Thoughts?

It wasn't a PR exercise, fer crissake. We were putting pressure on their economy and military.

"Bogged down?" No, hardly. We're not spending very much money or losing many guys in Afghanistan.

 

Yeah, 18 years later and you still haven't done it.

Get real ffs! You're still there and you can't leave, so that's 'bogged down' in any man's language.

 

And it could have just as easily been planned and organized in Jersey City.

 

Love how quickly the media circles the wagons and invents god knows how many polls “proving” they are right

It’s gonma be close, should be interesting to see who wins.

It’s prerty clear though that Trump is running further to the Right as politics gets more and more partisan.

Lol, we can’t even discuss border security anymore without massive lies

 

My thoughts are, the N.Y. Times paywall isn't worth .99 cents.

Afghanistan should have been handled as a punitive action war, "CRUSH and BOLT" that the U.S. military use to be good at back in the day.

America has never been good at wars of pacification or nation building.

Wars of profiteering...I'm not a big banana eater.

http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/small-wars-big-deal/

 

Putting a community organizer in the White House was the biggest mistake any nation could make.

Alinkyism 101:
Agitate
Cause trouble
Divide Society

 

Irrelevant as far as preventing further attacks here in America.

 

Good observation. The same applied to Iraq, and the symbolic moment to eff off would have been when that gigantic statue of Saddam was brought down, because just that one image would have spoken volumes. But just look what's happened to Iraq since! Another Mission Accomplished by the good ol' US of A?

 

To a certain extent that's what happened. The coalition had no real plan for what should happen after Saddam was toppled. The chaos in Iraq and the subsequent rise of ISIS is a direct consequence of toppling a regime with no clear plan what to do afterwards.

If, instead of attempting a botched nation building, the US had just left the situation would have arguably ended up even worse. After all, that's effectively what happened in Libya - hands off since deposing Gadaffi - and that hasn't turned out particularly well either.

 

Should have thought of that before you with the Saud's funded. trained and educated them in preference to democratic Afghans who told you again and again what you were doing. Could also have listened to Abdul Haq and allowed the Afghans to get rid of the Taliban (through largely psychological means) rather than bombing innocent people and regaining support for them and then of course refusing to go and help him and leaving him to be assassinated by the Taliban hence losing the one Afghan who still had the ability to unite the country.

 

I was talking about the Soviet Union. Our mistake was leaving the country to the Taliban who we used to fight the Soviets.

"Bogged down" is fighting an upopular war that costs a lot of money. Afghanistan no longer rises to that level.

We left the country to the Taliban in the 1990s and reaped this...



We shouldn't make the same mistake again.

 

Nope.

 

No, not really. You should know why not, too.

 

I find it rather odd, and perhaps telling, that once we got involved over there, that the opium production that was just about gone, picked back up tremendously, and I have seen pics of what looks like westerners guarding those poppy fields. Photoshopped? Hell, I dunno. But they looked legit to me.

Staying in afghanistan for 17 years is absurdly outrageous. I don't even see this area as a nation, given its history and how corrupt those people have always been in that neck of the woods. I read a book about it, written by a western journalist, long ago, and it has not changed since his observations. The culture is like most 3rd world cultures, corrupt, from the peons to the rulers.

We cannot turn afghanistan into Kansas folks, so forget about it. Bring the troops home and let whatever will be take place. Or we can bankrupt the US in the same place that has been a grave yard for other empires. Should learn something from history. ha ha. But the most basic stupidity of our neocons will continue to prevent that from happening. Sane people need to support trump on ending what the founding fathers feared.

 

The Taliban was never the problem. Al Qaeda was the problem. If Osama hadn't been in Afghanistan he would have just been someplace else. We lost that war the moment we pivoted from Al Qaeda to the Taliban, then off to Iraq.

 

The problem we have now is ISIS is moving in. Failed states are a haven for them. If we were going to leave 2003 would have been the time to do it.

 

Exactly true. While OBL may have gone somewhere else, if Afghanistan wasn't available, then we'd be stuck there. I'm a liberal, but even with my liberal leanings, I know we either fight over there, or fight over here.

 

If no one can occupy and govern Afghanistan, then it means that those nations shouldn't be there. A bit of diplomacy and productive reasoning towards them might be a lot more beneficial than our manipulations and forceful impositions. What I gathered and which might or might not be true, is that the drugs are being shipped into Russia so their society can be undermined from within. Also the terrorists that were carried out of Syria, were taken to Afghanistan to infiltrate Russia's southern flank.

I read that another profitable and legit produce is now replacing poppies, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is. If true, it means we have no more use of Afghanistan. Our nefarious plans are now nil.

Curses, foiled again!

​

(Just to let everyone know that what I wrote is my own opinion formed from bits and pieces I had read and from our past actions. I haven't come across any credible site stating it as a fact, so take it as you will).​

 

Into afghanistan? So what? You think they can take over afghanstan? ha ha. Hell, russia nor the US has been able to do much with it. We have 14,000 troops and assets there, and how is it going in regards to the Taliban? We done beat up and made them kneel, right?

If Assad had been left alone, to fight for his nation, without our and arab interference as we stayed the hell out, russia may have still been invited in to help save sryia from isis and other enemies of syria and it would have been over long ago. We impeded that in all sorts of ways. We just dragged it out. We didn't get serious about going after isis and A.N. until after the russians entered into it, on the side of syria and assad.

ISIS is more of a middle eastern blight and problem than ours. They are not existing just to attack the West, but to take territory, an imperialistic group. Supposedly backed by a particular radical interpretation of Islam. So, if we stopped aiding and abetting groups like ISIS, I bet each middle eastern nation could fight them off without our help. Novel idea, huh?

 

Make your case.

 

Sure, we were told by Afghan war lords, critics in this country, leaders and people in other countries--a lot of people--we were playing with fire by making cimmin cause with the Taliban and then walking away. We were playing with fire by starting the war in Iraq in 2003. We created a mess in Vietnam, too.

The action question is where do we go from here.

 

Perhaps I should, but I don't. Please tell me why not. Jersey City provides opportunity to scout out the location and better communication facilities than Afghanistan.

 

Stop making a mess in Syria.

 

We should have continued going after al Qaeda at the same time dealing with the Taiban government.