Leaving Afghanistan

[Ben Kenobi]

the improvements in infrastructure have been slight and have cost a fortune. the whole enterprise has been marred by corruption, incompetence and poor delivery, while doing little improve the lives of ordinary afghans.

So you'd rather give up than press on.

where is the improvement in the security situation. more civilians are dying every year since 2006.

Why are they lumping in age deaths?

it would appear that NATO forces are making the situation worse, not better.

Seems to me that the same old gang of mijiheeden idiots are still killing people. Probably because they figure that the harder they push, that Obama's not going doo crap all. And they are right.

and who will that be, kharzi the corrupt election fixer and his cronies? a great advert for democracy there! the afghan government are worthless, their writ barely runs beyond kabul and they would collapse in a matter of days if it wasn't for the vast amount of foreign support

So you'd rather have the Taliban take over? That's not going to help things, and will make things worse.

If you're going to intervene then the obligation is to fix things up before you leave. You just don't bail after intervention.

Yes, it is expensive, but then that should have beeen decided before going in. I believe I wasn the only realist who said that the US would be there for a long time. As in 50 years.

[Al B. Sure!]

The problem in Afghanistan (and for that matter, certain African countries, as well) is that it's too profitable to be a warlord/opium lord or follow a warlord versus all other opportunities. I'm not even sure what peaceful, economic opportunities the land of Afghanistan can even provide. This supposed Afghan proclivity for violence and division is not inherent to any culture but the result of an accident of circumstance. They live in a barren, mountainous wasteland.

[giblets]

The problem in Afghanistan (and for that matter, certain African countries, as well) is that it's too profitable to be a warlord/opium lord or follow a warlord versus all other opportunities.

Let's legalize opium then.

[Al B. Sure!]

These are the problems with Afghanistan:

Unemployment rate: 35%
% citizens living on less than $1/day: 42%
Labor force involved in agriculture: 78.6%
% of arable land: 12%
Biggest exports (after opium): Fruits, nuts, and rugs

That is not sustainable. You have an economy entirely centered on agriculture but with so little arable land; exports are low-profit and with fewer jobs than people, wages are low. It's easy to understand the appeal of styling yourself a mujihadeen and following a warlord in the mountains. You see similar situations in many sub-Saharan African countries, as well.

It's not culture. It's economic circumstance.

[Ben Kenobi]

The problem in Afghanistan (and for that matter, certain African countries, as well) is that it's too profitable to be a warlord/opium lord or follow a warlord versus all other opportunities. I'm not even sure what peaceful, economic opportunities the land of Afghanistan can even provide. This supposed Afghan proclivity for violence and division is not inherent to any culture but the result of an accident of circumstance. They live in a barren, mountainous wasteland.

Most Afghans are peaceful. What culture do you think is responsible for the suicide bombings and the IEDs?

You get one guess.

[giblets]

How do you know ~0.25 hectares of arable land per person is unsustainable?

[Ben Kenobi]

It's not culture. It's economic circumstance.

5 percent of Canada is arable.

18 in the US. 12 is hardly barren wasteland.

[giblets]

Most of Canada is a barren wasteland.

[Al B. Sure!]

What culture do you think is responsible for the suicide bombings and the IEDs?

Wikipedia tells me:

The term Improvised Explosive Device comes from the British Army in the 1970s, after the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) used bombs made from agricultural fertilizer and semtex smuggled from Libya to make highly effective boobytrap devices or remote-controlled bombs.

One of the first examples of coordinated large-scale use of IEDs was the Belarussian Rail War launched by Belarussian guerrillas against the Germans during World War II.[5][6] Both command-detonated and delayed-fuse IEDs were used to derail thousands of German trains during 1943–1944.[7]

IEDs were used during the Vietnam War by the Viet Cong against land- and river-borne vehicles as well as personnel.[8] They were commonly constructed using materials from unexploded American ordnance.[9] Thirty-three percent of U.S. casualties in Vietnam and twenty-eight percent of deaths were officially attributed to mines; these figures include losses caused by both IEDs and commercially manufactured mines.[10]

So for the IED's, I'm going with the Belarussians but the Irish and Vietnamese developed the practice.

Modern suicide bombing as a political tool can be traced back to the assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1881. Alexander fell victim to a Nihilist plot. While driving on one of the central streets of Saint Petersburg, near the Winter Palace, he was mortally wounded by the explosion of hand-made grenades and died a few hours afterwards. The Tsar was killed by a member of Narodnaya Volya, Ignacy Hryniewiecki, who died while intentionally exploding the bomb during the attack.

Ignacy Hryniewiecki, funnily enough, was a Belarussian.


So that's check on both IEDs and suicide bombings. Belarussians are responsible.

[Al B. Sure!]

How do you know ~0.25 hectares of arable land per person is unsustainable?

5 percent of Canada is arable.

18 in the US. 12 is hardly barren wasteland.

Hey, geniuses, do you think agriculture is virtually the only industry in the US and Canada? Do you think 78.6% of the Canadian and US labor force works in agriculture?

[giblets]

No, use of labor-saving machinery is profitable here because we have plenty of alternative ways to usefully employ labor. Countries that don't tend to engage in labor intensive agriculture which was practiced for thousands of years so I think it's probably sustainable.

[Al B. Sure!]

No, use of labor-saving machinery is profitable here because we have plenty of alternative ways to usefully employ labor. Countries that don't tend to engage in labor intensive agriculture which was practiced for thousands of years so I think it's probably sustainable.

Isn't that my ENTIRE ****ing point, dickhead?

Oh wait. I guess I didn't say this, did I?

The problem in Afghanistan (and for that matter, certain African countries, as well) is that it's too profitable to be a warlord/opium lord or follow a warlord versus all other opportunities. I'm not even sure what peaceful, economic opportunities the land of Afghanistan can even provide. This supposed Afghan proclivity for violence and division is not inherent to any culture but the result of an accident of circumstance. They live in a barren, mountainous wasteland.

[giblets]

Isn't that my ENTIRE ****ing point, dickhead?

Oh wait. I guess I didn't say this, did I?

So why are you struggling with the concept of employing most of the labor force in labor-intensive agriculture? Why do you think that is unsustainable? And why is ~0.25 hectares per person insufficient for this?

[Al B. Sure!]

So why are you struggling with the concept of employing most of the labor force in labor-intensive agriculture? Why do you think that is unsustainable? And why is ~0.25 hectares per person insufficient for this?

What the ****? I ****ing explained the problem:

You have an economy entirely centered on agriculture but with so little arable land; exports are low-profit and with fewer jobs than people, wages are low. It's easy to understand the appeal of styling yourself a mujihadeen and following a warlord in the mountains. You see similar situations in many sub-Saharan African countries, as well.

What the **** do YOU not understand?

[Al B. Sure!]

Hey ********, feudalism ended in Europe gradually with the emergence of other industries besides simple, labor-intensive agriculture.

Is that enough for you to put two and two together and understand my ****ing point?