in a death trap?

How does one "care" about a subject, while remaining wilfully ignorant of the nature of that subject?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Nice job, Gianni

After reading all this crap in this thread, I feel like giving you two weeks off, but just to show what a nice guy I am, I'll just give you one week, and the second week will be tacked on to the next time I have to ban you for running your mouth faster than your brain.

[Saint Marcus]

[Q Classic]

good god, for all of you people who keep b|tching about how it's the stalinists/communists/leftists/convervatives/fascists/rightists/juntas, will you not ever get it through your thick skulls that those are the exceptions to the political spectrum? those are the goddamned extremists.

that extremism, that factionalism is what we have to fear.

for those "liberals", in the "free" market sense: adam smith states that fact in the wealth of nations. i don't have my copy with me, it's back in the dorm room, and i'm on winter break, but it's there. i believe in volume 1, book seven or eight. something like that.

your vaunted leader himself says that "factionalism" is the primary cause for the destruction of justice, and thus one of the biggest contributors to the brutal pogroms and off-hand killings that you so eagerly assign to the leftists, communists, socialists, or, i suppose, as you call them in your less p.c. times, pinkos.

and as for you liberals, in the more current sense: your friend marx also believes in the idea of unity, behind the idea that it is only through a unification of the classes that a classless society would arise. it is his opinion, what he wrote in his numerous texts, that it is only when true democratic processes are in existence, i.e., a society where justice prevails and there is equality for everyone, that these horrifying events would not take place. thus, he warns against military rule; he warns against control of people through corporations to the extent where all life is dictated by said corporations... and by and large, this is not happening on a scale grand enough to ruin the lives of most people. (i grant that this point may be more open to arguing, but if so, how come a world revolution hasn't taken part yet? if so, how come the countries in which marx predicted revolutions to occur never really suffered them?)

look, people, quit your finger pointing and realize this: it is always the extremists, the fanatics who kill people. it does not matter what side of the political spectrum they are on, if they believe a certain political belief to the extent that it blocks everything else out of their mind, that they are zealots and completely bent on a cause, they will commit atrocities.

this is why you have terrorists. those people you refer to, stalin, hitler, pol pot... how are they different from osama? aside from the obvious difference of what they believe in? absolutely nothing. they are EXTREMISTS.

that is the danger of the society we live in, that is what we have to fear.

extremism == bad.

not differing political views.

[Q Classic]

now, onto a reason why we "won" the "war" in "afghanistan": it's because of our technology.

we had spy satellites in the air, photographing their every move. we had spy planes, manned and unmanned in the air, recording everything and relaying it back to the naval carriers. ever heard of the predator unmanned spy plane? it's equipped with video cameras, gps, and a laser targeting device. precision bombing allowed fa18 hornets to home in on targets as many as three times a night, making sure that the first strike killed the target, the second killed the rescuers, and the third killed the cockroaches feasting on their bodies.

we had black ops people in there and marines. the black ops helped with the air strikes, and the targeting.

the marines could leapfrog over 400 miles in one night.

this is why it didn't end up as another vietnam. the taliban were shocked that our forces could move so fast, so efficiently, so mysteriously without being seen.

if we'd done this in the 80s, or 70s, this WOULD have been another vietnam; technology, especially info technology, has come a long way, and that's what we can thank for this type of "victory".

[Q Classic]

now, for black comic relief:

instead of osama's head on a pike, we should take a cue from the classic connery movie, "the man who would be king"...

we should play polo with his decapitated head.

[Q Classic]

now, as for apologies.

that kind of mentality is ludcrious, especially in a truly democratic society that prides itself on being one of the few nations in the world when a person can speak their mind.

why should they apologize for not having believed things would turn out like this? so they were wrong. but being wrong with opinions is not sufficient grounds for an apology.

this victory? what if there is another attack on american soil? what if another 5k perish? should we demand apologies from all of those who believed the "war" was won in "afghanistan"?

how absurd.

the freedom to opinion without apologies in the american state is something that is meritorious.

now, if you're still with me, which i actually highly doubt that you are, this applies to all forms of opinions.

even the less savory ones.

the only major difference here is that those unsavory ones, i.e., chauvanistic ones, demeaning ones, racist ones, sexist ones, etc etc etc, those are the ones that may be expressed, however unfortunately, but never acted upon. for if we act upon those prejudices, those ignorant beliefs, then we are no better than those mullahs who "teach" their students that it was the japanese who orchestrated this with the swiss, and that the jews knew of this beforehand.

[Q Classic]

as an addendum to that last post: and yes, the freedom of speech and the freedom of ideas also extends to those who wish to answer those ignorancies, those prejudices, by saying things like "shame on you". more power to them.

[Q Classic]

and now, finally, dealing with this idea of a "victory":

this war was against terrorism, right? not afghanistan? afghanistan was just the most convinient one, primarily because it also had the ringleader?

i'll place a wager that we've not had the last of it.

victory indeed.

tell that to those crushed under the falling rubble of 100+ stories.

if we're going to adequately remember them, we need to fight the root causes. not just the symptoms.

when you have an infestation of roaches, ones that keep coming back, do you just put out combat and raid roach traps? no, the roaches will soon develop a resistance.

you go about it by getting rid of the root cause, be it actually cleaning up the original mess made, or by demolishing the entire structure in which the mess exists.

that's how you'll get rid of terrorism.

and i'll say this: osama wasn't the root cause.

[Saint Marcus]

What US victory?

NA did most of the fighting
1000s Afghan civilians died
Bin Laden still on the lose
Afghanistan still extremely unstable
Al Qaeda still operating all over the globe
Refugee problem in Afghanistan is worse than before the war
Many states are still sponsoring terrorism
Anthrax letters still cause people to die in the US
etc
etc
etc

The only objective that was achieved was the end of the Taliban regime. And that one too wasn't an American victory, but a NA victory since they did most of the fighting. All the other objectives (stopping Al Qaeda, getting to Bin Laden, making Afghanistan safe/free/whatever, etc) still aren't achieved.


And the reason the USA won isn't technology. It's the NA. The Russians didn't had a large group of trained and motivated Afghans fighting for them. This war could never have turned into another Vietnam since the Americans simply did not sent ground forces in (besides the small number of special forces). Instead, they bombed Taliban targets, and let the NA move in. The NA did suffer tremendous casualties in the war since the US got involved. If the Americans would have fought themselves they'd suffer just as much.