Avec un coeur plein de fantaisies délirantes dont je suis le Capitaine, avec une lance de feu et un cheval d'air, à travers l'immensité, je voyage. – Tom O'Bedlam - "Chansons"
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1804 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: ...Afghanistan
That is a cheap rhetorical device, Harry, because you probably are not a soldier in combat.
Regarding the Vietnam analogy, well, there is another analogy, and that is Jimmy Carter, who sat by and watched the USSR and its allies expand all over the world.
Also, people often talk about Vietnam and the 55,000 U.S. soldiers killed there. But they don't often talk about the "boat people" who had to flee Vietnam after America left.
As I have mentioned before, a better analogy for Afghanistan would be Columbia or Iraq and their defeat of their insurgencies, with U.S. help.
Elite Veteran Mother tongue: German Posts: 843 Joined: December 31, 2002 Location: Mexico
RE: ...Afghanistan
Originally written by John Bunch on November 14, 2009 11:48 PM
That is a cheap rhetorical device, Harry, because you probably are not a soldier in combat.
When person A kills person B, there is ethically no difference whether person A wears a uniform and is ordered to do so by a third person - everyone is responsible for his own acts.
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1804 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: ...Afghanistan
But of course context is everything. If Person A is a policeman and shoots person B to prevent a greater crime (person B shooting person C), then that is a moral act, right ?
Even the Dalai Lama follows that kind of logic: violence is allowed, to prevent greater violence, and I think that every ethical and religious system recognizes that. The real question in war is, is the violence truly necessary. I personally find violence very distasteful and I will really go out of my way to avoid it, but at the same time, one cannot always avoid it, and it is sometimes required, to prevent greater "evil".
[Edited by John Bunch on November 14, 2009 6:47 PM]
Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: ...Afghanistan
Originally written by John Bunch on November 14, 2009 9:48 PM
...Jimmy Carter, who sat by and watched the USSR and its allies expand all over the world.
Maybe he knew the old Roman rule Pacta sunt servanda? I am referring here to the division of the world agreed by the US and USSR in Yalta which allowed both empires to expand all over the world in a mutually acceptable way. As your friend, Niall Fergusson would say, empires are good!
Expert Mother tongue: English Posts: 1804 Joined: February 1, 2008 Location: United States
RE: ...Afghanistan
He said, some empires are good, and some are bad...
I don't recall part of Yalta being that the USSR could come into Latin America and start building bases there and fomenting "revolution".
The whole purpose of containment was to stop the USSR from expanding. I recall the 1980s, when the USSR began positioning SS-20 and SS-22 medium range missiles (nuclear) at west European cities (and we think Al Quida can cause damage !) in an attempt to then blackmail Europe and to neutralize it. Ultimately, a takeover or at the very minimum a kind of "we will let you live, if you do X, Y, and Z" arrangment would have resulted. I know a man who was a colonel in the East German military at that time and sat in on very high-level Soviet meetings in which they talked about a full-out onslaught against NATO, and "being in Gibraltar in 3 weeks" after the invasion began (!!).
At that time, western Europeans were of course blaming America for this (far easier to blame the guy who can't hurt you, rather than stare down the bully with the shotgun who really CAN hurt you, and also kind of wants to). Some west Europeans also use to say things like "America has no right to criticize the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when not all Americans have free apartments" (I actually recall a Dutch woman saying that to me in about 1984 and it is probably the most inane thing I have ever heard in my life.
Reagan put in the Pershing missiles and saved Europe from the 'Bear'. (to be fair, Gorbachev deserves LOTS of credit !! ... but only AFTER about 1985. I recall Gorbachev being very belligerant and actually being very in favor of this situation I depict above, until he saw that Reagan was not Carter and would not crumble. Then, he discovered Peristroika and detente).
[Edited by John Bunch on November 15, 2009 12:34 PM]
Originally written by John Bunch on November 15, 2009 12:41 AM
Even the Dalai Lama follows that kind of logic: violence is allowed, to prevent greater violence,
No, John.
"In highly charged situations that may lead to killing only those with the spiritual development of a Buddha are deemed capable of deliberately abrogating the principle of non-violence; the Dalai Lama declines to put himself in that category."
American public will not support war without end, it means to leave one day. Therefore the art of victory has to be to try to set up a government that can both survive US withdrawal and serve US interests. The circle to be squared is getting the people of a whole country to want what Washington wants. The trouble is that, left to their own devices, other peoples are likely to want what they want, not what we want.
One problem flowing from this dilemma is that the more the United States does to set up such a government, the more the "Afghans themselves" (or the Vietnamese themselves or the Iraqis themselves or the whoevers themselves) are tainted by the association. If the paradox of military engagement in such a conflict is that the more you fight the more you lose, then the paradox of political engagement is that the more you rule the weaker the native component of the government becomes, and the more likely it is to collapse when you leave, as the South Vietnamese government did in 1975. That is scarcely a new point, either. For instance, as far back as 1964, Senator Richard Russell said in a phone conversation with President Lyndon Johnson, "It appears that our position is deteriorating, and it looks like the more we try to do for them, the less they're willing to do for themselves." (Holbrooke reprised the point to Packer when he commented on the Afghan government, "The more help they need, the more dependent they get.... In Vietnam, that's exactly what happened.") ....
After touring the Garmsir District in Afghanistan recently, New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins wrote, "In Garmsir, there is nothing remotely resembling a modern state that could take over if America and its NATO allies left." In January a Defense Department report stated, "building a fully competent and independent Afghan government will be a lengthy process that will last, at a minimum, decades." Yet without such a government, US policy in Afghanistan is not merely destined to fail; it is incoherent. In a sense, it is not a policy at all. There is a lot in Afghanistan that is different from Vietnam, but this much is the same or worse.
Jonathan Schell teaches a course on the nuclear dilemma at Yale. He is the author of The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger.
Fragile, unstable states that are scarred by war and ongoing conflict linger at the bottom of the index. These are: Somalia, with a score of 1.1, Afghanistan at 1.3, Myanmar at 1.4 and Sudan tied with Iraq at 1.5. These results demonstrate that countries which are perceived as the most corrupt are also those plagued by long-standing conflicts, which have torn apart their governance infrastructure.
...with a little help from my friends?
Here is a story about "striking examples of the multimillion-dollar business conglomerates, financed by American as well as Afghan tax dollars and connected to powerful political figures, that have, since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, emerged as part of a pervasive culture of corruption here": Afghanistan as a Patronage Machinehttp://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175140
Paying Off the Warlords
Anatomy of an Afghan Culture of Corruption
[snip] Indeed, the tale of the "reconstruction" of Kabul's electricity supply is a classic story of how foreign aid has often served to line the pockets of both international contractors from the donor countries and the local political elite. Unfortunately, these aid-financed projects also generally fail -- as the Kabul diesel plants appear destined to -- because of a lack of planning and the hard cash to keep them operating. ...
To add insult to injury, much of the diesel is meant for the USAID power plant at Tarakhil that has become a symbol of the sort of massive and widespreadreconstruction waste and abuse that has gone on in this country for years. The plant, built by Black & Veatch, is now projected to cost $300 million, three times the price of similar plants in neighboring Pakistan. In addition, it will only be capable of supplying one-third of the power the Uzbek power line can deliver far less expensively. Nor will the Uzbek line be the only source of cheap electricity. KEC's engineers have broken ground on a second power line -- this one from Tajikistan -- that will supply 300 megawatts of electricity to Kabul, three times what the Tarakhil plant will produce at a bargain basement construction cost of $28 million. ...
It's considered one of the most dangerous airports in the world, and starting soon Baghdad International will be under the protection of the same private security empire whose embassy guards in Kabul engaged in range of misconduct and drunken hazing rituals, including those now infamous vodka buttshots. Recently, Iraq's governing council selected ArmorGroup to take over airport security, replacing a company called Sabre International, which has held the contract for the past year.
The security contract is worth $22.5 million, according to Agence France Presse, and comes a little over two months after the Project on Government Oversight exposed a pattern of misbehavior by ArmorGroup employees protecting the US Embassy in Kabul under a $189 million State Department contract. The controversy led to the firings of more than a dozen ArmorGroup personnel, prompted an ongoing investigation by the State Department's Inspector General, and could eventually end up costing the company the embassy contract.
[Edited by Jacek K. on November 18, 2009 10:44 AM]
Gallup now gives the Republicans an advantage of 48% to 44% over the Democrats in a generic congressional ballot. More worrying for the Democrats is a big drop in support from independent voters; they favoured a generic Republican candidate by 52% to 30% in Gallup's poll.
While some polls have found that the public opposes an escalation, the Q-poll finds that more people support adding 40,000 new troops — the biggest increase on the table right now. The rub is that the question presents the plan as McChrystal’s:
General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has asked President Obama to send 40,000 additional combat troops. Should Obama send the troops or not?
Yes 47%
No 42%
Fifty-three percent of independents also answer Yes. It’s true that Obama retains the trust of a majority — 53% — to make the right decision on Afghanistan. But a much higher number — 77% — trust the military on this question.
This kind of stuff is unlikely to factor into Obama’s decision. But with Republicans gearing up to portray any escalation short of 40,000 troops as a betrayal of the commanders, it’s pretty clear that the politics of this will get more treacherous for Obama going forward.
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