The Afghan people will win - part 3

Mullah Mohammed Omar and the Taliban leadership have always made it a non negotiable prerequisite for peace talks that all foreign troops must leave Afghanistan.

I'm not making a prediction. I'm just saying anything's possible considering recent past performances of the US and its proxies.

I'm not sure what hawks hope to achieve by escalating war in Af-Pak countries. Warfiteering has no rhyme or reason except to shovel money to the military-industrial complex.

There is a bad recession on in the US. US leaders can do what theyre doing now, shovelling money to the rich and hope the rest of the world continues buying US debt. Or they may decide to change the pay per view channel altogether by escalating war. War, in their minds, is good. War is profitable, and war is what they know. The US economy is based on war, and another good war would fit the bill about now. Global confidence in US debt would rise again as the world cops strut their stuff in Central Asia so close to Russia and China's doorsteps. Everyone would ask again, who can make  war with the beast? 

Meanwhile the Taliban are there waiting on pins and hooks for the next surge. It's what they do. This back and forth in Afghanistan and Pakistan could be very lucrative for US corporations as long as there is an enemy to do battle with. After some time passes, and plastic body bag and food services and munitions makers are sufficiently capitalized by US taxpayers, theyll feign surprise at their own defeat and call the whole thing off. Insert helicopter exodus scene on a rooftop in Ho Chi Minh City. The Taliban will be there and ready to take their place in Afghan history - Pakistan's ISI and Saudi royals will continue to have "strategic depth" in Afghanistan - and Pentagon capitalists will have a new reason to beat war drums, and singing and kicking heels up all the way to the semi-nationalised bank. Not the Taliban tho - no singing or dancing allowed for those guys

Frmrsldr wrote:

Mullah Mohammed Omar and the Taliban leadership have always made it a non negotiable prerequisite for peace talks that all foreign troops must leave Afghanistan.

According to an al Jazeera report summarized by RAWA, Taliban mediators participated in secret talks in Dubai, London and Afghanistan at start of this year. 

I think the Taliban have the upper hand in this conflict, but the Taliban also want to regain their former status as official governors in Afghanistan. Like all power-hungry leaders, Taliban elites want their own ticket validating by UN officials and global elite. And apparently our imperialists are willing to negotiate. Can the Taliban be bought? Backchannel talks with "the enemy" have taken place since at least WW II by what I can tell. 

Western officials, Taliban engaged in secret talks  February

It's always good to negotiate when you have a favourable position to deal from.

What's the point of slaughtering and dying while exporting freedom and democracy if you can't buy new puppets when you want? It is the essence of the free market.
There must be the freedom, in the newly fledged democracy, for the puppeteer to vote in a new puppet when he has lost confidence in the old one.

One puppet, One Vote!
One puppet, One Vote!

Quote:

US will appoint Afghan 'prime minister' to bypass Hamid Karza
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 March 2009 20.15 GMT

White House plans new executive role to challenge corrupt government in Kabul

The US and its European allies are ­preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the Guardian has learned....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/22/us-afghan-plan-to-bypass-karzai

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/64621.html

Yep, it's just like Vietnam. 

[url=http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12911][color=red][... US, NATO Wage World's Largest and Longest War[/b][/color][/url]

Quote:

On October 7 it will enter its ninth calendar year and with the projected deployment of at least 30,000 more American and thousands of more fellow NATO nations' troops this year it promises to go on indefinitely.

It is the second longest war, both on the air and ground fronts, in United States' history, with only its protracted involvement in Indochina so far exceeding it in length.

The Afghan war is also the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's first armed conflict outside of Europe and its first ground war in the sixty years of its existence. It has been waged with the participation of armed units from all 26 NATO member states and twelve other European and Caucasus nations linked to NATO through the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, the Partnership for Peace and the Adriatic Charter with the first-ever invocation of the Alliance's Article 5 mutual military assistance provision.  .  .

With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Central Asia was seen by the SCO's founding members and since by its observers as a mechanism for fostering mutually beneficial relations among the nations of Central Asia and Russia, China, Iran, India and even Turkey eventually.

Afghanistan has been hurled into interminable turmoil, with hundreds of thousands of its citizens displaced; almost daily bombing runs, drone missile attacks, middle-of-the-night commando raids, indiscriminate shooting of civilians at checkpoints; mass-scale drought and famine; an explosion of opium cultivation and trafficking; expansion of that destabilization by setting Pakistan aflame with the potential for its fragmentation and dismemberment and heightened tensions with its - fellow nuclear - neighbor India.

This is the current, grave situation seven and a half years after the invasion of Afghanistan.  .  .

The US and NATO have arrogantly spurned offers by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the post-Soviet Collective Security Treaty Organization to assist in bringing a regional - and non-military - resolution of the myriad crises afflicting Afghanistan, its long-suffering people and the region.

NATO is not a nation-building, peacekeeping or humanitarian outfit - it is an aggressive military bloc. When it and its individual member states' military forces leave South and Central Asia then healing, reconstruction and lasting peace can begin

Ill join in (returning) by asking a leading question:

Why is Canada in NATO in the first place if we are currently members of NORAD and the UN peacekeeping???

Also, was the invasion of Afgh. approved by the UN?

BetterRed,

NATO was established in 1949, largely through U.S. initiative (with probably a lot of backing by Winston Churchill). It was formed by Cold War paranoia and experiences from WW 2.

In WW 2 the Allies had Nazi Germany as a common enemy in Europe. U.S., U.K. and Commonwealth and French forces and Co Beligerant Italian partisans, etc., had different weapons and different calibers of ammunition. Until the end of the Cold War(?), the common "enemy" was the U.S.S.R. and its Eastern Bloc allies. NATO was a defensive military alliance that offered uniformity of command and a great degree of standardization of weapons that fired the same calibers of ammo.

"Why is Canada in NATO?"

It was seen as the "proper thing to do". Canada, having fought with the Allies in WW 2, and since NATO was an "old boys club" of Allied nations that fought in WW 2, it was only "proper" to join.

If NATO wasn't a tool of the Pentagon before, it definitely is now.

Why?

The answer is "Rwanda".

In 1994, when the killing started in Rwanda the U.N. dragged its feet. By the time U.N. peacekeeping troops arrived, it was too late.

Why?

The executive branch of the U.N. is the Permanent Member Security Council (U.S., U.K., France, U.S.S.R/Russia and China). The U.N.'s failure in Rwanda was a combination of both apathy and complicity. Instability in Rwanda and bordering DR Congo is beneficial to arms and mining industries.

Still, this did cause U.N. member states come up with the concept of "Responsibility to Protect."

Former Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson came up with the idea of U.N. troops. Their mandate is peacekeeping. U.N. troops' Standard Operating Proceedures (SOPs) are that they can only enter a country if they have been asked by at least one party in that country. They act as referees and 'enablers'. They keep the warring groups separate and assist in the peace negotiations. Their weapons are small arms and their rules of engagement are that they can fire only in self defense; only after they have been fired upon first.

As a result of Rwanda, NATO's mandate has changed: NATO (in theory) can go wherever its leadership determines. As a result of the "Responsibility to Protect", NATO can send its forces to a country without being asked by the 'host' country (unlike the U.N.) This is invasion. NATO chooses sides and defends the 'good guys' and fights the 'bad guys'. This is called 'peacemaking', an oxymoron for 'war'.

The first time we saw this new NATO was the 1999 invasion of Kosovo. Kosovo and that area has a lot of oil. Therefore, it is beneficial to have U.S. and U.K. troops stationed there.

The U.S. pressured other NATO members to join the Afghan war by invoking Article V (I believe) of the NATO Charter: "An attack against one member is to be considered an attack against all."

The rub is what is meant by "attack", military attack or any kind of attack?

NATO's enemies were conventional: Recognized nation states with recognized governments with recognized armed forces that would be deployed en masse on conventional battle fields. I don't think until 2001, NATO leadership would have had a different definition of 'attack' other than military attack.

According to international law, a terrorist 'attack' is a criminal act, not an act of war. According to international law, the attack and invasion of Afghanistan is illegal.

Was the invasion of Afghanistan approved by the U.N.?

Article 52 of the U.N. Charter states: "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security."

NATO cobbled together its ISAF troops, sent them to Afghanistan on December 20 2001 and informed the U.N. of its action as a fait accompli.

A nation(s) has the inherent right to fight a defensive war. There is no inherent right to wage an aggressive (offensive) war in self defense. A self-defensive war can only be fought until the Security Council steps in. According to Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, the Security Council must, of necessity, intervene when there is war, to maintain international peace and security.

Did the U.N. 'approve' the Afghan war?

Through its silence and failure to act, yes, the U.N. tacitly 'approved' (or "mandated", if you like) the Afghan war.

Was it legally and morally appropriate for the U.N. Security Council to have acted this way?

No. The Security Council by tacitly accepting NATO's (an organization subordinate to the U.N.) action, violated its own governing laws - i.e., its own Charter.

war is hell.

The inflamatory presence of Canadian and US troops in the country, killing civilians, gives strength to reactionary forces in the country, namely, the women-hating war lords in Karzai's cabinet as well as the women-hating Taliban.

our aggressive soldiers increase aggressive reaction in Afghanistan.

Women and children suffer.

It's completely sick.

The female politician may still be alive today, if our troops weren't occupying Afghanistan, attacking residents, and instigating conflict.

Without getting attacked from both us and the Taliban, women and truly democratic forces in Afghanistan might have a chance.

Why don't we take our thorn out of their flesh, bring our aggressive troops home, and truly support women of the country?

thanks,

It's because the press still doesn't get it. Yesterday, during the 6:00 pm news, CBC had a story about an Afghan woman who took a course in Afghanistan to become a photo journalist. Shortly after the fall of the Taliban government. She made a photo study of Afghan women in burkas. She's back in Canada now doing a tour of her photo study. One photo has a woman in a white burka with her arms outstretched and doves flying around her. Another photo shows two women in blue burkas at a burka shop. She makes no critical social or political comments concerning women being forced to wear burkas in Afghanistan. To me, it seems she has a pro burka fetish. Rather like a early or mid 19th century photographer who does a fetishistic photo study of all the means of restraints employed by slave owners in the American South without speaking out against or criticizing the practice.

The CBC journalist asked no critical questions or made no statements condemning the practice. The only comment made was that Afghan women were forced to wear burkas by the ousted Taliban government. No mention was made that the current government with its predominance of fundamentalist war lords, forces women to still wear them in many parts of Afghanistan - In fact, it's only really Kabul where women are relatively free to choose whether or not they wear the burka.

I think the CBC and the journalists associated with this story failed miserably when it came to truth and integrity in journalism.

Unionist, here's another site for you: http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/04/12/americaand-8217-s-afghan-war-...

frmrsldr, RAWA has long been used on babble as a source, and indeed the NDP met long ago now with Malalai Joya, when she was with RAWA and not an MP.

It is sickening that we are participating in the murder of women activists in Afghanistan, maybe our government and military, is learning how to oppress women better? Said with bitterness and only slightly tongue in cheek.

Webgear, yes that's the woman i was thinking of, but some media are spinning that death to give force to an even greater NATO aggression, to theoretically 'help' women.    at #71 above i'm trying to say that, as RAWA and others do, we're making it worse, throwing gas on the fire.     Caspian Basin gas, actually.  but i know you know this.

that's another thing the media have been remiss in reporting.  the elephant in the room.

more gas pipelines for more military weapons, to enable more massacres of civilians in fuel and mineral-rich areas around the world, fueling more reactionary responses at the expense of women and children, the cycling of violence into an inflamed planet.

Could you put up a link unionist?

Stockholm, there is a way to break the cycle of violence.

it's been said many times before.  troops home, alternative energy, free up war machine dollars for real human needs, the world over.

this approach will enable voices currently drowned out by chest-thumping to be heard.

We can bring our troops home - but nothing is going to break the cycle of violence in Afghanistan. It will just go on regardless. But since it will go on regardless - why should Canada pay any price in lives or dollars getting involved in an unwinnable war where both protagonists are so equally loathsome.

I want NATO out of Afghanistan - because it will be good for the troops and the finances of countries like canada and the US that are wasting so many lives and money in that god-forsaken country. But i have no illusions that its going to be good for the people of Afghanistan - the war there will go on whether we are there or not - and I don't think the Afghan people will be "winners" if either side wins - because its a certainty that whoever emerges to rule that country will be awful.

What a load of bull shit.

No you did not say she was a puppet, you only applied she was a puppet.

Would you call Safia Ama Jan, Zarghona Kakar, and Malalai Kaker puppets also?

Stockholm, what if, oh distant dream!, the parliament of Afghanistan emerges as 'ruler', a parliament based on actually free elections, not the under-the-gun NATO coercion that wanted northern alliance warlords and rapists to get seats.  which they did. 

if NATO was not there, forcing warlord rule, and instigating taliban reactionaries, maybe the people of the country could actually elect THEIR OWN parliament.

"Stockholm, what if, oh distant dream!, the parliament of Afghanistan emerges as 'ruler', a parliament based on actually free elections"

That would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath since Taliban has made it perfectly clear that they will never hold elections - why shuld they when they reflect the will of God?

You have already stated you know nothing about these women and again you have wave them off as western pupets.

They were/are of the same cloth as Malalai Joya and other members of RAWA.