Afghanistan, Still Losing the War, Part 11

And cut down in the prime of their lives, sacrificed for Crazy George's sake and the vicious empire. It's such a waste. Too large a sacrifice for those scum of the earth in Warshington and our colonial administrativeship in Ottawa

Fidel wrote:

Too large a sacrifice for those scum of the earth in Warshington and our colonial administrativeship in Ottawa.

 

You mean the colonial administration that the NDP hopes to be an integral part of in the very near future, under the fearless leadership of Iggy Thumbscrews?

That's right. It could be the first babysitting job in Ottawa for the NDP. Former Liberal Mel Hurtig said that party held too many closed door meetings in achieving too little for ordinary Canadians for his liking. The NDP and Bloc both realized that the troops arent coming home before 2011 no matter what they say or do in Ottawa. Might as well make the Liberals a minority in the coalition than put up with herr Harper and his 22 percenters until the next $300 million dollar election.

And as you learned in basic, the fact is that soldiers actually fight, mostly for their friends around them, their squad and their unit, not the cause to which their leaders deem to be just. All training focuses on and manipulates this fact.

This way sacrifice in the service of a bad cause can be propped up by the natural and normal and positive instinct to protect ones own.

But the fact remains that war is not about who is right but who is left.

Realigned wrote:

Anyone who dies in war is a useless death as far as I'm concerned.
These guys quite possibly died for something they whole heartedly
believed in (wether we agree or not) and they died trying to preserve
the life of other human beings.

Not at all. Allied soldiers who bravely fought and died in World War II contributed, in small and large measure, to the defeat of Nazism and Fascism and the liberation of the peoples of Europe and elsewhere from aggression.

Canadian deaths in Afghanistan, on the other hand, are a shameful and total waste. It is difficult for bereaved parents to face the truth, that "my child fought and died in vain", or "my child was sent to another land, filled with lies by the commanders, maimed and murdered based on those lies, then died in a criminal cause". But it's the truth, all the same.

The irony of this particular incident is even more powerful. For years, Canadian and U.S. and NATO soldiers (but mostly the Canadians, who are so happy to be sent to the front lines of Kandahar), have been driving by IEDs or stepping on land mines and blowing themselves to bits.

I find it very telling that these invading armies, armed with the most powerful technologies known to humanity, capable of detecting conversations using satellites - can't seem to detect or evade home-made booby traps. And they've had lots of practice!

It's a sure indication that the Afghan people, for the nth time, will triumph and throw these invaders out. Hopefully the invaders will remember the lesson for a few years (as the current crop of idiots did not) before they try again...

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Join M. Spector's tagline [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha]Satyagraha[/url]!

While awaiting their inevitable total humiliation and defeat at the hands of Afghan fighters, members of the Canadian forces, their friends and families, might wish to lobby the Harper government to spend some money protecting them against IEDs.

Every little bit helps - including cancelling 18 Senate appointments - if it can save lives.

Help is available if one wishes to allocate resources to save young lives (and I know, that's a big "if" in the case of Commander-In-Chief Michaelle Jean), but just in case, [u][b][url=http://www.mde.es/dgam/SYMPOSIUM/file/exhibitors.htm]here is a list of exhibitors[/url][/b][/u] from the 2004 Improvised Explosive Devices Symposium in Madrid. I'm sure they'd be happy to sell us some protection.

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Join M. Spector's tagline [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha]Satyagraha[/url]!

We haven't had many examples that have compelled us to dwell upon the right or wrong of our involvement in conflicts of the past, or at least ones that the majority of the population didn't support.  We're sort of new at it, engaging in conflict that is, where the public questions the underlying premise of the cause, and the price that is being paid for it.  The institutions that we normally turn to for information when national level questions arise seem woefully unprepared or unable to provide the answers through critical analysis.  The media, for example, haven't been able to move much beyond the patriotic cheerleading mode that normally is found at the early stages of conflict.  As the war has progressed, they have relied heavily on covering the sacrifices and it's impact on the home front to such a degree as to render journalistic detachment unrecognizable from the emotional aspects of the losses.  The leading faces within our news establishments report on these events with the solemnness and sympathy of a beravement councellor, becoming personally attached to the grief, which makes it impossible to turn the story toward debating the rationale for the losses.  Against the backdrop of an unjust war, professional skeptics seem incapable of figuring out what their role is supposed to be.  It is not the responsibility of soldiers to fill this void.  Indeed, training programs conducted at the basic and battleschool levels do not indoctrinate soldiers to consider the merits of skepticism.  In the absence of vocal dissent within the ranks, which is not at all likely in that environment, the attrition, retention and recruiting rates could be seen as one of the indicators of how soldiers see the cause they are being asked to support.  I would argue that the rates of mental illness found within those returning from the conflict might also be an indicator.

Military Recruiting and Retention

Mental Health Survey Results

There isn't much thought given nowadays in remembrance of the heroes that defended us from the Fenian invasions either.

[u][b][url=http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/12/14/afghan-officers.html?ref=rss]Bomb kills 3 Afghan policemen in Kandahar, wounds 11[/url][/b][/u]

Quote:

A bomb hidden in a wooden cart exploded in Afghanistan's largest
southern city Sunday, killing three police officers and wounding 11
other people, a government official said.

The attack targeted a police vehicle in the city of Kandahar, said Zalmai Ayubi, a spokesman for the governor.

He said five police officers were among the 11 wounded. ...

The latest explosion happened 14 kilometres from where three
Canadian soldiers were killed Saturday when the armoured vehicle they
were travelling in struck a roadside bomb.

On Friday morning, three British Marines died in an explosion in Afghanistan's Helmand province.

I know it's been 7 years, but any day now I expect cheering crowds of garland-bearing Afghans to hail Canada for freeing them from themselves.

Fidel wrote:

Arent our guys getting new helicopters to taxi them through the air and over all those roadside IED's? I'm thinking it could be a matter of time before the Taliban get their hands on some old stinger missiles or even bring down a few of them with rpg's as was the case in Iraq apparently. Taliban might have to put in an order for stingers with some of Karzai's people who've been selling them weapons all along according to Malalai Joya.

Which helicopters are those?

There is no way helicopters can replace supply convoys. We just have too many of them to do and too much supplies to move around.

It would be a dream if we could just fly the stuff. One of the ways out int guys do their things is to record the local reactions in areas. Are they happy are they pissed off. DO they wave to us or do they throw rocks. Do they make hand signs and gestures, if so what?

You've heard the local ANA is selling weapons to the Taliban?

Wouldnt it be ironic, our helicopers getting shotdown by our own missles.

The Taliban don't usually show up with enough force to engage helicopters. Most transport or medical ones have gunship escorts.

Frustrated Mess wrote:

I'm sure you have a flippant retort in your belt.

The point was that with any luck, they'll all eventually pass into obscurity and not continue to be the means through which terms such as sacrifice, honour, and duty are trotted out for remembrance, to compell the current generation to carry that stupid torch.

Realigned wrote:

Which helicopters are those?

There is no way helicopters can replace supply convoys. We just have too many of them to do and too much supplies to move around.

Canada to send Griffon attack helicopters to Afghanistan

And what about the millions spent on aerial drones?

Quote:

The Taliban don't usually show up with enough force to engage helicopters. Most transport or medical ones have gunship escorts.

Their predecessors, the mujahideen, were using stinger missiles to bring down Soviet helicopters and cargo planes in the 1980's. Rumors suggest that the Pakistani ISI(our allies), received requests from today's insurgents for new battery packs to re-activate unused stingers floating around Afghanistan and surrounding countries since the 1980's. The Bushies warned Iran a couple of years ago against supplying Iraqi insurgents with heat-seeking shoulder rockets, but apparently they've been somewhat successful with bringing down U.S. helicopters in Iraq with rpgs.  

Griffon ATTACK helicopter eh? Sure :)  Calling it an atack helicopter doesn't make it that.  Not a fan of the Griffon, guess we'll see how well it works but I don' have my hopes up.

Quote:

I suggest you try and find a copy of "Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character " by Jonathan Shay

You're the second person to recomend this book. It's definatly going on my list of next books to pick up from Chapters or Amazon.

Quote:

Now, I have a simple question, amid the many good things, and positive
intentions that you and your comrades experience, can you honestly tell
me that you have seen nothing at all that is a betrayal of your concept
of "what is right", in the name of the mission?

Good question and well worded.

No I can't.

[u][b][url=http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/12/18/kandahar-gov.html?ref=rss]Long-... Canadian resident is the new "governor" of Kandahar!![/url][/b][/u]

It must be getting tougher to find home-grown puppets,  hence this new character - an "agricultural expert" at UBC who has lived in Coquitlam for 13 years!

I'm quite confident his BC agricultural expertise has nothing to do with growing controlled substances.

Quote:

"I have … plans from the grassroots level. We will work with the small
farmers, we will work with the large farmers and hopefully we will
increase the production the way people are expecting," he said.

"Grassroots", no less.

[u][b][url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7793098.stm]Three Danish troops and one Dutch killed in separate incidents[/url][/b][/u]

By my count, that increases Denmark's total fatalities in Afghanistan since 2002 by 11%, and the Netherlands' since 2006 by 6%. Perhaps such events will help convince them to go home and stay home.

Meanwhile, U.S. shows [u][b][url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7792899.stm]great self-restraint and sensitivity toward Afghan people's self-determination[/url][/b][/u] in plans to beef up its troop deployment by only 65% under Mr. Obama's reign:

Quote:

Mr Gates said that the US "should think long and hard" before sending
significantly more than the 20,000 additional troops requested by Gen
McKiernan [b][i]so they do not become [sic] to be seen as an occupying force[/i][/b].

I can't believe those kids, undermining the mission on the home front. Don't they want mommy and daddy to finish reconstructing Afghanistan?

[u][b][url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7792899.stm]This morning:[/url][/b][/u]

Quote:

Mr Gates said that the US "[b][i]should think long and hard[/i][/b]" before sending significantly more than the [b]20,000 additional troops[/b] requested by Gen McKiernan so they do not become [sic] to be seen as an occupying force.

[u][b][url=http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/12/20/us-afghan.html?ref=rss]This evening:[/url][/b][/u]

Quote:

The U.S. military could double its presence in Afghanistan in 2009 with the deployment of [b]up to 30,000 extra troops[/b] by next summer at the latest, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said Saturday.

The U.S. thought long and hard over the course of the day, and decided that WTF, we're already an occupation force, what were we thinking!?

[quote)Now, the Taliban are willing to accept a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign forces and suggested the introduction of Muslim peacekeeping forces to ensure a smooth transition, until the Afghans can reach a consensus government. [/quote]Definitely worth considering.

[u][b][url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7798993.stm]Bodies are being stolen from mass graves believed to contain more than 2000 Taliban killed after the U.S. invasion[/url][/b][/u]

Quote:

Nader Nadery, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission, confirmed that unknown armed men were digging the graves and stealing bodies.

Mr Nadery said it was an attempt to destroy the "physical evidence of war crimes".

Meanwhile, Nato spokesman Captain Mark Windsor told the BBC that the force had not yet received any such request [to protect the graves].

According to reports, hundreds of Taleban prisoners died in northern Afghanistan in November 2001 after surrendering to US-backed forces.

Human rights groups said the prisoners were being held by forces loyal to the ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, of the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance.

Reports said the prisoners had died of suffocation in overcrowded container trucks as they were taken from their former stronghold of Kunduz to a prison in Sheberghan town, west of Mazar-e Sharif.

Fidel wrote:

Semour Hersh described in The Getaway(New Yorker), that a similar war crime was later averted when General Mussharraf ordered a secret airlift rescue of hundreds of Taliban and al Qa'eda commanders ...

You mean this:

Quote:

In interviews, however, American intelligence officials and
high-ranking military officers said that Pakistanis were indeed flown
to safety, in a series of nighttime airlifts that were approved by the
Bush Administration. The Americans also said that what was supposed to
be a limited evacuation apparently slipped out of control, and, as an
unintended consequence, an unknown number of Taliban and Al Qaeda
fighters managed to join in the exodus.

That's very, very different from your summary, Fidel.

You apparently have some interest in proving that the Taliban are just agents of Pakistan, armed by them, representing foreign interests.

You can't appear to bring yourself to believe that the Afghan people, relying on their own efforts, will destroy the U.S., Canada, and their cohorts - just as they humiliated and destroyed your Soviet friends in the past. Your view that they needed foreign help then, and now, is somewhat condescending, isn't it? And it conforms quite perfectly with U.S. imperialist propaganda about "foreign fighters". They used it in Viet Nam, they use it in the Middle East ("Iranian proxies"), and they use it in Iraq and Afghanistan (what they call "Al Qaeda").

Invaders lose. Always. It's just a matter of time.

They had to deny it. That's called covering up the fact that they snatched their own Islamic Gladios from the jaws of defeat. And it's exactly what I and many others are saying. The Bushies were backtracking. It was an accidental-deliberate fuckup on purpose... again! The Taliban and their mujahiden predecessors are a creation of CIA, Saudi, and British colonial foreign policies in Central Asia. Blowback is pure baloney. 

They cutoff half billion dollar a year CIA funding to Massood in '92 after he declared war on their religious robots, the Taliban. 

THIS IS A PHO-NY WAR ON TER-ROR.

Unionist wrote:

Fidel wrote:

Semour Hersh described in The Getaway(New Yorker), that a similar war crime was later averted when General Mussharraf ordered a secret airlift rescue of hundreds of Taliban and al Qa'eda commanders ...

You mean this:

Quote:

In interviews, however, American intelligence officials and high-ranking military officers said that Pakistanis were indeed flown to safety, in a series of nighttime airlifts that were approved by the Bush Administration. The Americans also said that what was supposed to be a limited evacuation apparently slipped out of control, and, as an unintended consequence, an unknown number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters managed to join in the exodus.

That's very, very different from your summary, Fidel.

You apparently have some interest in proving that the Taliban are just agents of Pakistan, armed by them, representing foreign interests.

You can't appear to bring yourself to believe that the Afghan people, relying on their own efforts,

Yes, the Taliban are evolving for sure. Many of the new recruits will be ordinary peasant Afghans ticked off at NATO and the U.S., and who know not their Pakistani and Saudi, perhaps CIA, perhaps Jordanian?, perhaps other surounding stani nation's mujahideen and former proxy jihadis aiding and abetting them. Perhaps as an article Jerry West pointed us to months ago, maybe even Russian, perhaps Iranian support for the Taliban. But I have a hunch, a worthless one I admit, that its not likely. I think the CIA, and both old line party cosmetic governments in the U.S., never actually broke ties with Islamic Gladios in 1992 as they have claimed. Blowback is a lie, a big bag of baloney concocted for the average person's sake, and there are a lot of those who couldnt be bothered trying to understand this sordid bit of CIA-U.S. Dept of Agriculture history.

Not just Pakistan's "strategic depth" in Afghanistan, but the CIA's and U.S. military's and western energy company interests in Central Asia as well. The CIA, SAS and Saudis are not Johnny come relative latelys to Central Asia by any means. You're still under the illusion that Taliban, and perhaps even "al Qe'eda", are the equivalent of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas or Vietnamese NVA and VC. I think it might be more accurate to compare Taliban leaders and their Saudi and Pakistani masters to the contra mercenaries or even the khmer rouge with the way they used Pakistan as a staging country for launching attacks on the Soviets and now against the North Atlantic Treaty Org and providing a secondary phony alibi for the US military to be there. The primary phony alibi for the American inquisition is that Afghanistan and Pakistan, two poverty-stricken countries and client states of the U.S., are harboring 9-11 terrorists. It's not too much different than the phony pretext for perpetrating shock and awe over Baghdad as a followup to U.S.-led medieval siege of that oil-rich desert nation lasting ten years.

But this war is a phony war. Like Vietnam and Cambodia and Nicaragua, the idea is not to spend on nation building but to maintain chaos and disorder and establish a military base in Central Asia, one of several hundred cold war era US military bases around the world and counting.

Here's a hint: Who is Baitullah Mehsud, and why have the Americanos ignored him almost as much as they've ignored OBL? Who is Jalaluddin Haqqani? Whose interests does he represent, and what's he up to today?

And what do you make of Malalai Joya's accusation that Northern Alliance commanders in Karzai's government have all been supplying the Taliban with weapons and ammo on the sly?

The problem with believing the CIA's blowback story is that they argue from a position of low integrity and low credibility. I dont even think you believe it, unionist

[u][b][url=http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/12/26/solider-dead.html]1 Canadian soldier killed, 3 injured, by roadside bomb[/url][/b][/u]

That makes seven (7) killed by roadside bombs this month alone.

Two conclusions:

1. It's clear now, as suspected by babblers, that troops were kept close to base during the election campaign and its immediate aftermath, to make Harper look good and keep Afghanistan off the political radar. Now it's back to killing cannon fodder as usual.

2. The Canadians, after 7 years in the country and half that time in Kandahar, have no clue and no connection with the locals. They know how to dial-an-air-strike, but they can't monitor the planting of IEDs nor detect them once they're there. It obviously isn't a DND spending priority.

[u][b][url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7800549.stm]CIA handing out Viagra to Afghan warlords[/url][/b][/u]

Quote:

America's CIA has found a novel way to gain information from fickle Afghan warlords - supplying sex-enhancing drug Viagra, a US media report says. ...

"Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people," the Post quoted one agent as saying.

"Whether it's building a school or handing out Viagra." ...

The pills could put chieftains "back in an authoritative position", another official said.

The paper said the CIA had a long line of inducements for the notoriously fickle warlords, including dental work, visas, toys and medicine.

It quoted one private security official as saying that simply handing over large sums of money would raise suspicions about newfound wealth.

I've heard about winning hearts and minds, but...