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If I remember correctly -- the British Foreign Office warned of the quagmire when
the first troops were sent-- and they were ignored.

--what a price to pay !

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan when the Americans attack every war is different. The result is the same. But the next one will be the same!

The USA fails to understand that ALL WARS END with talking, and some sort of withdrawal of the aggressors with some sort of peace.

On the other hand the military industrial complex needs to use their armaments before their 'best before date'!

It really is pathetic that in this day and age the military and politicians are still so ignorant and stupid as to wage war in situations where they have not properly assessed their exit strategy. Most primary school kids would understand this idea, but politicians do not and worst of all there is something about the far right in the USA establishment that predisposes the USA to waging war in such circumstances (is it their predilection to fundamentalist religion?) The only hope is that the present terrible economic crisis will cut the USA military budget to the point that a 'taking strategy' becomes more important than killing people.

By the way, what do we mean by 'Victory for the Taliban' -wasn't that exactly what the USA was funding for twenty or so years when the USSR was trying to pacify and de-corrupt the country.

Afghanistan policy has been a terrible failure of western ethics and that is the worst aspect of the USA's failure. The country is now more corrupt and more discriminatory than it was even under the Taliban - but apparently becasue it is our guys who are 'eating'(see Kenya) it doesn't matter. Sick!

First world countries in third world nations usually don't work out well for either. Afghanistan is a tribal mess with a central government based on traditional corruption. Pakistan has parts of the government that act independently for their own interest. The arms suppliers and civilian contractors pedal influence to keep the money coming their way. Terrorist who wish to do harm in other countries need to be contained or eliminated but that is external to the process of "Nation Building." In most countries the people would like to be left alone and given the opportunity to raise their families and not be pawns in some international game of politics that never benefits them. Although Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos are not paradise, they are better off with no war than they were with war...the poor in those countries are still poor and the powerful are still rich....state socialism tends to be an idea not a reality....some could say the same is true of democracies.

Elements of the Taliban have initiated their own plan focusing on regaining the power which they lost in 2001 following the US-led invasion. This involves hijacking the efforts & finances that the US is investing in training and equipping the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP).
I predict that both ANA & ANP will switch & join the Taliban on the eve of the scheduled withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. I suspect the US knows this; thus the interest in maintaining NATO forces beyond 2014.
US & NATO set a deadline for all security tasks to be transferred to Afghan forces by the end of 2014. However, this week, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that US troops would phase out their combat role by mid-2013.
NATO plans to expand the size of Afghanistan's security forces from the current 310,000 to 350,000 soldiers/police while US has about 90,000 troops in Afghanistan, down from a high of just over 100,000 last summer. It plans to withdraw another 22,000 by the end of this summer. In all, the International Security Assistance Force numbers 130,000 with troops from 50 nations.
As many as 32 policemen of the puppet Afghan army have already switched sides and joined the mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate in Wardaj, Badakhshan province (in the northeast of Afghanistan), handing their weapons to the mujahideen and vowing to fight against the invading forces.

This week, the Afghan Taliban denied planning to hold preliminary talks with representatives from the Afghan government in Saudi Arabia. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said this was "not true". The talks would be separate from planned negotiations between the Taliban & the US in Qatar, where the Taliban aim to establish an office.
A top Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban) commander, Mullah Nazeer Ahmad, confirmed the Taliban claims of planned defections from the ANA and the ANP. His militants hold sway in the South Waziristan tribal area and across the border in Afghanistan's Paktika, Zabul, Ghazni & Kandahar provinces.

After the end of the Taliban rule in late 2001, the new Afghan National Army was formed by NATO states. Billions of dollars worth of military equipment, facilities and other forms of aid has been provided to the ANA. Some of the weapons arrived from the US, including Humvees and other trucks, M-16 assault rifles, body armored jackets & other types of vehicles and military equipment. The support also included the building of a national military command center and training compounds in different parts of the country.
There were more than 4,000 American military trainers in late 2009 and additional numbers from other NATO member states, providing advanced warfare training to the Afghan armed forces and police. The ANA is divided into six regional corps, with about 180,000 active troops as of December 2011, although others claim only 100,000 troops are active. The current Afghan National Police was also established after the removal of the Taliban. It receives funding, training and equipment from NATO states. Various local and federal government employees from the US, Germany's Bundespolizei and the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defense Police provided most of the training.
The ANP - which serves as a single law enforcement agency across the country - had about 126,000 active members in May 2011, a number that is expected to reach 160,000 by 2014. The reputation of the ANA and the ANP has already been tarnished by their members attacking the foreign soldiers training them. In the latest incident this week, man in an ANA uniform killed a NATO service member in southern Afghanistan.
Also, an Afghan soldier killed four French troops, and as a result French President Nicolas Sarkozy suspended all training operations. In December, another Afghan soldier killed two French soldiers serving in an engineers' regiment.
France has 36,000 troops in Afghanistan, the second-largest number after the US. They mainly patrol rugged Kapisa province in central Afghanistan north of Kabul.
French forces were due to start handing over security to the ANA in March 2012 until their complete withdrawal by 2013.
So much for the US push for the TAPI Oil Pipeline. The project had gathered steam with Turkey’s decision to come on board & recent India-Pakistan negotiations on the scheme. Still, given the security situation in Afghanistan, it is hard to imagine the pipeline not getting blown up by insurgents.

JfH

-- I must be saying something correctly

63 postings removed !

Scotch_git

--- this answer to you was removed ?????


Scotch Git

-- I do not ever reading reading that in 1603 and 1707 the Serfs of Scotland had the vote.

To prevent a vote from occurring even in 2014-- in defense of Feudalism --is democratic ?


--the American blog DOES NOT have this problem.

The Afghani people have paid a heavy price for the aggression/invasion of their country by NATO forces in the wake of the 11/9/2001 attack by rogue al Qaeda elements on the World Trade Center. The Taliban was considered complicit because they allowed al Qaeda to establish training camps and a base of operations in Afghanistan. Holding all of Afghanistan which itself was and still is a feudal entity ruled for centuries by warlords and now ruled by a government that is barely seen as legitimate by the people is a questionable act by international law despite approval by the Security Council. The overuse of military acts of aggression to settle international disputes and problems is a peculiarity of the European state system that has barely diminished over many centuries and seems to be undergoing a revival in the early 21st century at a time when globalization cries out for a more civilized approach.

#8

quietoaktree,

You've lost me. (Not for the first time).

:o)



confused git

#10 Scotch_git

--sorry -- That was only my answer to some intellectual statement of yours --It was included in my many ´Battle of Culloden´ casualties.

-- the death toll could rise.

Ìý
Intellectual statement? Are you sure it was mine?


>8-D

#12 Scotch_Git

-- no one else could activate my brain cells from their normal dormant state !

Lt. Colonel Daniel L. Davis has served two yearlong deployments to Afghanistan. He has become a critic of the US war there. An article in the NY Times (In Afghan War, an Officer and a Whistle-Blower, Mon Feb 6, 2012) describes his long ordeal as whistle-blower based on "his fervent conviction that the war was going disastrously and that senior military leaders had not leveled with the Americian public." His views drew attention when he published an article in the (private) Armed Forces Journal. During his last tour of 12 months he talked with US troops and their Afghan partners in "every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, Davis covered more than 9000 miles. He talked and traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, and Nagarhar provinces. He said he hoped to find "that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress. Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level." On his return Davis met with war-skeptics in Congress. His openly made views have gotten him into some trouble with superiors but also some praise from military historians who say it is rare but courageous for an officer of Colonel Davis' rank to decide "that he knows better" than his superiors. By going outside of military channels "he's taking his chances on what happens to him."

The current war on Afghanistan code named 'Enduring Freedom' has endured longer than both World Wars ll & ll together and has brought not freedom but untold death, destruction and impoverishment of Afghanistan.
Over 2 million people have been made refugee, mostly housed in camps in Pakistan where they are frequently bombed by US drones. Nearly all aid has been chanelled into the back pockets of US companies with virtually nothing reaching the Afghanis.
The pretext used by the US ultimately for going to war was that the Taliban (whom the US armed and supported previously against the Russians) were sheltering Osama Bin Laden. We know that this wasn't true and now that he has apparently been killed in Pakistan the excuse for war is over.
The main source of income has apparently become opium for the heroin trade which the Taliban actually eliminated when they had control, any other form of farming now being often far too dangerous.
The war has been and is immensely costly not only in terms of human life and suffering but also financially, money which could far better be spent on welfare, education and health in both Afghanistan and also in the countries of the Western 'alliance'.
For years the most knowledgeable strategists have agreed that there is no military solution and that the war is not achieving its supposed objectives so there is only one sensible thing which is to call an immediate ceasefire and all party peace talks which will address the key issues of early foreign troop withdrawal, corruption and return of Afghanistan to its own people and chosen government free from outside interference.
The government of this country should be addressing this with urgency and taking a statesmanlike lead rather than for example considering sending Prince Harry to fly an Apache hellicopter which if he kills someone with it will make the heir to our throne a murderer or if he is killed cause a very severe constitutional crisis

The "taliban" are of course the Pashtuns. As I understand it Wazirestan is where they have lived for thousands of years. 150 or so years ago, the British had an incident on their first attempt to take it over.....

Now "killing" all the pashtun (armed Taliban) has been a miserable failure. As has been the "division" of Pashtuns into Pakistan and Afghanistan (both British inspired nations)

In Persian we have a saying "that the moment one STOPS LOSING, one starts Gaining"...

At least the author sees failure. Except he does not know who taliban really are"!?

An Independent Wazirestan, maybe the only way out for NATO....

Some holes are round and no matter how "heavy the mallet" the Peg still remains a square