[FilmCriticAwezume]

My thoughts exactly.

So what gives with all this peace is impossible in Afghanistan talk?

[fgfblog]

Canadian RESERVISTS are also doing tour after tour. I suspect our PM wants our troups ready to invade somewhere else - he is a neo-con & a hawk. Uh, the war was started by Jean Chretien, neo-con warmonger. But then you *knew* this.

[BenWired306]

But now do the same list for England from 1066 on...

Where did I claim that United States is the only country with such a history of warfare?

[yatrahnualenu]

i would like to ask those who support NATOs involvement in afghanistan two questions.

1) what do you think that NATO has achieved so far?
2) what you think NATO's continued presence there will achieve? What has it achieved? Substantial improvements in civil society and security in the region. The folks in Afghanistan are much better off without the Mujiheedin. Roads, bridges, infrastructure, etc.

What do I believe their continued presence will achieve? Esablishment of a responsible elected government capable of defending themselves.

From where I sit, you've already busted the place up, you stay to fix it until the job is done. You don't half ass the job and leave. The job is finished when the afghan military and police can control the region.

[rozneesitcn]

Yeah, it's not like this was ancient history.

Mobius, I seriously can't figure out if you're just trolling, or if you really believe your own bullshit on Libya

-Arrian

No, you're all right and I hold my hands up and admit that I was wrong in this case.

I think, IIRC (probably not!), that what I was getting at was that I was the first to say that partition wasn't necessarily a bad thing and that the fighting would grind to a halt between Brega and Ajdabiya, as it has. My reasoning is that the borders of post-colonial countries such as Libya are artificial constructs, hence why neither side is able to effectively advance beyond its areas of support. So perhaps we should be looking at dismantling these vestiges of colonial rule and moving toward a situation where all these different and disparate groups that have been arbitrarily lumped together are given the opportunity of self rule.

This is what I was driving at when I engaged foot into mouth, which I'm not denying that I did.

[BEyng6hj]

Yeah those Afghans are savages who are incapable of having peace!

History would seem to support that position given they only time they aren't fighting each other is when they get together to fight some foreigner. That's been the status quo since ancient Persian times and certainly the norm over the last 500 years. How long does war and chronic instability have to exist before we admit the savages are unable to have peace on their own? Chronic tribal warfare is as a part of Afghan (especially Pashtun) culture as breathing.

[twiffatticy]

They had functioning central governments which effectively controlled all of their home territory so they'd compare very favorably. There is a reason they become some of the most powerful countries in the world and centralization of government power was one of them.

[praboobolbode]

the improvements in infrastructure have been slight and have cost a fortune. the whole enterprise has been marred by corruption, incompetence and poor delivery, while doing little improve the lives of ordinary afghans. So you'd rather give up than press on.

where is the improvement in the security situation. more civilians are dying every year since 2006. Why are they lumping in age deaths?

it would appear that NATO forces are making the situation worse, not better. Seems to me that the same old gang of mijiheeden idiots are still killing people. Probably because they figure that the harder they push, that Obama's not going doo crap all. And they are right.

and who will that be, kharzi the corrupt election fixer and his cronies? a great advert for democracy there! the afghan government are worthless, their writ barely runs beyond kabul and they would collapse in a matter of days if it wasn't for the vast amount of foreign support So you'd rather have the Taliban take over? That's not going to help things, and will make things worse.

If you're going to intervene then the obligation is to fix things up before you leave. You just don't bail after intervention.

Yes, it is expensive, but then that should have beeen decided before going in. I believe I wasn the only realist who said that the US would be there for a long time. As in 50 years.

[Salliter]

The problem in Afghanistan (and for that matter, certain African countries, as well) is that it's too profitable to be a warlord/opium lord or follow a warlord versus all other opportunities.

Let's legalize opium then.

[royarnekara]

The problem in Afghanistan (and for that matter, certain African countries, as well) is that it's too profitable to be a warlord/opium lord or follow a warlord versus all other opportunities. I'm not even sure what peaceful, economic opportunities the land of Afghanistan can even provide. This supposed Afghan proclivity for violence and division is not inherent to any culture but the result of an accident of circumstance. They live in a barren, mountainous wasteland. Most Afghans are peaceful. What culture do you think is responsible for the suicide bombings and the IEDs?

You get one guess.

[Faigokilix]

It's not culture. It's economic circumstance. 5 percent of Canada is arable.

18 in the US. 12 is hardly barren wasteland.

[iouiyyut]

What culture do you think is responsible for the suicide bombings and the IEDs?

Wikipedia tells me:

The term Improvised Explosive Device comes from the British Army in the 1970s, after the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) used bombs made from agricultural fertilizer and semtex smuggled from Libya to make highly effective boobytrap devices or remote-controlled bombs. One of the first examples of coordinated large-scale use of IEDs was the Belarussian Rail War launched by Belarussian guerrillas against the Germans during World War II.[5][6] Both command-detonated and delayed-fuse IEDs were used to derail thousands of German trains during 1943–1944.[7] IEDs were used during the Vietnam War by the Viet Cong against land- and river-borne vehicles as well as personnel.[8] They were commonly constructed using materials from unexploded American ordnance.[9] Thirty-three percent of U.S. casualties in Vietnam and twenty-eight percent of deaths were officially attributed to mines; these figures include losses caused by both IEDs and commercially manufactured mines.[10] So for the IED's, I'm going with the Belarussians but the Irish and Vietnamese developed the practice.

Modern suicide bombing as a political tool can be traced back to the assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1881. Alexander fell victim to a Nihilist plot. While driving on one of the central streets of Saint Petersburg, near the Winter Palace, he was mortally wounded by the explosion of hand-made grenades and died a few hours afterwards. The Tsar was killed by a member of Narodnaya Volya, Ignacy Hryniewiecki, who died while intentionally exploding the bomb during the attack. Ignacy Hryniewiecki, funnily enough, was a Belarussian.


So that's check on both IEDs and suicide bombings. Belarussians are responsible.

[intorkercet]

No, use of labor-saving machinery is profitable here because we have plenty of alternative ways to usefully employ labor. Countries that don't tend to engage in labor intensive agriculture which was practiced for thousands of years so I think it's probably sustainable.

[idertedype]

Isn't that my ENTIRE ****ing point, dickhead?

Oh wait. I guess I didn't say this, did I?

So why are you struggling with the concept of employing most of the labor force in labor-intensive agriculture? Why do you think that is unsustainable? And why is ~0.25 hectares per person insufficient for this?

[Henldyhl]

Hey ****tard, feudalism ended in Europe gradually with the emergence of other industries besides simple, labor-intensive agriculture.

Is that enough for you to put two and two together and understand my ****ing point?