Taliban Strike Afghan Capital and Provinces

NY Times ^

[nuconvert]

The Taliban staged multiple and sustained attacks across Kabul and eastern Afghanistan on Sunday hitting the heavily secured diplomatic neighborhood of Kabul and the Parliament area as well as Afghan government installations in at least two provinces.

A NATO spokesman confirmed multiple attacks had occurred across Kabul, potentially in as many as seven locations.

[ilgipper]

fight them over there we'll have the fight them here

That has been quite effective against the middle east jihadists. In Afghanistan, it does not in anyway apply to Taliban. Taliban don't care about attacking western countries. Their just a corrupt local governing body. For Al Queda and other global jihadists, we have severely disrupted their organizations and network by fighting them over there. Also, we kept their militants busy fighting on foreign lands so they weren't traveling over sees to attack here.

[Third Person]

Remember, Zimmerman had more leeway to shoot Trayvon Martin than our soldiers have to shoot insurgents.

[AtlasStalled]

Why are we trying to save a crappy country that is little more than a narco state? Is the U.S. getting some cut from the heroin trade about which I don’t know?

[AtlasStalled]

“Is the U.S. getting some cut from the heroin trade about which I don’t know?”

For example, does Afghan drug profits support some off-the-books U.S. operations? Otherwise, I just can’t find any conceivable basis for the U.S. investing so much into a crappy plot of land which probably is a gateway directly to Hell.

I never bought this war on terror anyhow. I mean face it: if the terror threat were that real wouldn’t we make just a little effort to secure the borders? And yet thousands of miles along the Mexico and Canada borders are wide open (and our radar capacity on the Canadian border can’t even pick up low-flying aircraft in long stretches) and I think that suggests pretty convincingly the whole terror threat is a tad overstated.

[tcrlaf]

How do you say “TET” in Arabic?

[LomanBill]

"...who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men [the Taliban], have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time;

 

...

 

 that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. "

 

"I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF GOD ETERNAL HOSTILITY TO EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MIND OF MAN"

--The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom
--Thomas Jefferson, 1786

http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/vaact.html

 

[LomanBill]

>>Why are we there at all?

US Soldiers guarding  pium in Afghanistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChIF6yvTL6k&feature=related

 

" Obama’s First Order: Don’t Hurt the  pium "

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2287687/posts

 

"Afghanistan still world's top  pium supplier, despite 10 years of US-led war

Despite increased eradication efforts in Afghanistan, opium cultivation rose by 7 percent in 2011 as compared to last year, according to a new United Nations report. Production is up 61 percent."
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2011/1011/Afghanistan-still-world-s-top-opium-supplier-despite-10-years-of-US-led-war

 

The Appetite of Tyranny is never far removed from the Tyranny of the Appetite.

Marines ignore  pium — Taliban's cash crop

Marines fear locals would fight back if they destroyed the lucrative plants

updated 4:38 p.m. MT, Tues., May 6, 2008

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24489703/

Google Russell Trust  pium .

Noting to see there. Mooove along.



Tata.

[ohioWfan]

Please pray for every American in Afghanistan....military or civilian.

Thank you.

[huldah1776]

Still in full bloom 1 year later. Got any leftover napalm?

[NormsRevenge]

what did O’bammy shoot this morning?

our nation’s biggest handicap.

[NormsRevenge]

Springtime in Kabull.. more of O’s green ‘shoots’?

[Son House]

That’s the question for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Going on 3 years for the Afghanistan surge;

Published March 13, 2012
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/13/panetta-awaits-withdrawal-plan-for-afghan-surge-forces/

As many as 23,000 troops who were part of the 2009 surge in Afghanistan are supposed to come home this fall, though Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday he was awaiting plans from Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, on the strategy.

[familyop]

"When WW III is over all that’ll be left are the cockroaches and the taliban....not that there’s much difference."

And Mosin Nagant rifles.

[cherokee1]

Boy-—do I miss napalm!

[Morpheus2009]

At one point, it seemed that victory meant once we had killed Osama bin Laden. But then again, we could have argued that bin Laden was essentially crippled on the international scale, so I don’t have a clue anymore.

[Scutter]

My younger son and I recently watched this movie, “Restrepo”. It is a documentary that follows a US Army platoon over a 15 month assignment in the Korengal valley.

My main take-away was that the mission seemed to be without focus, and that the troops were fighting a largely defensive battle and spending a lot of energy trying to build goodwill with the locals. The locals, mostly farmers, who clearly did not care for the Taliban, seemed to just want the fighting to stop, even if it meant the return of the Taliban.

Even allowing for a healthy liberal bias on the part of the film-makers, it paints a very grim picture of the situation there.

I was skeptical about Afghanistan even when Bush was CIC. Afghanistan is not like Iraq. Iraq has in past centuries been a reasonably civilized place, and it has natural resources (oil) that can give it a vibrant economy. Afghanistan is a thankless sh*thole, with only one viable export: opium. So even if you buy into this nation-building business, it is hard to fathom it being successful in Afghanistan. On top of that, the terrain there that makes it impractical to wage the kind of air war we did in Iraq. The enemy just disappears into the mountains and waits for you to leave.

With Odumbo in charge, and what I am sure are libtarded ROE, I am convinced that we need to get out of there ASAP.

[DNA.2012]

“We will bring peace and democracy to Afghanistan which the people there want!”

/ stupid things Republicans used to say

[Morpheus2009]

Good film, and I appreciate the insight. I watched a BBC Film called “The Power of Nightmares” The entire purpose of the film was to explain how the entire threat of terrorism was totally overhyped. There was a blatant bias and the narrow scope of this film by showing it only during the Bush Administration time period, but think about it, if the 9/11 Hijackers didn’t need to use Afghanistan to carry out their attacks, and weren’t shown to be there, then what was the point? Also, the film explained a great deal of issues that were overhyped, such as the “dirty bomb” or the real proportion of the U.S. Population that actually gets fragged by terrorists as opposed to domestic criminal activity. All-in-all pretty informative, but I walked away from the film with the general fact that the actual threat from Afghanistan alone, unless there is some information that someone can really spit out, isn’t really all that much of a threat, or at least gets overhyped on the security measures, anyways.

[Morpheus2009]

“How do you say “TET” in Arabic?”

Ramadan

[Scutter]

I’ll have to see if I can find a copy of that film to watch. It is true that, statistically speaking, terrorism is a much smaller threat to a US citizen’s life than any other number of other things (like, for example, the risk of an auto accident). But you also need to consider the psychological and economic impact of terrorism. When you do that, you have to admit that it’s a pretty big deal. For example, a few incidents could make people afraid of air travel. This could have a devastating impact on our economy.