Posted on 06/19/2013 5:33:57 AM PDT by Innovative
"The Afghan president on Wednesday suspended talks with the United States on a new security deal to protest the way his government was being left out of initial peace negotiations with the Taliban meant to find a way to end the nearly 12-year war.
Karzai's statement followed an announcement Tuesday by the U.S. and the Taliban that they would pursue bilateral talks in Qatar before the Afghan government was brought in."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Obama is negotiating with the terrorists
In case anyone has forgotten, even the UN did not recongnize the Taliban years ago. They are THAT bad.
Iraq has a Shari-Constitution too. Both written or approved by the Bush Administration.
Obama is probably negotiating a cease fire on green on blue attacks, for the appearance of success, after doubling down on “nation building” -remember that Obama calls this “the good war”.
If Karzai is taking anti-depressants as has been speculated then he’s going to need them by the handful when Obama draws down forces.
They should hunt down what’s left of the Taliban leadership like the wolf pack that they are.
I dont think he really cares what anyone thinks or says other than his handlers.
I hear you. But I see no reason to send billions of dollars to this hellhole. We need to leave and then when it gets out of control dispatch drones. Don’t fix it. Just break it periodically when it severely threaten our interests. We cant get rid of radicals but we can make it difficult for them to grow and hurt us.
Negotiating with terrorists? At least nobama has the best SOS for the job. Kerry has experience in that.
Outside of its most northern border, Afghanistan is almost a no-man’s land. It is very landlocked by mountains and deserts, little or no major rivers, and a very poor road system. All of this creates an economic environment which makes traditional commerce almost impossible outside of the largest cities, leading to most of the country being very poor, isolated, tribal regions. Subsistence farming using terraced farms to capture runoff is the norm in most of the country. It is almost impossible for anyone to travel from a small village into a large town. You would need a rugged vehicle, provisions, jerrycans of gasoline, and weapons.
Drones require Pakistani bases and airspace. The ones we're using are easier to shoot down than WWII piston engine fighters. Bound as we are by human rights considerations, we can't kill 'em all. The fear is that leaving the Taliban to rule means another $100b attack like 9/11, against which a few billion a year is peanuts. At the same time, I can see at least one good reason to let the government fall. A second 9/11 attack on NYC might finally get the liberals riled up enough to let our guys take the gloves off.
Just like how Kissinger excluded the South Vietnamese from his secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese. Karzai is going to end up just like Thieu, or worse Diem.
“The fear is that leaving the Taliban to rule means another $100b attack like 9/11, against which a few billion a year is peanuts”
Any country in the world could have contained terrorists capable of hijacking airplanes and plowing them into buildings using box-cutters (at the time). It really was a simple terrorist act to implement. It didn’t require the taliban and afghanistan. Of course having that terrorist-friendly base helped. So we dont rebuild the nation. We just break it when it gets out of control. But more importantly we understand this is a worldwide problem and not fixate on afghanistan.
I do agree there are logistic issues to support drones. But we need that capability in many locations throuhout the world. I just think that is the future not ground troops and nation-building.
These attacks happen often yet the powers that be cannot even give the order to aggressively secure the perimeter of one of the biggest/important FOB in the theater (Bush and Obama).
McVeigh killed a couple of hundred people with a van full of fertilizer. A couple of 18-wheelers could probably kill more people than on 9/11, when parked up against the right structure. The way I see it, the reason they haven't done this kind of attack is because they don't want to deal with the resultant retaliation. But even deterrence fades. Once the Taliban regains its perch, it may fool itself into thinking that we won't return no matter what it does to us.
I know. That’s why all the Iraqis are busy killing each other even as we speak. Each faction wants to be the Muslim top dog. If it had been a secular government, things would be a lot different now.
Very much like Vietnam. We just walked away and turned over our allies to the tender mercies of the enemy.
A very slow and patient process, but an active process nonetheless. Taliban is winning this war anyway. Trillions wasted in resources on desolate regions with hardly anything to show for is embarrassing for a so called Super Power. Taliban sure as hell is not going away, so nothing to show for except a huge, extravagant, bloody transfer of wealth.
They're not. These wars take a while. India has been fighting in Kashmir for 24 years and lost 7000 troops/paramilitary cops killed. As long as there's funding, the Kashmiri insurgents will keep on fighting. The Philippines and Thailand have been fighting Muslim insurgencies off and on for 100 years. These things die with a whimper. I think we should depart Afghanistan but keep funding the government. Staying in Afghanistan means spending $100b a year. Subsidizing the Afghan government is only a few billion, enough to offset the money the Pakistanis are sending to the Taliban. I think of propping up Afghanistan as a cheap way of killing Muslim extremists, pitting our money against money from al Qaeda- and Taliban-sponsoring donors around the world.
Thanks for the information - I agree that we should never go there...
>>>>Afghanistan was closed, even more closed than China. We visited China back in 1981. We visited India too.
Afghanistan was considered backward, extremely primitive and secretive. There were no tours there so folks who did go there went on their own, not an easy thing to do. I don’t even think that they had an airline. Having an airline was considered a mark of advancement for a country.
Even Pakistan had an airline. It was called PIA, Pakistan International Airlines I think....lol,we used to say the OBVIOUS — pain in the ....
What else? Not much to say. When I read or watch T.V. about Afghanistan I still cringe.
It is SUPPOSED to be pronounced Af-ran-in-stan, with the “r” in “ran” like a French “r”—very gutteral. I’ve never heard it pronounced here with anything like that. ..and who cares? :o) I don’t. They can have their third world sewer. They have NOTHING for us. If there HAD been anything, the USSR would not have given it up. We should never go near there.<<<<
In fact Afghanistan wasn’t such a crappy place back when and it was developing pretty rapidly.
It had an airline, ‘Ariana’ if memory serves me well.
Afghanistan actually slided into barbarism in late 1980s, about time the USSR lost interest in propping a secular regime and withdrew troops.
So called Soviet-Afghan War was pretty similar to current events in Syria. Russians weren’t perfect but they certainly were a less evil side.
Right. We can’t ensure every low-life in the world is incapable of striking us. Not an easy issue. While I dont want to see the Taliban get back to their former strength i dont see how we sustain that hell-hole full of barbarians. What you say is true. We leave and they will grow stronger. Big problem.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.