The US embassy in Kabul under attack by Taliban fighters armed with RPGs and suicide vests. This comes on the heels of Saturday’s truck bombing of a US base, which injured 77 soldiers.
I’m a pretty regular reader of the news, and aside from these “big attacks” that get a little bit of press coverage, I have no idea how we’re doing in Afghanistan. If you’ve got some good analysis links, please add them in the comments.
mikefromArlington
I usually go here for interesting analysis of the region.
http://www.registan.net/
Ackerman has some good stuff sometimes too but he can get a bit dramatic at times.
schlemizel - was Alwhite
Just a few weeks ago we were assured we were winning, that the Taliban was crushed, only a handful of members left.
I’m having flashbacks to 1968 – and, no its not the brown acid :) – when were were assured the Viet Cong were on the run, had no support in the country and could not generate a threat against the US or the SVN. Then came Tet.
The apologists are quick to note that the VC did not win a single engagement during Tet but refuse to acknowledge why it was a huge victory for them. The Army had no idea what was happening inside Viet Nam, had no idea what the enemy was doing or was capable of doing. The DoD had been lying to us for years & it was impossible to deny it any more. This more than Uncle Walters denunciation of the war was the dagger to the heart of the debacle.
The Army will defeat this attack & the same people will be running around telling us “all is well” and we only need 6 more months. What is different now is that few people actually care (the draft really made a difference) and nobody in the media will point out that the emperor has no clothes.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
A Bright Shining Lie
Samara Morgan
git to tha choppah!
Omnes Omnibus
@schlemizel – was Alwhite: We need to get out. Logistically and operationally, however, it does take time to pack things up and move them back from outposts all over the country. I am okay with up to a year, if it is spent organizing and executing a withdrawal.
The Tim Channel
There was really no doubt going in that we would be engaging in a clusterfuck of enormous proportions, so it’s kinda weird to see people wondering how it could have all gone so wrong.
Enjoy.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Omnes Omnibus: Unass that mofo!
john walters
I like Juan Cole’s blog “Informed Comment.” http://www.juancole.com His take on Afghanistan right now: the heavy presence of US/NATO forces is sparking a significant backlash among Afghans who aren’t particularly Islamo/radical. Also, he sees a big opening for negotiations following the death of Bin Laden.
In short, the war is counterproductive and there’s a better option.
The Tim Channel
Reading over at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment site leads me to offer this explanation:
We won and didn’t leave. This fits pretty well with what the US gov’t has been feeding us. You know the deal. We’ve killed all but the remaining five (pick a small number) of the original Taliban. I’ve no reason to think this isn’t true given the relatively small number of them to begin with. Now that we’ve mangled them into dust, the locals have identified NATO/US as the only remaining interlopers.
Enjoy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): That is exactly what I am suggesting. I just want it done in a way that doesn’t lead to more soldiers’ deaths. Basically, I am talking about the difference between a retreat and a rout.
The Tim Channel
@john walters: You beat me to the punch by one minute.
The Tim Channel
@Omnes Omnibus: There’ll be no ‘rout’. The enemy doesn’t have the means and is smarter than that. They already did in the Soviets. It’ll be death of a thousand cuts. There’ll come a day when a whole barracks of marines are blown to shit and then it’ll be decided that we ‘won’ and need to leave. In no scenario does the rebel movement have the ability to mow us down during retreat (like we did to Saddam’s army back during the first gulf war).
I think the goals of the rebels is to be enough of an impediment to make any long-term foreign occupation and control of the country more expensive than the natural resources being fought over.
Enjoy.
Michael D.
My friend AJ lives about a 10-minute walk from the embassy. They’re being told to stay in their apartments and access to the roof of his building is cut off.
He is saying that one internatinal reporter is injured, dust everywhere and chaotic – which is probably obvious anyway. The fighting has slowed down quite a bit since though.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Omnes Omnibus: Goes without saying.
GregB
Let them die!
Sorry. I thought we were talking about terminally ill Americans.
jo6pac
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page.html
Samara Morgan
@The Tim Channel: lol.
we lost.
10 years and 4.4 trillion latah the Taliban are opening an office in Qatar.
for 10 years the US has been trying to delegitimize/kill off the talibs, and there are 5% more every year, and 30k talibs are delivering an asswhupping to 100k murrican troops and 250k combined Afghan defense forces and NATO troops.
a month ago the talibs killed Karzai’s brother in his office.
They are burning American flags in Islamabad every day and Pak kicked 330 CIA out of the country last spring and closed one of their airbases to drones.
when we leave, the talibs are going to roll into Kabul and put Karzais head on a pike and govern how ever the hell they please.
my guess is a shariah law state.
Alyson
Richard Falk, distinguished international law expert, on “Rethinking Afghanistan After a Decade”: “As the Afghan saying goes: ‘You got the watches, we got the time.'”
http://essays.ssrc.org/10yearsafter911/rethinking-afghanistan-after-a-decade/
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Samara Morgan: So. you are saying we should take the gloves off and quit pussy-footing around?
Alyson
And on the situation for women, “‘Rescue’ Ten Years Out: An Anecdotal Report on Afghan Women’s Challenges.”
http://tiny.cc/mbqh9
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Samara Morgan: So. you are saying we should take the gloves off.
Samara Morgan
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): nah. im saying we should fold our tents and GTFO as quietly as possible.
which is what O is doing.
he gave McC and the generals the mini-surge, but it was always the start of the drawdown in July 2011 if the mini-surge failed.
we are right on schedule.
and certainly the retreat could become a rout.
AfPak is one region, pretty much.
Last spring Imran Khan staged a sitdown strike that closed the roads to NATO convoys for 2 days.
It was organized on facebook and had student federations and islamists as organizers.
if the Arab Spring gets to Islamabad before the US gtfos A-stan, it could easily be a rout that has the remaining troops leaving from Kabul rooftops in Operation Frequent Wind Redux..
Samara Morgan
@Alyson: lol!
what was the mission again?
Samara Morgan
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
and we never used gloves. we tried to use military power to terraform a resistant culture.
cant be done.
schlemizel - was Alwhite
@Omnes Omnibus:
“Pull out? I don’t know Bill. Doesn’t sound manly to me.”
Gad I miss Carlin
schlemizel - was Alwhite
also too:
“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
–
And I suppose we should start a pool – who’ll be the first to call “stab in the back” and how soon? You know this is all the Dems fault. We needed to clap harder.
rumpole
Not well. I have a cousin who’s an officer in the reserves that is being sent over for a six-month tour, and possibly longer. I haven’t seen him in nearly 20 years. He’s been visiting his brothers, and extended family, because he’s afraid he’s not going to be coming back–despite the drawdown.
lacp
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Didn’t work for the Soviets. Hell, the only weapons they didn’t use were nukes.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
please reboot your snarkometers
handsmile
As other commenters have noted above, Juan Cole’s Informed Comment is perhaps the most perspicacious aggregator of information about Central Asia and the Middle East. His knowledge of the region is far-ranging (as well as his knowledge of reliable sources for specific areas); his own analysis astute.
Afpak.foreignpolicy.com [ http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/ ] is another website I would recommend for coverage/analysis of Afghanistan and Pakistan, though its perspective is often too Washington-centric for me.
Of course, Al Jazeera [ english.aljazeera.net ] is indispensable if one wishes to develop a more robust knowledge of current events in the Middle East and Central Asia. Its correspondents report stories/incidents/activities that are simply not to be found on other English-language news organizations.
cyd
Big difference between this war and Vietnam: in this war, Americans are grumbling but not protesting. So there is no real political cost to continuing it, even as the expenses bleed the country dry.
Chris
@cyd:
This.
It’s more like Korea than Vietnam that way, unpopular but not nearly on the kind of scale you saw in the 1960s.
arguingwithsignposts
@cyd:
FTFY.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Chris: It’s also not near the scale in terms of casualties either.
cyd
Sorry, originally wrote “Afghanistan” rather than “Vietnam”.
One more thought: the military leadership learnt how to avoid the anti war backlash, basically by using a volunteer army and spending lots of money to minimize US casualties (even if that means you gotta blow up civvies from the air).
But it’s maybe not a good thing that they did. Wars should be hard to fight. If the Vietnam War hadn’t been so politically toxic, maybe it would still be going on now.
handsmile
Offline, one essential analyst of this region is Pakistani journalist, Ahmed Rashid whose essays regularly appear in the New York Review of Books.
In addition to his ground-breaking book on the Taliban (published in 2000), his book “Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation-Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia” (2008) is one of the most authoritative critiques of foreign policy published in the past ten years. A must read.
MC
It’s important to note that it appears what the gov’t thinks it’s going to do next is replace the military with lots more civilians http://diplopundit.blogspot.com/2011/09/civilian-surgeuplift-in-afghanistan.html and my brain is reeling.
cleek
@cyd:
this will get me a little close to conservo-libertarian nuttiness with this, but i’m gonna go there any way:
and, it doesn’t hurt the military-industrial complex that all the money we’re spending to keep our troops safe, and to inflict damage from a distance, is borrowed money, which is piled on top of other borrowed money such that nobody feels any kind of direct financial hit for it.
we just borrow to buy more and better weapons and more fuel and more ammo, and nobody ever gets the bill. for the average person, war is free. compare that to WWII.
this is one thing the libertarians get right: if govt can simply borrow without real restraint, the actual cost of what it does becomes irrelevant to the public.
Chris
@cyd:
And so war becomes about PR.
You know what occurs to me when reading this kind of stuff? That we’ve had this Big, Professional Standing Army since the end of World War Two now, supposedly the best in the world, but I hope I don’t offend anyone when I point out that we don’t have much to show for it. Out of the five “big” wars we’ve fought since 1945, only one was an unqualified victory – Korea was a draw, Vietnam a defeat, Kuwait a victory, the jury’s still out on Afghanistan and Iraq but at the very best, I doubt they’ll be better than a draw (and you know what the very worst is).
Meanwhile, the four big wars we’ve fought since the foundation of our nation – the Revolution, the Civil War, World Wars One and Two – all fought by citizen-soldiers levied for the occasion, the last three by draftees. Yeah, I know: we didn’t have nearly the level of commitments then that we do now. But it still seems like something worth pondering when looking at the U.S. military.
kdaug
@cyd:
Old-school, chief – bring in the droids. Our heroes-to-be are the ones who can master a joystick instead of an M-16. And don’t get me started on LEO weapons platforms – “nuke ’em from orbit” ain’t just for the movies anymore.
Omnes Omnibus
@ Chris: Our Army is very good at what it is designed to do. Look at the Gulf War in the 90s and the invasion of Iraq. It is not good at doing the things it wasn’t designed to do. The problem is that it gets told to do those things.
grandpajohn
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): and 58,000 victims of that lie.
the traveling wall was in a nearby town last weekend. and was here a couple of years ago.
nevgu
Cue General Naive as a sack of hammers Cole with his childishly simplistic Libertarian like view that because all war is bad we should never consider it, get out now, sit back and let genocides happen etc etc.
He still has not answered for the blood on his hands over his Libya views which have clearly been proven sadly naive.
Samara Morgan
the attack on the US embassy in Kabul is being mounted by 10 talibs. there are at least two, maybe three other attacks going on simultaneously.
a lot of PR bang for the buck.
this is the al-Q model of 9/11….the expense to damage ratio of approx one million.
last month the Taliban whacked Karzais own brother.
the 35 country Kabul training mission is the real target for the Taliban today.
they want NATO and the other countries to leave the US “mission” and cut and run.
Samara Morgan
@nevgu: that isnt Coles view.
he is a type A interventionist.
He thinks we shouldn’t intervene unless its in America’s “interest”.
Samara Morgan
@kdaug: the problem is you cant fight insurgents and guerillas with conventional military power.
just like you cant get SIGINT from wedding parties or SAR signatures from carbonbased organisms.
:)
Chris
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, that’s probably fair. But fewer and fewer wars seem to follow the conventional, Desert Storm type of pattern (no one’s dumb enough to take on the U.S. military force-on-force like that anymore).
@Samara Morgan:
Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz.
Paul in KY
@Chris: The reason the powers-that-be like an all-volunteer armed forces is that it is:
A) Self selecting, in that nice, ordinary, non-military-oriented people who aren’t into combat will not end up in it & thus will not end up being the kind of casulties that turn the regular public against a military engagement.
B) Since they are ‘volunteers’, when they get killed, it’s not like they didn’t know what could happen to them.
These are just shorthand reasons. It’s more complicated than that, but I didn’t want to write a Greenwaldian length post.
Samara Morgan
@Chris:
wallah! you speak cudlip?
:)
catclub
@Samara Morgan: Is that when Bush was boarding Marine One?
catclub
@Chris: How can you leave out the grand success of Grenada? It is like you don’t even wear Ronald Reagan pajamas.
Chris
@Paul in KY:
No, I think you got to the heart of it. And I think the trend towards more and more war with less and less involvement by the American people is going to get worse rather than better (increasing use of things like drones helping).
I’ve idly wondered for a while now how long it would take before we outsourced an entire war to a private military contractor. You know, leave the All Volunteer Force for shiny, easy, clear-cut interventions like Grenada, Panama and Kuwait… and when you’ve got a Vietnam-type mess, officially stay out of it and have one or several PMCs do your work for you. As “advisers,” “contractors,” arms providers or whatever to our local allies… with the U.S. government pulling strings behind the scenes.
(Hell, Nicaragua in the eighties was already like that, with Oliver North using foreign and private funds to finance a war off the books).
Samara Morgan
Two core memes emerged from 9/11 for dar ul Islam …and (incidentally) Wikileaks.
1. America is NOT invulnerable.
2. the million to one damage to expense ratio fueled by paranoia induction.
there was an arabic cartoon that showed America as a giant flailing around batting at flies and tearing itself to pieces in the process.
How they see 9/11 is a lot different than how juicers see 9/11.
its pretty undeniable that the Taliban learned some new stuff from the lesson of 9/11, like how to manipulate media, but they have also been fighting invader/occupiers for centuries– the Taliban are mostly the same Deobandi Sufi that fought the British Raj.
NCSteve
I don’t know that it’s true here. But in strictly in military terms, when an insurgency goes from engaging in combat with enemy soldiers to trying to make headlines with splashy terrorist attacks that don’t require a lot of manpower, materiel or money, it generally means they’ve lost militarily and are making an attempt to generate a political victory despite the military loss.
Unfortunately, if the opponent is a democracy fighting a distant foreign war, the attacks tend to do exactly what the insurgents want–convince the civilians that they’re losing at precisely the moment they’re winning. And, of course, they can always count on the assistance of people like Cheney and Westmoreland to have laid the ground for them by gutting the enemy government’s credibility with their own foolish statements and conduct.
Frankensteinbeck
@MC:
This is a big ‘of course’. Obama promised to give one last try to fix Afghanistan and to slowly pull out of Iraq, and he’s been doing both. M-C’s racism aside, this is about George Bush screwing the pooch. He and his administration told the Pentagon to dump their reconstruction plans in both countries. We invaded them both, and then let them sit there while maintaining a military presence. For EIGHT YEARS. Cheney’s neocon religion insisted that this was all we had to do to turn these countries into shining pro-Western democracies, and it made Bush feel manly.
We should never have been in Iraq to begin with. Eight years of ignoring the needs of the Afghan people may well have made our position there irrecoverable. There’s no way to say anymore what would have happened if we’d focused on security and reconstruction work to create a stable and prosperous independent nation in Afghanistan. That kind of plan is SOP. Bush and Cheney didn’t even try, they ran off to invade Iraq and then abandon it. But if (and obviously it’s a debatable point) you think it’s worth a try fixing the clusterfuck they created, your biggest priority needs to be rebuilding the civilian infrastructure they gave jack shit about.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus:
The bulk of the armed forces no. But there are reactionary units that are designed for other forms of warfare. They are usually pitifully small due to the urge to just have grunts instead of trained warriors. Warfare is changing, and the Army is not adapting. The Marines are slowly, but they’re fighting tradition along the way too.
Samara Morgan
@Chris: the mil cycle is 10 year R&D to deployment. We will outsource our carbonbased frontlines to silicon, teleop, teleprecense for the next Big War.
Iraq and A-stan are just the end of COIN.
America cant fight a “counterinsurgency”, whatever the fuck that is anyways.
We’ll outsource the next one of those to spooks and mercs.
Nevgu
@Samara Morgan: Name one ‘intervention’ he agreed with? Nada!
Not only are his childishly simplistic and idealistic views of war naive. They are dangerous.
Once in an ‘intervention’, he constantly harps on the need to get out now. Which is like pouring gasoline on a raging fire. Mostly for the most innocent and vulnerable people of that country. But General Cole is too stupid to realize that.
Samara Morgan
@NCSteve: umm….the Taliban are not losing.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Yutsano: “Reactionary units”, the Whites?
Omnes Omnibus
@ Yutsano: I am typing on my iPhone, so brevity was prioritized. You are correct. Also too, funding for big ticket weapon systems is easier to get than other things.
kdaug
@Chris: The history of mercenary armies goes back a lot longer than that.
But, perhaps counterintuitively, I question their utility if drones and droids can do the same, cheaper and quieter – and most importantly, under control.
Samara Morgan
@Nevgu: right here.
Classic Type A interventionism– acting only when America’s “interests” are involved.
see also– NOT-Rwanda, democracy for me but not for thee, OIF, OEF
:)
Chris
@kdaug:
Mercenary armies have gone in and out of fashion for centuries, Swiss (and eventually Swabian) mercenaries in the Middle Ages being one of the high-water marks of that profession in the West. I’m just saying this might be a time for them to come back into fashion with a vengeance.
Intriguing idea in the second paragraph, but what do you mean by “droids” exactly? We’re ages away from Star Wars/BSG type all-robot armies: at some point, there still need to be human boots on the grounds. (Although those needn’t be mercs, locally recruited death squads like the contras can do the job just as well).
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Chris: Ever hear of these cats?
Frankensteinbeck
@Samara Morgan:
Yet again, M-C, you are lecturing people about things they already know.
I’ve never read ANYONE, commenter or front pager, on BJ who thinks that purely military solutions will solve Iraq or Afghanistan. I’ve never read anyone, not even our right wing trolls, who thought they ever would no matter how well they were carried out.
Most of BJ, including Cole, are seriously anti-military and take the default position that wars are not worth it and are fought because of greed. Cole is just barely willing to accept that other ways might exist, but he ain’t seen ’em.
The people who are interventionists believe that it’s possible that a population might be willing to excuse your military presence if you work your ass off nonmilitarily to make their lives better than when you got there. Bush and Cheney did not even bother to try, an attitude viewed with contempt and disgust here.
Stop arguing against a nonexistent opponent to make yourself feel superior. You are behind the curve here, not ahead of it. We already know this shit, and are discussing more complicated issues.
Samara Morgan
@Chris: we are testing waldos now.
Robotic body armor.
the next cycle (after silicon) will be nanotech. swarms of nanobots or nanomites.
Strong AI is hard…nanotech will be field deployed before droids or cyborgs i think.
you should be more worried about designer eugenics and germline modification for supersoldiers.
Paul in KY
@Chris: I would say Bush/Cheney would have loved to do what you thought about. Rove probably thought the optics of that would be bad. Otherwise, Erik Prince would have been Consul of Iraq (shudder).
Paul in KY
@Chris: FWIW, Machiavelli thought mercenary armies were bad juju for a state.
Samara Morgan
@Frankensteinbeck:
yes they did try. that is what COIN, the Bush Doctrine, and Peaceful Democracy Theory is all about. That is what “armed social workers” and building girls schools is all about. That is what “nation building” is all about.
This is the attitude that I view with contempt and disgust. Bush and Cheney paved the road to hell with your American do-gooder fuckery. Even if you opposed OIF and OEF you still think missionary democracy would do those stupid muslims a world of good, especially the poor shariah ridden man oppressed muslimahs.
asshole colonialists.
you are not any different from Bush. you are evangelists of western culture, proselytizers of missionary democracy.
And that is why OIF and OEF were both epic fails.
Morzer
@Chris:
?ehs t’nsi, toidi gnikcuf a si ehS
Omnes Omnibus
@ m_c/SM: It is possible to improve people’s lives by assisting with things like sanitation and improved agricultural methods. Think a little for once.
Samara Morgan
if even the glibertarians get it right…….
hey McC, now your government in a box is holed up in Kabul taking live fire.
hubris, ate
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus:
not while you are making the whole country into a fucking warzone.
that is NGOs are for.
we went into A-stan to get OBL. then the mission changed to nationbuilding armed social workers and girls schools.
90% of Afghans have never heard of 9/11.
get a clue Omnes– 10 taliban have been shelling the US embassy for eight hours.
they DONT WANT US THERE.
Elie
I am not a military expert, but my understanding is that the US is withdrawing and preparing to hand over more and more of the reigns to Afghanis. Remember, the President announced this would be happening.
Correct me, but this — what is happening now — the attacks etc., are what happen when a force of occupation is withdrawing. It is one of the problems with announcing your departure because the “enemy” always tests the retreating army looking for weak spots to get their licks in and to set up new power relationships/control territory as much as possible during the “transition” to help dictate their position after the withdrawal is complete.
I can’t say for sure that this is what is happening, but it sure looks like it to me. This also happened in Vietnam, for those of you old enough to kinda remember, but a lot more dramatically and was documented more honestly back when we had a media that worked.
My guess is to expect more and worse before its over…
kdaug
@Chris:
Quasi-autonomous, dragonfly-sized flying robots for intel and A/V transmission from the field.
Joystick jockey in the Nevada desert for the takedown.
No boots required. No wounded overhead. No pay. No retirement benefits.
Just as disposable as mercs, but a lot cheaper.
Omnes Omnibus
@ m_c: I did not say they want us there. Read the fucking thread; I have said we need to get out. I made an observation that improvements did not necessarily equal installing democracy. I was not advocating a continued presence; my guess is that every literate person who read my comment understod that. You are an idiot.
Samara Morgan
@kdaug: i thot droids assumed AI. autonomous independent actors.
dragonfly bots are still drones.
no silicon intelligence.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: im not the idiot here. you are an idiot.
you made that idiotic statement about “making lemonade.”
we cant make lemonade.
all we have made is more enemies.
why dont you address this statement.
you are a fucking colonialist too, Omnes.
you and your “lemonade”.
Morzer
@Samara Morgan:
This is the sort of witty and insightful exchange that makes BJ such a wonderful treat to read.
Morzer
@Samara Morgan:
This is the sort of witty and insightful comment that makes BJ such a treat to read.
kdaug
@Samara Morgan: Autonomous re: pathfinding, object avoidance, onboard flight control, wind/turbulence compensation, power management, etc.
They still have to be told where to go, what to look at and who to listen to, but that can be preprogrammed.
Droid in my book.
Paul in KY
@Samara Morgan: You may be watching a bit too much sci-fi. I think we are many years away from ‘silicon intelligence’ being allowed to autonomously fly around dripping with weapons.
Omnes Omnibus
@ m_c: I have not advocated “making lemonade”; the closest thing you will find to that from me is a suggestion that some other people have adopted that view. Read the fucking words I wrote not the ones in your head. Again, I think we need to get out as soon it can reasonably be accomplished. You are a simplistic twit.
mellowjohn
@Omnes Omnibus:
for a highly readable and basically historically accurate account of the british retreat from kabul during the first afghan war (1840-41), i recommend george macdonald fraser’s flashman.
stephen pressfield’s the afghan campaign is also very good. it’s about alexander the great’s time there.
the afghan’s have been at this a long, long time.
Paul in KY
@mellowjohn: You know, they have been conquered a few times since Alexander. Both Ghenghis Khan and Tamerlane conquered them. They didn’t stay conquered for too long after either man died, but they were conquered.
Both men used tactics out of ‘Game of Thrones’ to cow the populations. We (the USA) can’t (and shouldn’t) do that stuff.
mellowjohn
occupied, yes.
conquered, ?
Paul in KY
@mellowjohn: They paid taxes & acknowledged their rule (publically, anyway). More conquered than what we have done.
Very bloody, though.
Samara Morgan
@kdaug: well…….droid comes from android.
anthropomorphic in form and/or function.
we called everything drones or bots.
@Omnes Omnibus:
the act of calling it “lemonade” implies superiority or improvement.
but not in a warzone that the US created. right? it seems like it would cancel itself out.
Do you believe in nationbuilding Omnes?
your statement seems to imply that.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s funny. I can always tell when you’re just bored. Cat with a mouse toy.
Morzer
@Yutsano:
To be fair, I think Samara the Polyonymous is making some effort to tone the punchiness down a bit of late. If so, I applaud this promising development and hope it continues.
Omnes Omnibus
@m_c: Nation building as a policy, no. Do I think there was a brief window of time around 2002 when we could have provided aid to Afghanistan that would have materially improved the lives of its citizen, yes. Your idol at the time fucked that all up.
Again, as far as the lemonade comment goes, it was not my position. It was a description of a position taken by others. You should be capable of recognizing the difference.
One more time: my position is that we should be working on getting out of Afghanistan as soon as practicable.
El Cid
If US/NATO forces withdraw now, it will lead to chaos and the possibility of an anti-Western Afghanistan outside a tiny area of Kabul. However, if the US/NATO forces remain there for a long time, the same is also the most likely result.
Therefore, it’s seemingly politically necessary to remain there since no one will want to be the one blamed for the chaos to follow.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: let me be more direct then.
Do you think westernstyle democracy with freedom of speech would benefit muslim countries? Think carefully…because this is also known as Peaceful Democracy Theory.
Samara Morgan
@El Cid: let me correct that.
Afghanistan will be anti-American, not anti-western.
Just like they became anti-British under the Raj, and anti-Russian under the sovs.
And Kabul too.
Kabul will forge stronger ties with Islamabad, and they are burning American flags there everyday.
Yutsano
@Samara Morgan:
And there went the goalposts…
Morzer
@Samara Morgan:
Are you grading the final exam on a curve, and will there be any extra credit?
Samara Morgan
@Morzer: i see you missed my little spat with Anne Laurie.
Morzer
@Samara Morgan:
Dare I ask which one? Anyway, I had the thought that you were calming things down a little from your last few posts on here. I hope not to be disappointed.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Enough already, Moaning Myrtle. Everybody knows that particular stunt of yours by now: any answer Omnes could possibly give is going to be RONG, because he lacks your special genius/is a WEC cudlip/whatever; and you are going to harangue him about it for weeks on end, even in threads that have nothing whatsoever to do with Afghanistan.
Morzer
@Yutsano:
There is a certain scent of “a magic unicorn in every peasant’s condominium” about the question.
kdaug
@Morzer: Agreed. m_c’s recent adoption of capitalization and punctuation is welcomed.
Omnes Omnibus
@ m_c: I know what I personally would prefer. I, however, am not an Afghan.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: IMO, Samara is wanting to play her +3 Muslims-can’t-have-Western-style-Democracy-because-there-can’t-be-Western-style-free-speech mace of righteousness.
I’ve seen her bring that one out many times.
El Cid
@Samara Morgan: Are you implying that the typical use of the term “Western” would exempt non-US NATO forces? I.e., the regime would be anti-US (not American, which if you’re being a tight-ass includes the whole of Mexico, Central, South America, and the Caribbean) but not anti-any of the following: Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, nor any other nation typically included in the term “Western”, which is used most frequently in a broad and non-politically scientific sense?
So, they wouldn’t mind continual NATO forces as long as it wasn’t the US?
Idiocy.
El Cid
@Paul in KY: This would be an empirical, and not a theoretical question. So the issue would not yet be able to be settled.
Paul in KY
@El Cid: I do agree with her that as long as anti-blasphemy laws (for saying bad stuff about the Prophet, peace be upon him) are on the books & enforced, there isn’t ‘Western-style free speech’.
Amir Khalid
@Paul in KY:
And I’ve had her swing it at me a few times. But as far as I know, she’s never managed to land any blows with it, on anyone. Omnes knows quite well that he will come to no harm.
@Samara Morgan:
For my part, I’d say that democracy, on their own terms, would do the people of Afghanistan a world of good. It would empower them, as it empowers people everywhere, to take charge of their future as a nation. Freedom of speech is essential to any democracy, and I would expect any Afghan democracy to allow it.
Every place of course has taboos on what you can say in public; but these should be as few as possible, particularly in the realm of public discourse. I know of nothing in Islam that contradicts these principles.
El Cid
@Paul in KY: Sure, now, but this doesn’t mean that such simply will not or cannot change. Of course, “Western style” shouldn’t imply that one can’t be punished for certain statements throughout the Western world, either.
Amir Khalid
@Paul in KY:
It wouldn’t quite be Western-style, no. But it only needs to be Afghan-style to be good enough for their democracy.
Paul in KY
@El Cid: Excellent point there on it being able to change over time.
I guess you are talking about libel laws & stuff in the West? Falsely yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater isn’t speech, IMO, but that type of asshattery is also justifiably prohibited.
I guess making pro-Nazi statements is verboten in Germany (as another example that springs to mind).
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: It is only a +3 mace, you need it to be +6 or more to do real damage ;-)
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: It is their country & they should be able to tailor it to the laws & customs of their societies.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: it would be islamic democracy then. WITH shariah law, WITHOUT freedom of speech.
I take it you are unaware of the Islamic declaration of human rights?
Shariah forbids the proselytization of the poor and ignorant. Freedom of speech legalizes the proselytiztion of everyone, including the poor and ignorant.
That is why i keep asking if you follow some other sort of Islam that I am unfamiliar with.
@Paul in KY: my s10 ruthless mace.
Samara Morgan
alas, moderation.
too boring to try to pass the filter.
@Paul in KY: my s10 Ruthless mace.
better beware.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: I take it you are unaware of the Islamic declaration of human rights?
Shariah forbids the proselytization of the poor and ignorant. Freedom of speech legalizes the proselytiztion of everyone, including the poor and ignorant.
That is why i keep asking if you follow some other sort of Islam that I am unfamiliar with.
Paul in KY
@Samara Morgan: Wallah! My ‘anti bad site’ software would not allow me to see your link.
I bet it was pretty funny :-)
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid:
ORLY?
what about the message of the Noble Quran and the First Pillar?
Paul in KY
@Samara Morgan: That does seem pretty self-serving, if you are a Muslim cleric for example.
Take away the ‘Islam’ and substitute ‘Catholicism’, for example.
Wallah! Too many ‘for examples’. Must get better thesarus.
Morzer
@Samara Morgan:
I am perplexed as to how you got a Taitz reference into the discussion.
Samara Morgan
@Paul in KY: the link goes to MMO champions page on arena season 10 pvp weapons.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid:
here is a basic disagreement i have with the juicitariat in general.
classical hellenic democracy means consent of the governed.
nothing about free speech.
that is why i call American style democracy “missionary democracy”. because it mandates freedom of speech.
Samara Morgan
@Paul in KY: as i have tried to explain before, Islam is a consensus religion. there is no top down authority.
and that Cairo Declaration is the current concensus interpretation of the Quran… there can be no compulsion in religion.
the exegesis or mutawatir(current interpretation) of that part of the Quran is codified in shariah law as an injunction against proselytizing.
In other places in the Quran Allah mandates a proportionate response to the proselytizers.
so i dont understand what Khalid is saying when he says he knows of nothing in Islam that contradicts free speech.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus:
that actually is a quite a good answer. You do not know what the Afghan people would prefer, because you are not a muslim. Afghanistan is 99% muslim today, just like it was 10 years ago.
Muslims like Islam. The great majority do not see anything wrong with it.
They are not pining for missionary democracy, and actually detest missionaries and proselytizers in general.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
You have had this tantrum before, Moaning Myrtle, and I am not going to respond to it this time either.
Morzer
@Samara Morgan:
Hmm, whereas you with your deep Pashtun ancestry and longterm residence in Afghanistan….
Omnes Omnibus
@m_c: Of course you have know idea what democracy is or how it works. How can the people consent if they do not know to what it is they are consenting? Free exchnage of information is a necessary condition for a functioning democracy.
BTW it is nor that I am not a Muslim that makes it hard for me to judge what an Afghan wants. It is that I am not an Afghan.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus:
no, it is not.
there is just one neccessary and sufficient condition, the consent of the governed.
the people are consenting to be governed by an entity of their choice.
and you can have free exchange of information without proselytizing.
but you cannot forbid proselytizing the poor and ignorant without forbidding all proselytizing.
And freedom of speech legalizes proselytizing everyone, even the poor and ignorant.
i do not get why this is so hard for you to understand….just as xians believe they have a RIGHT to proselytize, muslims believe they have a RIGHT to be free from proselytization.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: i think you can’t actually.
that is why you dont respond.
how can you say you are a muslim and ignore the message of the Generous Quran?
Omnes Omnibus
Why the fuck is proselytation even entering this conversation? Consent is impossible without knowledge. Knowledge requires information. Functionally, a
democracy cannot exist without free speech.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: i disagree.
freedom of information != freedom of speech.
lets try a thought experiment.
Is indonesia a democracy?
is Iraq?
Omnes Omnibus
@ m_c: Do you really believe free exchange of information is possible without free speech?
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
The rest of us were talking about freedom of speech and its role in democracy. But Moaning Myrtle obsesses on proselytizing. She sees it as the great Nefarious Purpose behind WEC meddling in MENA, which Islam is designed to be immune to, so she worries about it because shut up, cudlip, that’s why. Or as the sine qua non of freedom of speech, which Islam therefore FORBIDS, maftoon! (This line she reserves just for me, as a special honor.)
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: sure. consent of the governed means the information required is who to vote for.
that is publicized by the candidates.
now is Indonesia a democracy? Is Iraq? Because Iraq has shariah in the constitution, and Indonesia has anti-blasphemy laws.
yet both countries vote for elected representatives.
How about Pakistan?
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: that is not true.
i am saying shariah law is incompatible with freedom of speech because of the Quran.
you keep saying that isnt true.
well, refute my argument with something other than your feeelings.
Morzer
@Amir Khalid:
What is a maftoon anyway? Is it a sort of muffin? Is she calling you a baked good?
Morzer
@Samara Morgan:
All he’s doing is disagreeing with the premise of your argument. That’s not the same thing as relying on his feelings.
Omnes Omnibus
@ m_c: No country has complete freedom of speech. Relatively free speech as a means of informational exchange is simply necessary for democracy to function. Deal with it.
@ Amir Khalid: I know. I am just doing isometric exercises here.
Mjaum
How are we doing in Afghanistan? Well, them bloody americans are still here, and they still haven’t figured out that if something is an easy target, it isn’t the target you’re looking for.
Was that a trick question?
Amir Khalid
@Morzer:
She says it means I’m infatuated with the West. I know, it’s strange to have a Westerner accuse me of this. But Moaning Myrtle, who claims not to be a racist, also recently addressed me — a brown Southeast Asian, as she is aware — as “boi”. It seems she’s not too particular about being consistent.
Morzer
@Amir Khalid:
I suspect she’s caught the Anime virus and it’s infecting her linguistic software. Or it might just be a variant of the GOP worm.
handsmile
I suspect this post will be as little noted as my earlier comments on the ostensible subject of this thread, but for those sincerely interested in the intertwined subject of Afghanistan and Pakistan, I have just read a superb essay by Mohsin Hamid in the current issue of the New York Review of Books.
He summarizes two recent works on the subject: “The Scorpion’s Tail: The Relentless Rise of Islamic Militants in Pakistan…” by Pakistani journalist Zahid Hussain, and “Pakistan: A Hard Country” by the estimable British academic Anatol Lieven.
Really must every single politically-themed thread on this website devolve into a puerile slagging match between Samara Morgan (whatever her nom de guerre) and her evident legion of easily-provoked detractors? What exactly is being contributed?
Samara Morgan
a maftoon is a muslim who is charmed by western culture.
like a gunga for browns or an uncle tom for blacks.
i call ever one boi.
its my culture.
i still dont see how someone who says they are a muslim can argue with the Noble Quran.
isnt the first pillar pretty straightforward?
if Muhammed is the messenger of Allah, then the Holy Quran is the word of Allah.
Omnes Omnibus
@handsmile: You know, in the past, I also have made brilliant comments and suggested insightful articles for others to read and had those comments go unnoticed in the hurly-burly of the Balloon Juice comment section. I feel your pain; truly, I do.
Chris
@handsmile:
Well, I read it, and thought it well worth it, so hey, you’re not totally wasting your time. More complex than what you read from front-line news, at least.
In my case, an opportunity to quote Calvin and Hobbes. (Don’t you judge me!)
Samara Morgan
@handsmile: oh please. im just holding a mirror for their hypocrisy and they can’t bear it.
we are living in Unjust America.
America spent 14.3 trillion dollars and caused a million muslim deaths in a failed attempt to push missionary democracy on muslim populations.
And no one will own that.
well, own this doglovers.