Taliban

[DaveS]

A statement released today by the Taliban says that the shooting of that 14 year old Pakistani girl was fully justified. What kind of coward does it take to shoot a little girl while she sits on the school bus? I guess our job in "afganasand" will never be done!

Dave S

Edited October 16, 2012 by DaveS

[Lumber_Jack]

Absolute atrocity. I hate watching our soldiers go over to the hell hole to die, but seeing these types of stories makes me want to pack my guns and go Taliban hunting. Sickening.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Makes me sick, also. To do something like that is not justified in any situation, regardless of religious

belief or any other order. The people that do these kinds of things are still living way too far in the past.

[RobertNashville]

Extreme fanatics; most especially those claiming "religion" as the basis for their actions, are the most dangerous and illogical and uncivilized among us. I know we can't do it because there are far more innocent people in Muslim countries than there are terrorists like the Taliban but I can't help but wish we could just drop some nukes on them and be done with it.

Of course, even if we did we will never be "done with it"...to paraphrase Golda Meir...Peace will come when the terrorists love their children more than they hate us.

[tnhawk]

Many years of history have shown that we will never change the evil beliefs and actions of these people.

[Garufa]

Many years of history have shown that we will never change the evil beliefs and actions of these people.

Exactly. All we are doing is wasting vast sums of money and American lives.

[Mike.357]

What hawk and Garufa said.

There is no viable reason to be there anymore. We are not going to change much of anything.

[mcurrier]

I guess our job in "afganasand" will never be done!

Dave S

Obama’s War: US Soldiers are Told They are Fighting for the Afghan People, Not for the US

http://www.rightsidenews.com/2012101617215/editorial/rsn-pick-of-the-day/obamas-war-us-soldiers-told-they-are-fighting-for-the-afghan-people-not-for-the-us.html

http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/obamas-war-us-soldiers-are-told-they-are-fighting-for-the-afghan-people-not-for-the-us/question-3246089/

[Guest CCI]

Women are expendable to them! A cow, or camel, has more value than a human female!

[DaveS]

Women are expendable to them! A cow, or camel, has more value than a human female!

I know, and that's very sad...

Dave S

[JayC]

A statement released today by the Taliban says that the shooting of that 14 year old Pakistani girl was fully justified. What kind of coward does it take to shoot a little girl while she sits on the school bus? I guess our job in "afganasand" will never be done!

Dave S

Our "job", and national security concerns were done in Afghanistan 8 or 9 years ago. Since then we've been trying to do nation building, which we suck at...

A good President would have a simple foreign policy, mess with us and we'll place your country back in the stone age, no power, water, or bridges left standing... then you're on your own to fix the mess.

If we had followed that policy, less than 200 troops would have been killed, and it would have saved us almost a trillion dollars of our grandchildren's money.

[Chucktshoes]

Our "job", and national security concerns were done in Afghanistan 8 or 9 years ago. Since then we've been trying to do nation building, which we suck at...

A good President would have a simple foreign policy, mess with us and we'll place your country back in the stone age, no power, water, or bridges left standing... then you're on your own to fix the mess.

If we had followed that policy, less than 200 troops would have been killed, and it would have saved us almost a trillion dollars of our grandchildren's money.

This, this, eleventy bajillion times this.

You screw with us, we lay waste to everything in your country in a manner that makes Sherman's March look like a Sunday afternoon round of golf. Then we go home and you clean up the mess you made.

[Caster]

This, this, eleventy bajillion times this.

You screw with us, we lay waste to everything in your country in a manner that makes Sherman's March look like a Sunday afternoon round of golf. Then we go home and you clean up the mess you made.

Why 200 men? jdam doesn't require boots on the ground. Heck, it doesn't even require boots in the air anymore. We could let a bunch of kids do it on Xbox live.

[RobertNashville]

...You screw with us, we lay waste to everything in your country in a manner that makes Sherman's March look like a Sunday afternoon round of golf. Then we go home and you clean up the mess you made.

A decent country, which I hope we still are, is never going to "lay waste to everything" in a country because it simply isn't rational or moral to kill innocent people (which is what we would be doing under the scenario above. What I'm saying is, as long as terrorists exist we will need to have intelligence operatives on the ground so that when we are attacked, we know WHO to lay waste to.

What we don't need are thousands of our troops billeted in these god-forsaken armpits of the world on a continuing basis to try and save them from themselves.

[Chucktshoes]

A decent country, which I hope we still are, is never going to "lay waste to everything" in a country because it simply isn't rational or moral to kill innocent people (which is what we would be doing under the scenario above.

Hamburg.

Dresden.

Nagasaki.

Hiroshima.

[Caster]

Give them a taste of their own medicine.

We decommission planes all the time. Instead of selling them for scrap, load them up with ordnance, have a HALO jumper pilot it to a target and bail out.

[Garufa]

A decent country, which I hope we still are, is never going to "lay waste to everything" in a country because it simply isn't rational or moral to kill innocent people (which is what we would be doing under the scenario above.

The last time this country won a war (1945) was after killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and laying waste to most of the urban areas of Germany and Japan.

Edited October 17, 2012 by Garufa

[RobertNashville]

Hamburg.

Dresden.

Nagasaki.

Hiroshima.

Your examples are hardly an apples to apples comparison. If memory serves, Hamburg and Dresden were bombed by the Brits; not us and that was after Germany had been bombing London's civilians. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were to stop WWII and end the need to invade the Japanese homeland at the cost of far more lives (civilian and military) than were lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

If we NEED to kill innocents to get at the bad guys then so be it but with the technology we have today, I see no need to do so.

If we think the unnecessary, wholesale murder of innocents just to get a few animals is okay, then pray tell how that makes us any better than the animals who shot the 14 year old Pakistani girl that this thread is about?

Edited October 17, 2012 by RobertNashville

[Chucktshoes]

Our fathers and grandfathers understood the concept of total warfare. We seem to have forgotten that the purpose of war is to make the other side bleed enough that they stop or the people force their government to stop.

If a government is the representation of its people, then the people are responsible for the actions of that government. If the government has gained power by illegitimate means and is acting contrary to the wishes of its people, the people are still responsible if they grant their approval by failing to take action to the contrary.

[RobertNashville]

Our fathers and grandfathers understood the concept of total warfare. We seem to have forgotten that the purpose of war is to make the other side bleed enough that they stop or the people force their government to stop.

If a government is the representation of its people, then the people are responsible for the actions of that government. If the government has gained power by illegitimate means and is acting contrary to the wishes of its people, the people are still responsible if they grant their approval by failing to take action to the contrary.

It's pretty easy, isn't it, to sit at a computer in the richest, freest country in the world and tell people in Pakistan or Syria or Iran what they ought to do and what they are responsible for.

I was fortunate to know both of my grandfathers and my father pretty well; my grandfathers both fought in WWI; my father was a tank driver in the U.S. Third Army under Lt. Gen. George Patton in WWII. All three had killed men in battle...I think all three of them had a pretty good understanding of the purpose of war but, I am sure that neither of the three would have extolled the virtue of the wholesale murder of innocent civilians just to "make them bleed".

If we are willing to unnecessarily murder innocent civilians just to get a few bad guys then we are no better than the animals that shot this 14 year old girl.

Edited October 17, 2012 by RobertNashville

[Tedro2022]

Our fathers and grandfathers understood the concept of total warfare. We seem to have forgotten that the purpose of war is to make the other side bleed enough that they stop or the people force their government to stop.

If a government is the representation of its people, then the people are responsible for the actions of that government. If the government has gained power by illegitimate means and is acting contrary to the wishes of its people, the people are still responsible if they grant their approval by failing to take action to the contrary.

The problem is that we're not making the other side bleed enough. There are still plenty of Taliban fighters out there in the world. I'd venture to guess that we're nowhere near scratching the surface of finding/dealing with them all. It's probably more like standing in a kitchen and trying to stomp on a bunch of roaches while the lights are on and they're scattering everywhere. Larger measures need to be taken to eradicate the problem, which I'm not sure that our government (especially in this day and age) has the courage to do.

The governments in the Middle East are not a representation of their people, they're a representation of the most corrupt and the richest being able take power. Therefore the argument that their people should be held accountable for their governments actions is hardly the case. That would be like saying that you and I are accountable for "Obama-care." Sorry, I didn't vote for the guy and I refuse to take responsibility for his actions. If I cast my vote and the person I vote for gets elected, then I take responsibility for him/her as I helped put them into office to represent my voice. Many of the countries over there don't have that luxury.

While we may not be the best at helping to build governments or countries, we are doing some good work over there (building schools, getting DEPENDABLE running water and electricity up, and training them to fight and defend themselves). The problem is that none of this happens overnight. It takes time and patience, things that we as Americans just aren't that used to.

[Chucktshoes]

Tapatalk jacked up my edit. Will post the corrected text later. Out of time to debate at the moment.

Edited October 17, 2012 by Chucktshoes

[Guest HvyMtl]

Actually, the Taliban may have goofed here. There is rising opinion against them in Pakistan. One can only hope it continues to rise.

Extremism feeds on lack of knowledge. Educate the masses, and the power of those who wish to use those masses wanes.

Call it Obama's war if you want to. I call it a misguided attempt to hit back at the perpitrators of 9/11. O didnt start it, he gets the "pleasure" of ending it.

Going into Afghanistan, after seeing how it chewed up the Soviets, well, that was just plain stupid.

[Dolomite_supafly]

The difference between us and USSR is the USSR was attempting to overtake the entire country. We are just there to get rid of the Taliban, which is a small portion of the populace. There are a lot of the population who want the Taliban gone unfortunately they are not willing to risk their family to do it. The Taliban will, and does, kill family members of anyone who they know help the the US.

The only way to win a fight with them is to remove their option of going to paradise when they die. They are fighting for their God. And when they die fighting for their God, and become a martyr, they go to paradise. The believe that if they are killed fighting the infidels they go to paradise NOW and do not have to wait until they die later. So to them there is an incentive to die and that incentive is going to meet with Allah in paradise now, rather than later. So in order to win they must be made to believe they will NOT go to paradise and be with Allah when they die. Not sure of how we could do that but until we remove paradise as an option they will continue to get people willing to fight us.

Most fighters are just those recruited under the guise they will go to paradise if killed. The intentionally choose individuals who have nothing left to loose then promise them a way to paradise ahead of schedule as well as promises that the Taliban will take care of their family.

They are a very superstitious people and believe a lot of what they are told. I am really, really surprized we haven't used propaganda to instill a fear of not going to paradise if they die killing us. Maybe if they believe they are not going to paradise they will be reluctant to join the Taliban or fight for them.

This is why Israel's policy of hanging anumal blood in buses has reduced the number of suicide bombers. Muslims belive that if their blood is mixed with animal blood at the time of their death they will not go to paradise. Perhaps we need to make a public statement that all ordinance, small and large, is processed with and contains pork blood. The lubricants are pork based, our paints are pork based as well as any metals. That would remove all chance, hopefully in their eyes, of going to paradise when they die from our munitions.

Dolomite

[Caster]

THat gives me a great idea. YOu know those planes that carry water payloads and dump over forest fires?

Filler up with swine blood and razor blades and start making sweeping passes.