OBAMA: "I want you to be honest with me. You can do this in 18 months?"Those military fuckers all agreed that they could hand over Afghanistan to the local government and start withdrawing American troops by July 2011 and they've been trying to undermine President Obama by working the press ever since. (Which is one of the reasons that McChrystal was fired.) Getting them on the record committing to the deadline was one of the savviest moves of Obama's presidency to date.
PETRAEUS: "Sir, I'm confident we can train and hand over to the ANA [Afghan National Army] in that time frame."
OBAMA: "If you can't do the things you say you can in 18 months, then no one is going to suggest we stay, right?"
PETRAEUS: "Yes, sir, in agreement."
MULLEN: "Yes, sir."
184 people who happened to be working in my neighborhood got killed on 9-11What does this have to do with Afghanistan or the Taliban?
This is like cancer; you can't ignore it,You are so wrong it hurts. The endless wars in foreign countries, killing people who have offered us no harm, does not prevent further attacks; it causes further attacks. Simply look at the words of any of the terrorists who have attacked us over the last decade for proof!
Pashtunwali means I will be your friend so long as you do no invade my woman's dressing room, my house, my family compound, or my country. Do any of those and it's on like Donkey Kong and it doesn't stop until I am avenged and you are driven out. And if I die, my sons and nephews and cousins will carry on the fight.I paraphrase.
When you grow up you will take your father's gun and go kill American soldiers as payback for invading our country, dishonoring our women, and blowing up the neighbor's wedding parties for so many years...What then?
European countries feel trapped by their relationship with NATO and the United States. Holbrooke and Obama feel trapped by the position of American generals. And everyone -- politicians, generals, diplomats and journalist -- feels trapped by our grand theories and beset by the guilt of having already lost over a thousand NATO lives, spent a hundred billion dollars and made a number of promises to Afghans and the West which we are unlikely to be able to keep.posted by adamvasco at 10:41 AM on July 2, 2010
So powerful are these cultural assumptions, these historical and economic forces and these psychological tendencies, that even if every world leader privately concluded the operation was unlikely to succeed, it is almost impossible to imagine the US or its allies halting the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan in the years to come. Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa may have been in a similar position during the Third Crusade. Former US President Lyndon B. Johnson certainly was in 1963. Europe is simply in Afghanistan because America is there. America is there just because it is. And all our policy debates are scholastic dialectics to justify this singular but not entirely comprehensible fact.
Despite ever higher numbers of foreign troops, the Taliban have steadily extended their influence, rendering vast tracts of Afghanistan insecure, and violence in the country has returned to levels not seen since 2001.posted by adamvasco at 4:35 AM on July 10, 2010
GREG MORTENSON: Originally the Taliban were somewhat, as you mentioned, somewhat more ideological. We saw them as an ideological kind of monolithic entity. But today the Taliban have turned, become more criminal. The Taliban are getting less Saudi funding now, so they're doing more extortion, heroin trafficking, illicit lumber trafficking, kidnapping, crime. What's interesting, too, is having been on the ground for many years, I've seen a shift in where people are starting to turn against the Taliban in the last two years. As a militant entity, they had a lot of support. But they're not able to deliver healthcare, education, roads, and the things that most people want, and peace. . .
BILL MOYERS: Well, what does the Taliban want? What is their goal?
GREG MORTENSON: Well, the Taliban want-- it's a little different than Al Qaeda. The Taliban want the imposition of Sharia law, in their version, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The trouble is, though--
BILL MOYERS: And that is religious law.
GREG MORTENSON: Islamic law. But having spoken to some of the actual Sharia experts, Sharia law actually doesn't say that women should be hurt and harmed and marginalized. It doesn't say they should commit suicide. It doesn't, in fact-- there's very implicit laws in Sharia about the right of land ownership for women. There's implicit laws about treating children, women, with respect. So they've again used illiteracy as a way to impose their own virulent, you know, militant kind of ideology. And most people are really getting sick and tired of the Taliban.
BILL MOYERS: Should we think there's progress or should we think of things going to hell there?
GREG MORTENSON: I tend to be an optimist. So here's the good news, Bill. The first thing is the number of kids in school has gone up ten times in the last decade to 8.5 million children. There's a central banking system in Afghanistan since 2006, which has been huge. There's a road building program, about 80 percent of the roads have been built now from north to south and east to west. It's like building a road from Minneapolis to Dallas and D.C. to-- or New York to LA. Now, that's maybe 70 percent of the way done. There are 80,000 troops trained now, the Afghan Army. The goal is 180,000. And some more interesting things are if you go into the district courts, you'll see the number of women filing titles and deeds for land ownership is skyrocketing. And I think that's a real important thing to note. . I think the U.S., we're-- we've been far too busy in the last two decades trying to plug in democracy in the world. And you cannot plug in democracy. We have to build democracy.« Older William Wegman, most widely known for his photogra... | How top officials at Arlington... Newer »
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