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Xlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
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Don't mention Afghanistan
#1280334 - 02/05/03 03:39 AM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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The near collapse of peace in this savage land is a narrative erased from the mind of Americans
There's one sure bet about the statement to be made to the UN Security Council today by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell ? or by General Colin Powell as he has now been mysteriously reassigned by the American press: he won't be talking about Afghanistan.
For since the Afghan war is the "successful" role model for America's forthcoming imperial adventure across the Middle East, the near-collapse of peace in this savage land and the steady erosion of US forces in Afghanistan ? the nightly attacks on American and other international troops, the anarchy in the cities outside Kabul, the warlordism and drug trafficking and steadily increasing toll of murders ? are unmentionables, a narrative constantly erased from the consciousness of Americans who are now sending their young men and women by the tens of thousands to stage another "success" story.
Only in New York and Washington do the neo-conservative pundits suggest ? obscenely ? that the death of the Columbia crew may well have heightened America's resolve and "unity" to support the Bush adventure in Iraq. A few months ago, we would still have been asked to believe that the post-war "success" in Afghanistan augured well for the post-war success in Iraq.
So let's break through the curtain for a while and peer into the fastness of the land that both President Bush and Prime Minister Blair promised not to forget. Hands up those who know that al-Qa'ida has a radio station operating inside Afghanistan which calls for a holy war against America? It's true. Hands up again anyone who can guess how many of the daily weapons caches discovered by US troops in the country have been brought into Afghanistan since America's "successful" war? Answer: up to 25 per cent.
Have any US troops retreated from their positions along the Afghan-Pakistan border? None, you may say. And you would be wrong. At least five positions, according to Pakistani sources on the other side of the frontier, only one of which has been admitted by US forces. On 11 December, US troops abandoned their military outpost at Lwara after nightly rocket attacks which destroyed several American military vehicles. Their Afghan allies were driven out only days later and al-Qa'ida fighters then stormed the US compound and burnt it to the ground.
It's a sign of just how seriously America's mission in Afghanistan is collapsing that the majestically conservative Wall Street Journal ? normally a beacon of imperial and Israeli policy in the Middle East and South-west Asia ? has devoted a long and intriguing article to the American retreat, though of course that's not what the paper calls it.
Training camps have been set up inside Afghanistan again, not ? as the Americans think ? by the recalcitrant forces of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's anti-American Afghans, but by Arabs. The latest battle between US forces and enemy "remnants" near Spin Boldak in Kandahar provinceinvolved further Arab fighters, as my colleague Phil Reeves reported. Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami forces have been "forging ties" with al-Qa'ida and the Taliban; which is exactly what the mujahedin "terrorist remnants" did among themselves in the winter of 1980, a year after the Soviet invasion.
An American killed by a newly placed landmine in Khost; 16 civilians blown up by another newly placed mine outside Kandahar; grenades tossed at Americans or international troops in Kabul; further reports of rape and female classroom burnings in the north of Afghanistan ? all these events are now acquiring the stale status of yesterday's war.
So be sure that Colin Powell will not be boasting to the Security Council today of America's success in the intelligence war in Afghanistan. It's one thing to claim that satellite pictures show chemicals being transported around Iraq, or that telephone intercepts prove Iraqi scientists are still at their dirty work; quite another to explain how all the "communications chatter" intercepts which the US supposedly picked up in Afghanistan proved nothing. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, you can quote Basil Fawlty: "Whatever you do, don't mention the war.''
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=375608
-------------------- Don't worry, B. Caapi
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Strumpling
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: Xlea321]
#1280696 - 02/05/03 05:46 AM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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Afghanistan!
-------------------- Insert an "I think" mentally in front of eveything I say that seems sketchy, because I certainly don't KNOW much. Also; feel free to yell at me. In addition: SHPONGLE
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pattern
multiplayer
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: Strumpling]
#1280786 - 02/05/03 06:17 AM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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Afghanistan!
-------------------- man = monkey + mushroom
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Xlea321
Stranger
Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: pattern]
#1280849 - 02/05/03 06:40 AM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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Sssshh!
-------------------- Don't worry, B. Caapi
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TwIg
Pariah
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: Xlea321]
#1282977 - 02/05/03 06:03 PM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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Okay, that was a lot of reading, so I just skipped to the bottom so i could say
AFGHANISTAN
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hongomon
old hand
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: TwIg]
#1283139 - 02/05/03 07:56 PM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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Whew! There must be 600 words in that post!
Forget Afghanistan--say attention span!
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luvdemshrooms
Two inch dick..but it spins!?
Registered: 11/29/01
Posts: 34,247
Loc: Lost In Space
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: hongomon]
#1283276 - 02/05/03 09:46 PM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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Actually there are 680 words. 3,515 characters not counting spaces, 4,213 characters counting the spaces.
Quantity does NOT equal quality.
-------------------- You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers
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GazzBut
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It does raise some interesting points though doesnt it? Afghanistan has fallen right off the media radar now. Do you really see what has gone on there as a success story?
-------------------- Always Smi2le
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luvdemshrooms
Two inch dick..but it spins!?
Registered: 11/29/01
Posts: 34,247
Loc: Lost In Space
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: GazzBut]
#1283298 - 02/05/03 10:02 PM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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Off the radar? Nope. Not as many stories? Yup. It's definately not the "Story Of The Day" anymore. I'd chalk that up to the inability of most people to have an attention span much longer than the average three year old.
A partial success would be as far as I'd be willing to go.
-------------------- You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers
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hongomon
old hand
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TwIg said it was "a lot of reading." Quantitative, not qualitative. But thanks for your input.
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TwIg
Pariah
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: hongomon]
#1286550 - 02/06/03 05:59 PM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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Always...
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TwIg
Pariah
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Posts: 275
Loc: IL USA
Last seen: 14 years, 8 days
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: TwIg]
#1286601 - 02/06/03 06:13 PM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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Aside from me acting like an ass, Alex makes one good point that has been bugging me.
I find it quite disgusting, and frightening to say the least, that political leaders in our country manipulate and use it's own citizen's (me, you, everybody) ragged and torn emotions to justify their own cause(s).
President Bush, Jr. will go down in history as 'a great American president who fought tyrants, terrorist and political alike' in his short term. The truth of the matter be known is he is nothing but a selfish, ignorant brat of a man that we the people put into the most powerful position on the Earth.
Bush has done nothing humane that I can see so far. He has decimated what was left of the Afghan countryside. Granted, those people have known war and poverty long before Bush came to power. But (like Alex said) Bush and political leaders vowed that 'after the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, we will re-institute peace and prosperity to a land of hardship'.
Did these political leaders fulfill these vows? No. As a person, what were your feelings when he spoke those words? Were you concerned more of wiping out the countryside? Or installing peace once the decimation was complete?
But, in my own opinion, it seems Bush has done nothing but create nothing but conflict since he was appointed. Unfulfilled promises and war is what he has done so far. The minute the publics eyes drifted from the war on terrorism, he shifted his attention to something else - something else that would grab the public's small attention spans and make them forget about his emptiness.
Bah, who know's who is to blame? We the people and our happy little ignorant existence, or the savvy, deceitful leaders we empower? I don't know. I just know it makes me sick.
~TwIg~
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Rono
DSYSB since '01
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: TwIg]
#1286615 - 02/06/03 06:16 PM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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nice post...I concur. (Then again my opinions of Bush are hardly a secret)
-------------------- "Life has never been weird enough for my liking"
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silversoul7
Chill the FuckOut!
Registered: 10/10/02
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: TwIg]
#1287602 - 02/07/03 04:55 AM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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I'd like to see if there's even one year of his presidency where we're not at war with someone. First Afghanistan, then Iraq, next it's North Korea, then what? I suppose he's then going to fulfill his "Axis of Evil" prophecy by finding some reason to go to war with Iran. Bush is a mass murderer.
-------------------- "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."--Voltaire
Edited by silversoul7 (02/07/03 04:57 AM)
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angryshroom
Stranger
Registered: 12/18/01
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: TwIg]
#1287718 - 02/07/03 05:31 AM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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Very nice post TwIg.
Of course, I DO agree to what you say 100%...
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hongomon
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: TwIg]
#1288137 - 02/07/03 08:02 AM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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Nicely Put, TwIg. I wonder if today's U.S. federal government is just the kind that a largely apathetic population in a democratic nation will produce.
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luvdemshrooms
Two inch dick..but it spins!?
Registered: 11/29/01
Posts: 34,247
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Re: Don't mention Afghanistan [Re: Rono]
#1288427 - 02/07/03 10:09 AM (21 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
(Then again my opinions of Bush are hardly a secret)
You have opinions about Bush?
-------------------- You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers
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