Fuck.. more war in Afghanistan? (we don't need no more trouble)
 

Obama orders as many as 17,500 troops to Afghanistan



WASHINGTON — In his first troop deployment to a war zone as commander in chief, President Barack Obama on Tuesday authorized sending as many as 17,500 additional troops to Afghanistan beginning this spring, a move that appears to mark the formal U.S. troop shift from Iraq to Afghanistan.
"There is no more solemn duty as president than the decision to deploy our armed forces into harm's way," Obama said in a statement. "I do it today mindful that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al Qaida supports the insurgency and threatens America from its safe-haven along the Pakistani border."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered the deployment of 8,000 Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., and 4,000 Army soldiers from Fort Lewis, Wash., defense department officials said. Approximately another 5,000 support troops are expected to receive deployment orders "at a later date," a Defense Department statement said.
The first Marines could arrive in Afghanistan by May. The Army brigade is expected to arrive by mid-summer.
There are 38,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 146,000 in Iraq.
The magnitude of the deployments will force the military to pull troops from Iraq or give soldiers longer deployments or shorter breaks. In his statement, Obama said that he understood the deployments will place an "extraordinary strain" on the troops, but it will be possible because "we are going to responsibly drawdown our forces in Iraq."
The decision comes amid a broad review of U.S. policy in Afghanistan that isn't due for completion until just before a NATO summit in early April. Obama said the troop decision "does not pre-determine the outcome of that strategic review."
He had to make a decision before then, said a senior administration official — who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak on the record — because of the looming onset of the fighting season in Afghanistan with warmer weather, and preparations for national elections there later this year.
If the president had not acted now, "the options start to slip away," the official said.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former prisoner of war and Obama's Republican opponent last year, said that sending more troops was long overdue but that "I believe the president must spell out for the American people what he believes victory in Afghanistan will look like and articulate a coherent strategy for achieving it."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he supported Obama's decision.
Roughly 8,000 troops will be from the II Marine Expeditionary Brigade, nearly all based out of Camp Lejeune.
Because of Afghanistan's rugged terrain, the Marines will come with their own air support. In addition, the 5th brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, a Stryker brigade of about 4,000 soldiers out of Fort Lewis also are being deployed.
The Marines and soldiers will be deployed to southern Afghanistan, where U.S. forces are expanding to take on the poppy trade there, which the Taliban use to fund it forces and obtain its weapons. Since the Taliban fell in 2001, British and Canadian forces have been in charge of that area, but recently violence there has increased, as has poppy production.
Afghanistan produces two-thirds of the world's heroin from poppies. More than 90 percent of it comes out of Helmand province where the Marines are headed. Currently, the 3rd battalion 8th Marine brigade, also from Camp Lejeune, is in that area.
Several months ago, Army Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, requested up to 30,000 additional troops — three combat brigades more and an aviation brigade and support troops. What many in the Pentagon had expected to be a routine deployment became a part of the administration's effort to shift the approach taken under President George W. Bush.
Some critics felt it was inappropriate for the military to deploy troops without a clear strategy. Others said that Obama wasn't giving troops, many who'd been preparing for Iraq, the time to train for a different mission.
The Defense Department defended the timing, however.
"This is the first time that this president has been asked to deploy large numbers of troops overseas, and it seems to me a thoughtful and deliberative approach to that decision is entirely appropriate," Gates said last week.
On the ground, troops said the shifting strategy often forced them to make decisions within their own communities on how to balance training the Afghan army and police, which Gates called the U.S. "exit ticket out of there," and securing the population.
Tom Andrews, a former Maine congressman who directs the organization Win Without War, said in a statement Tuesday that "the first principle for someone who finds himself in a hole is to stop digging.
"The U.S. policy 'hole' in Afghanistan is not of the new administration's making. But it is important for the president to consider if adding new U.S. combat forces in Afghanistan, without a new and comprehensive plan for U.S. policy there, might be digging an even bigger hole."

we don't need..... no more trouble..

what we need is love,
to guide and protect us on..
If you hope good down from above
Help the weak if you are strong now.

we don't need... no more trouble..
what we need is love sweet love..

but we don't need... no more trouble..

we don't need, no more trouble

"The first Marines could arrive in Afghanistan by May. The Army brigade is expected to arrive by mid-summer."

May?!? Mid-summer?!?! How the fuck are they getting there? By golf kart?

Fucking kill those poppy-growing misogynist fucks!

some how I don't think that is quite the best solution..

you know, we have been busy killing each other for, tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, and yet it has accomplished nothing..

maybe one day we will get smart and try something else for a change.

next stop: tehran!

You mean sit around, smoke pot, and pray that "the will of God" will do it for us?

I'm afraid it's too late for reconciliation.
An advance on Tehran still sounds more probable.

defiance cannot be tolerated

You mean men like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar? Whom the USA trained, armed, organised and established a drug growing & smuggling network to fund? When he wasn't fighting Soviets he would spend his free time throwing acid in the faces of women he considered insufficiently modest.
They knew perfectly well who he was, it had been documented going back to his dealings with the ISI through the 1970s, and they worked with him and others like him.
And when they no longer had a need for them, they stood back and let them tear Afghanistan apart.
And for misogyny - well the allies Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and so forth aren't exactly known for being bastions of feminism.
More likely what this is about is ramping up the presence in Central Asia and protection of the natural gas pipeline after the Dubya regimes foolery led to the one through the Caucasus being cut off (hard to believe people think these morons orchestrated 9/11). Gotta re-establish credibility.

Hahahaha genius.

so do you feel strongly enough to go over and fight war yourself?

or do you hide behind those suits who send our youth and brothers to do it for you?

"love is lovely and war is ugly, so make love and not war, if your gonna make war go far, if your gonna make love draw near.. brothers beware, sisters beware, beware of the warmonger.." everton blender

None of that matters.

In the USA, all pacifism and war-advocation is arbitrary.

You have no personal stake in Afghanistan so praising eternal peace is easy. I've decided to not care about wars in which I have no power. Iraq sucked me dry of empathy. I am not in favor of war in Afghanistan nor am I against it because I've never been asked.

war isn't ugly. war is fun.
you pothead dumbfuck hippy.









































just kiddin' :p

This is not that surprising given the last two months in Pakistan, right? It's just a really big game of chess. 17k troops is a safer move than getting the nukes out. On the whole.

hmm.

Mmmm, I'd like to hear from one of our fellow forum members from Afghanistan (or Iran or Iraq or ....) and see what they think....

Oh - that's right, we don't have any.

It's just us Western kids chattering away as usual....

if EVERYONE was doing it, it would work!

If there is one place where proactive Western military action is warranted it is in Afghanistan/Pakistan. The Taliban are about as opposite to what I believe how life should be as possible. And they aren't satisfied with living their own lives, they must live ours as well. I'm don't approve on using drones to blow up their children, but they really want us either to be their muslim slaves or dead. The Koran won't allow it otherwise. What is nuts is how the US helped give Pakistan nukes. If you know anything about the govt of Pakistan that is just a frightening situation.

I can't believe my eyes! did you really just write that??

that said....

I agree, but I think it's pointless. the lumbering US military machine cannot fight this type of war. it's like using a hammer to kill as many cockroaches as you can before they all scatter back into the dark. the hammer is more than sufficient to take out all the bugs, but direct application of force is limited.

I suspect that "our" greatest victories in this war are so highly classified that you will never hear about them. westerners don't have the stomach for wetwork.

the war in aghanistan was the orignal one, which got sidetracked becauyse afghanistan does not have enough petroleum, so instead bush made BILLIONS every quarter for his oil company fat cat buddies (exxon alone made record profits of 14 BILLION every three months) by attacking Iraq, an extremely oil rich country.

afghanistan was left to swelter and fester. It is time we focused on finishing there, and capturing bin laden no matter whether the saudi arabian royal family gets in a tizzy about it. fuck them.

we should ask the russians if they have any good ideas for that. amiritie?

ha! true!

"finish what you started! don't be retarded! just finish what you started!"

sí pero not all afghans are in favor of the taliban whereas most of afghanistan was against the soviets.

the reason the taliban has resurged is because they offered the closest thing to law and order in a wild place.

if american troops can in fact gain the good will of the people, as they had with the northern alliance back in... oh it was so long ago... but yeah, they could conceivably de-nut the taliban. of course the taliban has their base in pakistan and that's another much bigger clusterfuck of doom...

as hard as it is for folks to swallow, isn't it possible that many people in Afghanistan and Pakistan support the Taliban, just as the south Vietnamese supported the Vietminh?

(in other words, is America fighting a war against an organization which has popular support, and therefore is America fighting the will of the people to serve its own interests?)

Bush gave a speech which said, "The terrorists seek to impose their views.."


But if afghanis and pakistanis support openly and directly the taliban and elements of al queda, then is not America imposing its views on afghanistan and with overwhelming military force at that? Are we not the terrorists in this specific situation?

its as !@#$%! pointed out,

While you dont personally agree with the taliban, many people do. Sure, it sound ridiculous, but that is the point of the world, diversity. I'm sure you might not agree with the Pope, but there are nearly a BILLION roman catholics.. I myself don't support the president or the american system, but there are MILLIONS and MILLIONS who believe in the american dream..

The reality is that not everyone wants to live a life like we have in the western world..

war is ugly.

In the so-called "tribal areas" millions of people in fact support the taliban as their grass roots government, just as many in Chiapas support the EZLN, or many in south Vietnam supported the Vietminh...

in America we often have this smug overconfidence that what we think is right, and that our experience has provided all the answers, but this is not a universal cookie-cutter solution..

the world is the world, and people have different views. diversity should be cherished, not bombed to shit.

The reality in Afghanistan and Pakistan is that eventually and without a shadow of doubt, the taliban will be recognized as a legitimate regional/local government, and that is the ONLY way this war will ever end, that or a fucking holocaust of the approx 45 million people who are the support-base of the so-called insurgency..

make love and not war..


what about all the heroin and opium, which predominantly goes to the United States for consumption? You know heroin is how we ended up in Vietnam to begin with, and it is no coincidence that we find ourselves entrenched in another massive heroin producing country fighting an open war...

have y'all seen whats been happening in Mexico since last year? With US assistance, the so-called narco war has killed nearly 10,000 people! Mexico accounts for approx 10% of the world production of heroin as well...

anyone else see the pattern?

Its never been about fucking Osama Bin Laden, that nigga doesn't even exist, he is a fucking CIA ghost, used to pump up fear in Americans... the fucking cucuy!

gots to keep the junk supply flowin.

and blame all the problems on the potheads

I have already had two people on the inernet metawebs tell me that my pic which I use for a sig here in SY land, is in bad taste.

yes, thats the plan. follow the warpath of America in the past century and you will find a trail of drug dealing and production.. its all about drugs drugs drugs..

it is actually :(

of course they have supporters-- otherwise they wouldn't exist. there's no big mystery there. the pashtun tribes support the taliban illiterates.

see:



still--fuck them. those sons of bitches deny women the right to have any education. they can stone them rape them treat them like a piece of trash. the cocksuckers also ban all music. fuck them.

and the other tribes are against them.

while I dont agree with the taliban's extreme methods of enforcement, and further I believe that even the taliban could convinced that education for women is essential, I somehow don't think that blowing up a bunch shit and killing some people will convince them..

and further, I don't think blowing shit up and killing people will help educate girls as they get killed as collateral damage.. we already learned in indochina that you CANNOT blow up the village to save it... it simply does not make any fucking sense

the cultural extremes of the taliban are in fact supported by many many people in the region, it is something that we will have to accept in time, as afghanistan is not america, and Islam is not secular humanism, but that should not somehow invalidate the culture

see, if we hadn't dropped the ball and had kept order in afghanistan after the invasion, because dubya cuntbrains bush with cheney's dick up his colon powell hadn't been up to shit in iraq, this wouldn't have happened.

see, this is how the return of the taliban began:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0412/p06s01-wosc.html

but how could we have continued to produce and distribute all this heroin if the war was as large in scale and as public as say Iraq? There is a REASON all this war has been rather secretive and uneffective.. the US WANTS an environment of chaos, it makes it easier to participate in covert drug production and trade..

good luck trying

not with that attitude mister!

The taliban are people, just like we are people, and people can accept good ideas if the come from indigenous, ingenious sources..

the reality of the world is that especially in developing countries, though marginalized, women play the crucial socio-political and economic roles, and so in the long run, even a boisterous, chauvinistic regime could be convinced of the value of letting girls who already effectively run their households and businesses to be able to read and perform simple arithmetic..

it is the inevitable future, and the only thing that would stop it is to blow up everything and continue and environment of war and chaos rather than working to create an atmosphere of normality..

drugs and the $$$$ the bring to those who control the trade

US? majority voted for obama to end this shitty clusterfuck.

fuck rumsfeld, cheney, bush, richard perle, wolfowitz, and all those shits, fuck them to hell.

the pashtun are people, the taliban are evil dumbfucks

youre supporting the wrong revolution

try this instead:

http://www.rawa.org/index.php

in regards to Afghanistan more americans have their ponies' tails tied on the war path as much as the soldierboys on the ground..

americans believe in the war in afghanistan cuz they are scared of the cucuy as I said before..

and when is Obama gonna get us outta all this mess when he is busy sending in MORE troops.. sounds a lot like Tricky Dick Nixon if you ask me... a bunch of that peace with honor bullshit, meanwhile on the otherside of the world people die.. where is the honor in that?

I am not necessarily supporting to taliban as much as calling the facts on the ground.. the people support the taliban, and yes, the members of the taliban are still people.. even hitler was a person which is why the bastard killed himself in obvious guilt.

i don't think hitler killed himnself due to guilt, as much as to avoid the humiliation and torture that was to befall him. ego's that big cannot stand to be deflated.

what the fuck, the taliban was nurturing bin laden and refused to turn him over after september 11. american troops went in to go get them and to topple a terrorist regime-- that's right, terrorist.

nobody was fucking with the taliban in spite of the millions of women crying for help until the osama thing-- so nobody was meddling in afghanistan's internal affairs while they ran their little evil theocracy. the invasion was justified.

i'm for tolerance, living and letting live, but only up to a point. those motherfuckers crossed the line.

where we fucked up royally was after going in, letting chaos rule and therefore the pashtuns had to go to what they knew, which was the backing of the taliban so they wouldn't be living in a jungle. fucking incompetent morons running the war, fuck them for that.

Its only in the mountainous North of Pakistan you find real concentrations of the fundamentalists, and their current support has less to do with "Taliban? FUCK YEAH!" than it has to to do with tit-for-tat retaliation for dead relatives and a general disinterest in being told what to do.
Of course all this fundamentalism really only came about in the 1980s when the US set up those madrasah in Pakistan and elsewhere to create lunatics to fight in Afghanistan, the Caucaus, and elsewhere.