WikiLeaks Publishes Afghan War Secrets 966
A number of readers submitted word on the massive WikiLeaks release of Afghanistan war documents. "The data is provided in CSV and SQL formats, sorted by months, and also was rendered into KML mapping data." WikiLeaks provided the documents in advance to the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the UK's Guardian — the latter also has up a video tutorial on how to read the logs. From the Times: "A six-year archive of classified military documents... offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal. The secret documents... are a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year. The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday. The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001."
Re:US abuse (Score:1, Interesting)
And as a non-American who has a great deal of admiration for the foundation of the United States I expect it to be better than the previous countries.
But I'm probably just stupid...
One thing I don't understand... (Score:5, Interesting)
...is how did someone manage to download, store and transfer 90,000 classified documents and not be noticed?
I know there will be a lot of finger-pointing at Wikileaks for publishing the data on their website, but for the information to have been leaked in the first place should raise even more questions.
re Triple GDP (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the CIA World Fact Book: [cia.gov]
So now, expenditure over six years (Jan 2004 - Dec 2009) is $300,000,000,000.00 divided by six is around $50,000,000,000.00 per year
Per capita is $1,716.96 or more than double the GDP per capita of the country!
I would think that the US would get better resultsif the money was simply given to each inhabitant, the $800 they already make plus $1,700 from the US, would triple the GDP per capita, no small feat.
Just smile for the camera and show that you have not handled explosives or fired guns in the last week (paraffin test) and you get your weekly expenditure; you don't show up for a week then you lose the privilege, i.e. you knew you couldn't pàss the test.
Who said "You Can Rent an Afghan But Never Buy One"? It would rent the whole lot of them for a long time!
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
Not recently, and there have been a push to make the world a non-corrupt and peaceful place.
Precious few, if any, governments have these goals at the top of their list or anywhere in their list -- ignore the rhetoric and watch what they do. Corruption is the nature of nearly all governments simply because it's how business is done. You'd be amazed at how much of your priviledge of owning a computer and having electricity is the result of bribes and blatantly unethical behavior. Nor is peace their goal. The only goal is economic stability. Whether that means a non-combatant posture today or a brutal attack on certain citizens the next, the goal is only stability for the economy and outside investment.
There is many countries that haven't had war in many many years now. It was different in the pre-modern times.
Besides, the issue is the hypocrisy and hiding it from the public. US has done over and over again the exact same things that they accuse the current terrorists and countries that support them doing.
I agree the US is guilty of the same atrocities they accuse terrorists of committing, but so are many countries. Your memory may be short, but history is quite long, and just because a few years have gone by without major war reporting doesn't mean they're suddenly pure and will never use weapons again.
So let's not be naive about anything here. Much of the criticism against the US is deserved, but it is not the only deserving country.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
since in those three wars combined only one single attack was ever made on the US.
So the murder of American civilians traveling on noncombatant ships [wikipedia.org] doesn't count as an attack on the US? Attempting to get one of America's neighbors to join an alliance [wikipedia.org] against her doesn't count as a hostile act?
The US had ample provocation to enter WW1. Ditto for WW2. Ditto for Korea. Hell, the peaceniks here should have loved the way Korea went down -- authorized by and conducted under the auspices of the UN in response to aggression against one of it's members.
Re:US abuse (Score:1, Interesting)
I pretty much agree with your point, but would like to point out that no other country is or has been involved in as many large scale, outright wars as we are, at the frequency we are.
We really need a frame of reference for a statement like yours, yes politically it's a nice thing to toss around that Americans are imperialistic or causing the wars of the century, but it really does belittle the real imperialisms of history to make such claims. Lets not forget that the British did an amazing job of controlling the world in the beginning of the last century leading up to WWI and WWII, when they held control/direct influence over 25% of the worlds population, and 13,000,000+ square miles of land. Now that was an imperialism, and they fought for it..... a lot. Also, Cold War era the US and Russia were neck and neck in conflicts and probably matched up pretty even all the way to 2000 if all conflicts are tallied. Now, 2000-2010 the US might be ahead slightly, but don't forget Russians spat with Georgia, or their never ending tensions with Chechnya (Remember the two wars in 10 years they had?), not to mention the fact most conflicts thus far have been "multinational" efforts rather than nation on nation warfare this century for what it's worth.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
The British and Roman empires were waging at least as many as we are, and were just as ruthless.
No, they were far more ruthless than we are. The Romans would have conquered Afghanistan a long time ago -- it's much easier to pacify a population when you are willing to kill anyone capable of offering resistance and sell the survivors into slavery.
We aren't even as ruthless as we were just sixty years ago. Read up on how we conducted ourselves in the Pacific War against Japan. They refused to abide by the laws of war and we responded in kind.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually this behavior can be seen in any aristocracy/republic, when you have a cultural elite that controls most of the wealth/power/resources it will naturally seek to "domesticate" the population by sending off aggressive individuals to fight remote wars. This pacifies your population in the short run and in the long run you limit their chances of passing on aggressive genes since they are less likely to breed offspring while away or dead. In most mammals you can domesticate them within 10 generations, why should humans be any different?
America got played.. (Score:2, Interesting)
The Afghani war was legitimate as an attack on US soil was planned and coordinated from there but the US didn't put enough resources when they could have, instead they turned to Iraq which caused them to lose the Afghan war. It has turned into an untenable situation exactly like Vietnam and the US is scrambling to get out while they still have a fig leaf on and don't repeat the airlift of Hanoi in Kabul.
To those who would object to the use of the word 'lose' with respect to the American army.. it has. A war is won or lost when the enemy has lost the will to fight and America has lost that. To oust the taliban now would take major commitment spanning another decade, and unfortunately Obama doesn't have the stomach for that.
In this he is showing his naivete when it comes to Geoploitics and is wrong when compared to the Republicans, they understand the bigger global picture(although their divisive politics are disgusting). There is a second cold war happening right now, except this one has multiple factions.. US/EU on one side with Islamists and their enablers the 'moderate Arab countries' and their Chinese enablers on the other. This will take another 20 years to resolve properly and by demurring now the US is emboldening the other side just like when Obama announced a pullback date prematurely, a huge strategic error from an inexperienced leader.
He is turning into Kennedy in too many ways.. and this comes from a guy who voted for him enthusiastically.
Re:One wonders... (Score:3, Interesting)
Something tells me you could have sold it to the American voter on September 12th 2001.
Probably, but at that point there was still the prospect of walking into Afghanistan, grabbing bin Laden and getting out; the US government took a few years to realise what a disaster they'd caused by not doing just that. If they'd been willing to lose enough troops to do the job then it could all have been over in a few weeks, but by using Afghan mercenaries to take most of the casualties they pretty much guaranteed that bin Laden would be allowed to get away.
Re:US abuse (Score:1, Interesting)
You realize that every country in the history of humanity has done the exact same things, right?
That doesn't make it the right or smart thing to do. Just because someone else did it doesn't justify it for anyone else.
Oddly that's one of the hallmarks of the right. Anything someone else does justifies their bad behavior.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
What a lot of people don't know is that a Soviet submarine captain actually gave an order to launch a nuclear missile during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but his second in command [wikipedia.org] refused to do so.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually - researchers in 2008 uncovered that there were weapons on the Lusitania: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1098904/Secret-Lusitania-Arms-challenges-Allied-claims-solely-passenger-ship.html [dailymail.co.uk]
Really doesn't say anything to the discussion here or the point your making. But I just read this the other day and thought it was interesting.
Re:One wonders... (Score:1, Interesting)
If the goal was to crush the bug, I can assure you that it would have cost much less then 13 billion to solve the problem if the US were to drop a dozen of nukes on Afghanistan. The problem, however is a total lack of understanding on the part of the US "strategists" of the place they operate. The Afghan society is stuck in circa 11 century mind set. Words like "freedom", "human rights" and "democracy" just do not exist in their lexicon. The US tries to bring "free" elections to people who who never heard of Geneva, much less Geneva Conventions. Their idea of freedom is the freedom to stone unfaithful wives and disgraced sisters, to chop off heads of the infidels. (Of course, there are exceptions - there are unfortunate souls in Afghanistan who were able to get some education under the Soviets and were not able to leave. People who think the the Soviets came to just kill the Afghanis are brainwashed).
That's why all these money go to waste: it's like insisting on going to dentists even though they can not diagnose a problem, when you need a rectal surgery.
Re:US abuse (Score:2, Interesting)
Here you go: Beijing suspects false flag attack on South Korean corvette [onlinejournal.com]
Some snippets:
However, Baengnyeong Island hosts a joint US-South Korea military intelligence base and the US Navy SEALS operate out of the base. In addition, four U.S. Navy ships were in the area, part of the joint U.S-South Korean Exercise Foal Eagle, during the sinking of the Cheonan. An investigation of the suspect torpedo's metallic and chemical fingerprints show it to be of German manufacture. There are suspicions that the US Navy SEALS maintains a sampling of European torpedoes for sake of plausible deniability for false flag attacks. Also, Berlin does not sell torpedoes to North Korea, however, Germany does maintain a close joint submarine and submarine weapons development program with Israel.
The presence of the USNS Salvor, one of the participants in Foal Eagle, so close to Baengnyeong Island during the sinking of the South Korean corvette also raises questions.
Anonymous Coward (Score:2, Interesting)
These csv files and reporting data are identical to US Army reporting database systems. Most likely an MI soldier grabbed this data off a SIPR computer and sent it to Wikileaks. There's really nothing critical to national security in those logs but unit SOPs which change regularly. I'm surprised someone ended up doing this, if whoever did it gets caught, there will be hell to pay.
Oh and hey idiots, these are SIGACTs not proof of clandestine abuses. Read the material before you go spouting your liberal/conspiracy theory bullshit.
Re:US abuse (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100708/full/news.2010.343.html [nature.com]
There's plenty of other information out there, such as the fact that North Korea doesn't have a submarine capable of evading South Korean sonar arrays.
There's also lots in Korean, but that doesn't help you.
Re:re Triple GDP (Score:3, Interesting)
the remainder realizes the fight is not worth it.
Yeah... that's not true. Not in the slightest. You might get lucky and have the enemy become demoralized. What's more likely, when you're in their territory, is that they're going to stop caring if they live, since they know they're going to die, and then adopt more damaging tactics. Instead of getting a guy dropping off a briefcase with a pound of C4, who tries to get out of blast radius, you get a guy driving a truck with a few hundred pounds of C4 driving straight in to a target. And then you get all the other fighters doing similar, in hopes of inflicting as much damage as possible before they die at your hands. So, how do you cope when a single car-bomb can have a block-wide or greater blast area, and it's not terribly difficult to bolt on enough plating to make it possible to aim the vehicle and get it close enough to do damage?
Or an even worse-case scenario is you kill enough people that all of a sudden YOU are the evil one, and the entire country starts working against you, so literally every hand will be willing to slip a knife in your back. In that case, you're pretty much fucked. You can't pretend to be fighting to liberate the country any more, and if you leave, you're leaving a populace with a deep-seated grudge against you, and a working knowledge of your supplies and basic tactics.
No, the best way to fight a war is to not have to fight it. If you can prove that you can improve the life of the majority of the populace, without them having to give up certain things they hold dear (differs depending on country, and even individual population segments), then they're not going to want to fight you, since all they're doing in that case is hurting themselves. A small segment may resist, but if you have the majority of the people on your side, they'll even *help* against those resisters.
You really don't have even a basic understanding of large-scale warfare against a populace that doesn't include the phrase "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," do you?
you take off the head (Score:1, Interesting)
I think I would have hanged the bankers and industrialists who supported him, and also the same guys who supported stalin and the bolsheviks. Basically their progeny today do the same thing, push for wars, bankroll wars. War is *crime*, planned, run and operated by, and profited from, outright criminals masquerading as leading business people, politicians and political military officer corp. In Germany's case, we had plenty of those criminals in black suits in the nations that were not Germany, but gave him aid and comfort and much needed $cratch to get going. Another point would have been to slacken up on the previous war reparations, and not keep Germany in economic thralldom, the people there were in pitiful shape and wanted any out they could find. they were staring at generations of debt they couldn't pay, on top of suffering during the depression like everyone else.
The real bottom line is though, every individual human being has to make a choice, go along with insane leaders and fight their wars for them, take orders from cuckoos, or personally live in peace. No soldiers, then all you have is a few madmen arguing with each other, they can be dismissed like any other rambling drunk on the sidewalk.
I believe in self defense, I am not a pacifist by nature, but after a lot of research and contemplation about this subject, I have determined that almost all wars the last long time now, a couple/few centuries at least, probably longer, are pushed by a pathetic few insane people who somehow are able to convince millions to "follow their orders" like some cult leader..and it's funny how the same clique of money changers and industrialists and professional high level "soldiers" who get cushy jobs after they retire in the war industries, always profit from all these wars and all these cult followers doing what they are told like trained monkeys.
"War is a Racket" by General Smedley Butler, everyone should read this. He did it, fought what he called the banker's wars, for a long time, and finally it really dawned on him what was going on and how much he had been brainwashed and used and abused by the profit system. This same system is all over, been a successful racket for generations now. the only way to stop it is two fold: don't participate yourself, and encourage others to not participate, all the way to do not work in war industries, don't join up, don't own stock in war industries or war pushing banks, all of it. Do the research and you'll find the main motive for war is almost always "profit" of some kind. The war pushers-any side-will come up with all sorts of complete nonsense why their next planned war is so important, but dig just a little bit deeper, you'll find the profit angle hiding in plain sight.
It was the same in WW2. That's what would have beat Hitler, not supporting the profit angle that built him up, along with the "allies" war machines.
Re:US abuse (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe the fact that the Romans and the Mongols never tried to conquer Afghanistan was the result of an intelligent reticence. Even in the Byzantine era (who still called themselves "Romans") when Heraclius more or less replicated Alexander the Great's feat of conquering the Persian Empire, he promptly turned around and went home without touching Afghanistan.
But like an earlier comment mentioned, as ruthless and (in my opinion) needlessly violent as the USA's recent conduct as been, the Romans would not have tolerated an insurgency. I once heard the journalist Seymour Hersch (I probably misspelled his name) allege that in the Project for a New American Century circles such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the Third Punic War is bandied about as lot as an example of what the USA should do (As in, after two huge wars against Carthage, one of them involving Hannibal running riot across Italy for ten years, the Romans had effectively cowed Carthage into little more than a vestige of what it once was. When there were rumblings of possibly a third major conflict, the Romans responded by simply killing everyone they wanted to, selling the few survivors into slavery, and famously sowing their land with salt so that nothing would ever grow there again.)
I'm reminded of a great quote by the grouchy Roman historian Tacitus - "The Romans make a desert and call it 'peace.'"
Re:re Triple GDP (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for the reply, but it has been done before, like the Marshall Plan [wikipedia.org] or McArthur's occupantion [wikipedia.org] of Japan
People with nothing to lose, become suicide bombers, people with children and a way to feed them, do not.
Re:Just stupid... (Score:3, Interesting)
No you're not stupid! We should all aim to improve ourselves and our countries! And, I can't believe all the assholes that say that other countries have been as bad or worse. Who cares, everyone is responsible for their own actions! Otherwise all you're saying is that it's ok to be an asshole because there were and are other assholes! Highly unethical, if you ask me!
Can anyone figure out what the mission is? (Score:3, Interesting)
I know, according to the official story, the original mission was to go to Afghanistan and kick the Taliban out of power and get Osama Bin Laden.
I don't really think that's the mission right now. I haven't heard anything about Osama Bin Laden in quite a while. What exactly are they trying to do? Perhaps these documents can shed some light on that?
The US isn't trying to crush them (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a big difference. The US military is the best of the best at destroying shit. If things need to get blown up, people need to die, etc, they can do it quickly and professionally. Never before has there been a military with such raw power.
What the US military is not good at is conquest, going in and taking a place over. For that you need lots and lots of troops on the ground, and a willingness to be fairly ruthless. None of that guarantees a conquest is successful, of course, history is full of people pushing out oppressors, but it is needed for it to work. That's not what the US army does, never has except for maybe in Japan in WWII.
So what they US army can do, and has done well, is act as an army of liberation. A country has a powerful occupying force, the US can smash that force and liberate the populace. France in WWII is a good example. That is what the US tried to do in Afghanistan and Iraq. Come in, toss out the assholes in power.
The problem is that liberation only works when people want to be liberated, and are willing to work for it. It worked in France because of two reasons:
1) The French people wanted the Germans out, pretty much to a man. There weren't a whole lot of Nazi supporters there, relative to the total population.
2) They were willing to work together. When the Nazis were kicked out, the worked as a country to untie and rebuild. They understood that freedom meant sacrifices.
This is not the case in Afghanistan. It is a very, very tribal mindset over there. For the most part people care about what is good for them and their tribe. There is little sense of national identity, little cohesion. To them, freedom means freedom to take your neighbour's shit and make your tribe richer/stronger. As such liberation is near impossible. They aren't willing to work for it.
So if the objective was to kill every person in the country, I've no doubt the US military could accomplish that goal quickly and efficiently, with little loss on their own part. That's not the goal though.
Re:US abuse (Score:2, Interesting)
No, not at all (Score:5, Interesting)
Handing out money would accomplish nothing. Few reasons:
1) True wealth is not in having money, it in having the ability to produce things. Rich countries are rich not because they have cash, they are rich because they have strong economies. While cash could be used to buy that, it won't be. Direct handouts are never used in that fashion.
2) It would just fall in to the hands of warlords. When you get an anarchy situation where the strong can prey on the weak that is what happens. Happens all the time in Africa with aid. You can hand it out to individuals if you send in guys with guns to make sure that happens, but when they leave it'll get taken.
3) It would just be used to fuel further fighting. Afghanistan is highly tribal. What this means is people don't really have a large scale, national, identity. They identify just with their "tribe" which in this case is basically extended family living together. By and large they see no problem with stealing from, killing, etc other tribes to their own gain.
Unfortunately, there is no real solution to the problems there. You cannot help people that do not want to help themselves. This is true with individuals who have addictions, and it is true with cultures, with nations, as well. Help only works when the group you are trying to help wants it, and is willing to worth with you. The Afghans don't, so help will do nothing.
Re:Pretty pathetic (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you think Julian waves his hand and documents appear?
He gets documents from people inside the war machine, those sources are able to tell him what parts would be detrimental to the people on the field.
Who elected Martin Luther King? Who elected Gandhi? Who elected Mohter Theresa? They do what they think is right to make a better world.
What's your age? Like sixteen / seventeen? Grow up! Now get off my lawn!
Re:No, not at all (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for the reply, I agree with your points entirely.
My beef is: what the hell is the US goverment (I don't think the people are getting anything out of this war) trying to accomplish?
Back in the 80's, it was clearly a way to keep the Soviets out of the regions, but today?
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
my point is, even with the selection against agressive genes that wars provide, aggression, and most importantly, the ultra-violent people [amazon.com], get that way through a gradual learning process of though experiences most people in this forum will never be able to imagine.
Re:15,000 reports held back but will be release la (Score:3, Interesting)
The bottom line here is that we elect people who's job it is to decide what happens, when and how and they appoint others to do the same. If things go bad, then they are ultimately held accountable. Maybe not as fast as you want and maybe not to the degree you want, but that's the system that we have.
Your naivete is charming. These are the people that will NEVER be brought to justice - even now they'll just let someone else take the fall. Instead they will be very, very rich, and live long and prosperous lives, like most proper successful sociopaths do in modern western society.
And no, it's not all the same to me. When you put a fox to guard the hen house, and then claim that it's "proper and right, because he's been democratically elected there by the local fox community", it's not a correct thing to do - it's a travesty and a rape of justice.
Frankly, I could care less what Assange's motivations are, so long as his acts stick to delivering the facts, rather then opinionated crap. The video released some time ago was borderline material for me, because it wasn't ALL of the relevant material. In this case, he clearly learned his lesson and went for what people are asking for - as many relevant facts as possible.
Re:15,000 reports held back but will be release la (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, if you watch the video on guardian, Assange specifically addresses the problem of "safety" that is being lauded here, noting how wikileaks take great care not to endanger people, other then politicians and military making the decisions leading to these occurrences of course. He points out why "this endangers the safety" argument is beating on a dead horse - the data here is so old, that the real meat that could in fact endanger lives of NATO soldiers, namely positional info is long beyond any reasonable secrecy requirements, while names are being redacted.
Anyone parroting the "endangers lives of out troops" is doing nothing but repeating drivel meant to discredit wikileaks at this point. Sensitive negotiations on the other hand usually imply "crimes behind them", which brings us to judicial responsibility - i.e. how many children are you willing to have raped, mutilated and killed in the name of Aghanistan, before it gets to be too many? Perhaps it's time to note that NATO has quite a few sociopaths installed in positions of power, and they need to be replaced rather then be taking part in "sensitive negotioations"?
On the other hand, the people dead because of what NATO is doing in Afghanistan are actually dying, in droves. And as these documents show, NATO sweeps many of them under the rug, and who are the people responsible for that accountable for, and who are people covering them accountable for?
And mind you, he's not American. He's Australian, and he claims to speak for no one least of all Americans. He simply offers facts, and allows everyone to formulate their opinion on their own. This is quite different from most modern mass media, that tends to be opinionated to no end nowadays rather then offer facts and let people think for themselves.
I am one of these troops. If you knew anything about operational security, you'd know that an enemy can use the most mundane information to gain advantages over an opponent. I'm sure that in these documents there are numerous references to things that will potentially endanger troops lives, from procedures, to defensive capabilities, to weapons system operation and employment.
I'm all for a free press.. but this is one step too far. These documents were classified for a reason and they were stolen. Maybe someone can steal your information and post it on the interwebs in the name of "transparency". I think that would be sound journalism..
Re:US abuse (Score:3, Interesting)
Does it really surprise anyone? America was conceived of in the heat of genocide and revolution.
Re:No, not at all (Score:3, Interesting)
The government is, misguidedly, trying to bring freedom and Democracy there. The overall reason is simple: The more of the Middle East that isn't a theocratic shithole, the less problems it causes the rest of the world. If all the countries there used their oil wealth to build prosperous Democracies that took care of their people, well we probably wouldn't have much in the way of terrorists from there. Contented people don't tend to go blowing themselves up.
Nice idea, but as I said, it won't work unfortunately. The US military needs to get the hell out of there.
As far as I can tell, there is no solution in any short term. In the long term, the world will eventually transition off of oil as the primary energy source, one way or another. When that happens, the ME will lose their economy, their power. The countries will then have to either grow up, evolve, and become world citizens, or they'll just devolve in to tribal wars that nobody cares about like in Africa.
Nobody can force progress, unfortunately. Any nation that wishes to progress can and should be offered the world's full support. However it cannot and thus should not be forced.
Short version: The US government has their heart in the right place and wants what's best for stability over all, but they are blind to the realities of the situation. All they are accomplishing is more war.
Re:US abuse (Score:3, Interesting)
Note the PRESENT tense rather then past one used here.
Also note that if you want to go down that road, you'd have to look very hard at the actions done all across former colonies in the name of the profit and ask how would they evolve if West didn't interfere. While that kind of macro-level math would be extremely hard to do, we'd be comparing millions to millions, and it's not all that certain that we'd end in the black.
Criminal (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course I anticipate the open-minded responses criticizing my "dualistic" thinking. All of the open mindedness in the world will not change who the Taliban are or what they stand for (and it is not open mindedness). They hate us because we are free. We are not required to hate them back, but we are required to prevent them from any killing more of us. If that is not a "national security" issue, then I don't know what is.
Eh, partly right (Score:3, Interesting)
You have a valid point HOWEVER it puzzles me why you then forget to mention the OTHER side in this conflict. The Taliban/Al Queda (or dare I say it, Islam) is involved in far MORE wars then the US.
Odd that you leave that bit out. There are two sides to every conflict. Oh and other countries are close seconds, lets not forget that the US is not fighting this war alone.
War mongering is a common business of countries. It is just that Joe Public doesn't notice much of it.
Re:The US isn't trying to crush them (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a very important point, one of Sun Tzu's keys to victory and the most important was what was translated as "the moral law". The moral law was a populations willingness to follow a leader, in WWII most of Europe was willing to follow the Allies or Stalin rather then Hitler. Same with the Pacific, the Filipinos, Indonesians and Thais happily threw off Japanese rule in favour of the Americans at their first opportunity.
It wasn't the US Army who shot Nazi collaborators when they liberated Holland, the Dutch did.
Re:US abuse (Score:4, Interesting)
A puny sword cut, compared to what flamethrowers and napalm can do to you, or those vacuum bombs which literally turn your lungs inside out (but don't always kill right away)? And that's not even to mention chemical weapons.
There are very gory ways to go even on today's battlefield. It's just that they happen more often to the "insurgents", so you don't hear much about them. Then again, the fate of a captured American soldier can be quite disturbing, as well.
How is this not like Vietnam? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Daniel Ellsberg / Pentagon papers == whoever / This stuff
2) Operation Phoenix [wikipedia.org] == "capture / kill" CIA operations in Afghanistan.
3) The corrupt Ngo Diem [wikipedia.org] == The corrupt Hamid Karzai.
4) French war in Vietnam == Russian war in Afghanistan
5) Corrupt, worthless army [wikipedia.org] == The corrupt, worthless Afghanistan army.
6) Support for the war from North Vietnam == Support for the war from Pakistan
7) Death from above via B-52's, AC-47's, Hueys == Death from above from F-16's, Predators, Reapers
8) Massive civilian casualties == Massive civilian casualties
9) Nationalism / Religion fueling the fire == Nationalism / Religion fueling the fire
10) Slow build up over years, with too little to start with == Slow buildup over years, with too little to start with
11) Humiliating defeat for the US, with a small fig leaf == ????
Without lots more soldiers sent in, and perhaps even then, this war is lost. When are we going to recognize it?
Ah Alexander did actually... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ever heard of Hellenistic Bactria. Their kings did not wear Macedonian royal berets on their coin stampings for nothing.
Re:US abuse (Score:4, Interesting)
Strangely enough, I'm pretty sure the US and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons made the world safer overall.
If you define "the world" as "US and Russia", maybe. Because there were no shortage of proxy wars in South America, Africa, and Asia with the communists and capitalists supplying different sides.
Re:special interests (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know. I don't think that Afghanistan is capable of invading and conquering the United States. They pose no great threat to us. Given that, I'd really rather have the $300 billion.
How dare you say a nation with a roughly $10-$15 Billion GDP cannot conquer a nation with roughly a $15 Trillion GDP. Such gall!
On a serious note, we've known for over 30 years that Afghanistan is an untapped nation of massive minerals that can be used for military and commercial applications. The conservative $1 Trillion recently discussed is confirmation to what we always suspected was the main reason the USSR wanted to control it. Same goes for us so it seems.
Re:Can anyone figure out what the mission is? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seeing as no-one has replied to you (yet), I'll take it as my opportunity to tell you my opinion.
Afghanistan is a hard country to rule, due to the geography. Back when the US was aiding the rebels to fight the Soviet Union some of the best work they did was making roads. It allowed a government to form. However the roads didn't go everywhere and there's plenty of pockets of peoples who are officially part of Afghanistan but simply don't want to be ruled, and when you consider that the last government was the Taliban, who can blame them?
So what is the US doing there? They're helping the government gain complete dominance over the populous. Why? That one is beyond me I'm afraid.. I'm Australian and we're in-country too. My honest opinion is that it gives our forces something to do - it's the most effective training for some theoretical future war.
Words like "insurgents" and euphemisms like "bringing stability to the region" are the kind of talk that pisses me off the most. Just talk like a rational human being so that someone who isn't indoctrinated in your culture can understand your motivations and you'll do a lot better at gaining support.. assuming you even understand why you're shooting at people.
Re:US abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
I hesitate to intrude upon this good-natured colloquy, but I must point out that there were no "Frenchmen" (or French women) for about 1000 years after Caesar and his colleagues conquered Gaul. (The very name "France" derives from the Franks, a tribe of barbarians who invaded Gaul hundreds of years after Caesar). The main source for the Roman conquest of Gaul, of course, consists of Caesar's own books. Is it at all possible that he might have slanted them, perhaps touching up a few facts and figures, in order to impress the voters back in Rome? (Point 1: Caesar is one hell of a general, who conquers whole provinces in a matter of months and utterly destroys Rome's enemies; Point 2: You *really* do not want to anger him).
You are probably aware of the wide gap between pagan Roman (and Greek, and for that matter Gaulish) ethics and the Christian ethics with which everyone in the West is more or less permeated. Whereas Christ abjured us to love our enemies, turn the other cheek when struck, and to forgive our brother "unto seventy times seven" times, the ancients believed in returning whatever they received - with interest. A noble Roman, Greek, Gaul, or Goth would take pride in rewarding his friends and servants lavishly, heaping kindness upon his dependents, and showing the most merciless cruelty to his declared enemies. In some ways, the Nazi philosophy (if one can dignify it with that name) harked back to the days of the Romans in regarding forgiveness and mercy as signs of weakness, likely to be abused and exploited by enemies. So it's not surprising that the Romans took such a robust approach to conquering other nations and repressing rebellions. The very word "virtue" originates from the Latin "vir" (a man) and to the Romans meant the manly virtues of truth, courage, and strength. That's why it's foolish and inappropriate to compare the violence of 20th and 21st century wars with those of the pre-Christian period. One shouldn't forget, either, the appalling bloodiness of the high Christian period, from the Dark Ages through to the Enlightenment. No one who casts stones at Islam for its culture of violent intolerance should forget that Christianity, for most of its history, was very similar in that regard. It has just had an extra few hundred years to lose its sharp edges.
Nowadays, in the post-Christian epoch, everyone has been exposed to Christian ethics - even if many of us are avowed agnostics or atheists, the ethical rules that we consider self-evident and universal often derive from Christianity. So we pay abundant lip service to kindness, mercy, charity and forgiveness. Yet the people who reach the top layers of government and the armed forces cannot afford any such scruples: they have to behave very much like ancient Romans, while pretending to subscribe to Christian or humanist ethics. Hence the paradoxes expressed in the t-shirt slogan "Whom would Jesus bomb?" Clinton had it right: "It's the economy, stupid!" Every US president (and all their staff too) is fully aware that his overriding goal must be to make Americans prosperous and keep them that way. That is not done by exporting the huge amounts of wealth that would be necessary to turn a country like Afghanistan into a passable replica of Ohio (or even Egypt); instead, it is done by sucking wealth out of such countries for the enrichment of Americans. But overt looting of foreign nations is frowned upon, most of all by our own ethics. How to square the circle? (Hint: I do know that's impossible) The method adopted has been to pretend that the invasion is for the good of the invaded. The forces of Western civilisation are conquering Afghanistan - as they did Iraq - to bring freedom, security, and the American Way of Life to the benighted heathen (sorry, "impoverished tribesmen").
It won't work. And there is very good reason to believe that no one in the White House or the Pentagon ever believed it could. This is what Maximilien Robespierre, no pacifist himself, had to say on the subject in 1791:
"The most extravagant idea that c
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:US abuse (Score:3, Interesting)
US is also the only country in the world that is constantly in war with other countries, bullies them and has a history of supporting enemies of its enemies
You realize that every country in the history of humanity has done the exact same things, right?
Not Switzerland (my country), which gave up expansion in 1515 and has been neutral for a few centuries. And became one of the richest countries in the world. Any causality ?
Re:US revolutionary war, anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure that old-style infantry was a result of outright incompetence.
Sure, it's better to spread the troops out, and hide them behind rock walls, but only if you trust them to stick their heads out long enough to fire. That's not a problem if you have all volunteers, but colonial armies aren't staffed with volunteers. I guess modern armies have better training, so they can give their troops a bit more independence.
Re:So what *is* there? (Score:3, Interesting)
All you had to do was read a single news story for the point. It's the truth versus the rah-rah bullshit patriotism that passes for news these days.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26warlogs.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
The archive is a vivid reminder that the Afghan conflict until recently was a second-class war, with money, troops and attention lavished on Iraq while soldiers and Marines lamented that the Afghans they were training were not being paid.
The reports — usually spare summaries but sometimes detailed narratives — shed light on some elements of the war that have been largely hidden from the public eye:
The Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft, a fact that has not been publicly disclosed by the military. This type of weapon helped the Afghan mujahedeen defeat the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
Secret commando units like Task Force 373 — a classified group of Army and Navy special operatives — work from a “capture/kill list” of about 70 top insurgent commanders. These missions, which have been stepped up under the Obama administration, claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment.
The military employs more and more drone aircraft to survey the battlefield and strike targets in Afghanistan, although their performance is less impressive than officially portrayed. Some crash or collide, forcing American troops to undertake risky retrieval missions before the Taliban can claim the drone’s weaponry.
The Central Intelligence Agency has expanded paramilitary operations inside Afghanistan. The units launch ambushes, order airstrikes and conduct night raids. From 2001 to 2008, the C.I.A. paid the budget of Afghanistan’s spy agency and ran it as a virtual subsidiary.
So, the Taliban are apparently using advanced weaponry against ineffective drones, and the CIA has once again formed a secret police force that's terrorizing Afghani citizens for the crime of defending themselves against a foreign invader.
you don't want to play by the rules of the game (Score:3, Interesting)
the rules of the game are this: protect your secrets. be constantly paranoid about evolving threats. protect against those threats and anything else you can imagine. once you've locked every door you can possibly conceive of 5 different ways, then look for more doors and make 6 different locks. rinse and repeat
this game is called the game of national security. there is no sympathy if china loses its national secrets. there is no sympathy if russia loses its national secrets. why do you think there should be any sympathy about fairplay and decency if the usa loses its national secrets?
"its not fair"
not fair? is there or has there ever been anything fair in the game of national secrets?
if you don't protect your secrets, and they get out, guess what? you lose. simple as that. no other recourse, no blame game
whining about whoever released the secrets, wherever they were hosted, and whoever reported on them, etc., is completely besides the point and marks you as insufficient in character for the nature of the hardcore game you are commenting on
we are not talking about the civil behavior of government officials or your reputation in high school. arenas where concepts such as fairplay, decency, reciprocity, trust, etc., have valid meaning. we are talking about the game of national secrets. nothing matters except vigilance
that means you take responsibility for the integrity and the maintenance of your secrets, and if they are released, then you, and you alone, have failed, and no one else is to blame, because such a blame game is completely besides the point: you can't put the genie back in the bottle, so the game is completely over at the point of release of secrets
so stop whining. or admit you don't have the stomach for such a hardcore game, and go comment on an easier game
but you have absolutely zero right to complain and no basis to complain, because you clearly do not understand the hardcore nature of the game you are commenting on
Re:US abuse (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh no.. not this thing about Capitalism again.
Capitalism is a categorization of economic systems where the *mean of productions* is owned privately. That's all it is. The related concept of "laissez-faire" translates roughly to minimal government interference in markets (duties, price ceilings, etc). Capitalism does not necessarily equate to more individual freedom, but by definition capitalism tends towards smaller public sectors as less of the economy is handled by the state.
No single economic system solves all problems. Private ownership of the means of production works for many goods and services, but breaks down in others (notably heathcare and utilities) and the reasons for which is clear to anyone with a rudimentary education in economics. Most people don't have a problem with Capitalism per se, but only when it is practised blindingly, when people disregard the obvious non-market-based solutions to economic problems which can not be solved by the market alone.
Now back to your post, I can't speak for everybody, but from the people with who has a opinion on this, the core problem with America is that likes to proselytize its values while actively interfering with other nations contrary to said values. The issues you point out are illustrations of such cases.
Re:US abuse (Score:3, Interesting)
So, we invaded Afghanistan for their opium?
From what I hear, that might well be part of it. Although they have some very nasty beliefs and rules, the Taliban - as religious fundamentalists - are absolutely opposed to drugs. While they were ruling Afghanistan, they came quite close to stamping out opium production completely. Today, it is booming again - which is odd when the Coalition is seemingly so keen to prevent it.
http://www.counterpunch.org/mercile06302010.html [counterpunch.org]
Or did we send someone into the future to find out about the untapped mineral resources that were just discovered?
More like "into the past":
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/14/minerals_in_afghanistan_mais_oui [foreignpolicy.com]
Just because you have a fine knowledge of history does not mean that you understand true intent.
Thanks for the compliment. But how does knowing less about history make one able to "understand true intent"? That sounds dangerously close to telepathy.
Our mission was to destroy Al Qaeda.
To destroy a shadowy organization, not certainly known to exist at all, with unknown membership, size, resources, whereabouts, and intentions. And the way to do this was to invade and subjugate a sovereign nation that had made no overt hostile act, kill or maim very large numbers of its citizens, overthrow its government, and set up a Quisling regime?
http://www.counterpunch.org/rothenberg05262010.html [counterpunch.org]
Unfortunately, the second mission was the neocon ideal of "nation building" that is doomed to failure.
It seems to me that was why it was chosen. A state of war gives the executive enormous power and impunity. But most wars are so short... As Orwell pointed out in 1984, the logical solution is a permanent state of war. How better to guarantee that than to invade a country that has never been permanently conquered, in pursuit of an organization not certainly known to exist, and attempt to change that nation into a standard-issue Western democracy?
"Of all enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germs of every other. War is the parent of armies: from these proceed debt and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare".
- James Madison