"Eleven years in, if your forces are still burning Korans in a deeply religious Muslim country,

[sad sally]

it's way too late and you should go."

The official propaganda war machine wants us to believe that the President's and military's apologies have calmed Afghans disgust, mistrust and outright hatred of America and Americans, despite pictures like this:



Blown Away
How the U.S. Fanned the Flames in Afghanistan
By Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse

Is it all over but the (anti-American) shouting -- and the killing? Are the exits finally coming into view?
-----
Sensitivity, in case you hadn’t noticed at this late date, has not been an American strong suit there. In the headlines in the last year, for instance, were revelations about the 12-soldier “kill team” that “hunted” Afghan civilians “for sport,” murdered them, and posed for demeaning photos with their corpses. There were the four wisecracking U.S. Marines who videotaped themselves urinating on the bodies of dead Afghans -- whether civilians or Taliban guerrillas is unknown -- with commentary (“Have a good day, buddy… Golden -- like a shower”). There was also that sniper unit proudly sporting a Nazi SS banner in another photographed incident and the U.S. combat outpost named “Aryan.” And not to leave out the allies, there were the British soldiers who were filmed “abusing” children.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how Afghans have often experienced the American and NATO occupation of these last years. To take but one example that recently caused outrage, there were the eight shepherd boys, aged six to 18, slaughtered in a NATO air strike in Kapisa Province in northern Afghanistan (with the usual apology and forthcoming “investigation,” as well as claims, denied by Afghans who also investigated, that the boys were armed).
-----
Despite its massive firepower and staggering base structure in Afghanistan, actual power is visibly slipping away from the United States. American officials are already talking about not panicking (which indicates that panic is indeed in the air). And in an election year, with the Obama administration’s options desperately limited and what goals it had fast disappearing, it can only brace itself and hope to limp through until November 2012.

The end game in Afghanistan has, it seems, come into view, and after all these fruitless, bloody years, it couldn’t be sadder. Saddest of all, so much of the blood spilled has been for purposes, if they ever made any sense, that have long since disappeared into the fog of history.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175509/tomgram%3A_engelhardt_and_turse%2C_the_end_in_afghanistan/#more

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. How different is it now from the 1970s and 1980s?

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB57/essay.html

[sad sally]

10. Thank you for the link - history repeating...

In 1984, Congress passed a resolution, introduced by Senator Paul Tsongas (D-Massachusetts) and Congressman Don Ritter (R-Pennsylvania), which called for "effective" U.S. material aid for the rebels "in their fight for freedom from foreign domination." Several legislators, particularly Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas) and Senator Gordon Humphrey (R-New Hampshire), tried to use the Tsongas-Ritter resolution to increase the size and quality of the rebel covert aid program.

[Stinky The Clown]

2. K&R

[msongs]

3. burn Korans bad, sexually abuse preadolescent boys good. Afghanis are truly peculiar people nt

[white_wolf]

4. This wasn't about the Quran.

I'm sorry, I just think we are missing the point when we focus too much on the Quran. The Quran was the final straw, the spark that set the flame, but that fire has been kindled over 11 years of occupation. I've said this in another thread, religion is rarely the cause for these things. Fanaticalism does not arise in a vacuum, but is an (wrong)answer to oppression.

[sad sally]

6. Believe your observation is what this article is pointing out. The sentence I used from it to start

this op seems to be that spark.

Besides being an outrage that the US is an 11 year occupier, we're being told that apologies are all that's needed to calm Afghans from this latest straw. This is a lie, and Americans who don't want to think about this war and what its doing just accept these lies without question.

[white_wolf]

7. Yeah, I know, I was just agreeing with the article.

Sorry, if I wasn't clear. It's a really good article. I wish more people would read it, because it is important. I hate to admit it, but Ron Paul is right about this. Terrorists don't hate America because of the U.S.'s "freedoms" they hate us because we are oppressing their people. Fundamentalist Islam is being used as a rallying cry against oppression. It is the wrong answer to oppression, because it is a force of reaction and stands in the way of progress, but it is still AN answer and that is what the people of Afghanistan are looking for. When they say their friends and family getting killed by drones and then they hear some radical mullah saying that the American forces are the enemies of God and are trying to destroy Islam, well it isn't hard to see why so many young Muslims believe that.

As an aside, even that radical Mullah I mentioned didn't wake up one morning and decide to hate America. He too looked for an answer to oppression and he found in the Quran: "You may fight in the cause of GOD against those who attack you, but do not aggress. GOD does not love the aggressors." 2:190 (For the record I should point out that Arabic is notoriously hard to translate, so some translations say "but do not transgress limits, God dose not love the transgresser", etc.) I'm not defending his actions, but we need to understand that we can't blame this all on Islam or religion and expect to fix this.

[sad sally]

9. Me too...I wish more people would read and understand.

When an Afghan intelligence officer killed the AF lieutenant colonel and the Army major in a secure room in the Interior Ministry office, and an off-duty police officer protesting tells a reporter he will take revenge from the "infidels" for what they did to their holy book - that he would kill them (Americans) whenever he got the chance, the situation has clearly turned against the occupiers.

I read that a group of Afghan parliment members called on the people to take up arms against Americans.

If officials voice these sentiments, one can only imagine what ordinary people must think.

[JCMach1]

5. The ironic tragedy is how many people will die in the bloodbath that will happen after we pull out

burning Korans, or burning bodies...

Seems Afghanistan has made its choice.

[white_wolf]

8. This is all the U.S.'s fault.

The U.S. supported the Mujahideen which became the Taliban. Saint Ronnie thought that it would be a good plan to prop religious fanatics and supply them with weapons to fight the Soviet government and it came back to haunt the U.S. Now, the U.S. is in the same position as the Soviets. " History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

[JCMach1]

11. Not precisely correct

The Mujahideen fell-apart and started fighting each other. The religious madrassas and terrorist training infrastructure in Pakistan began churning out the Taliban which eventually took over (that infrastructure was created in support of the Mujahideen).

But you are right... it's a whole MESS of BLOWBACK.

[Selatius]

15. Yes and no. Many senior Taliban commanders were once Mujahadeen commanders.

The Taliban, as far as the older and higher level commanders go, is essentially run by former commanders of the Mujahadeen who were friendly or at least willing to listen to what the ISI had to say on matters or had interests that may have converged on ISI goals. What united the Mujahadeen back then was the simple presence of the Red Army on their land. As long as that was the case, whatever differing views and goals and interests of the senior commanders was put on the back burner until the main objective was achieved: Bleeding the Red Army.

Once that unifying element was removed, yes, the resistance front fractured, and internecine fighting erupted for control. Some of the commanders would later form the Taliban, with some help from the ISI of course, and the religious schools would turn out a newer generation of much younger fighters to carry on. Other commanders may have taken other sides, such as the Northern Alliance, while still more may have waited on the side lines and switched to the side that seemed most likely to win. This phenomenon was seen when the Northern Alliance was making progress towards the city of Kabul after the US became involved in Afghanistan following 9/11, and the reverse has also likely happened as well, especially in remote areas where the Taliban can maintain a persistent presence and can exert more control.

[leveymg]

16. We appear to have made precisely the same error in Syria - backing Jihadi elements that will turn

their Saudi and western-supplied weapons and terrorist training back on us the second they're tired or frustrated from taking power in another unfortunate targeted Russian client state.

This is in large part how 9/11 happened, and one can only reasonably expect it will happen again for precisely the same reasons. And, so the wheels keep spinning.

[Selatius]

17. Are we supplying rebels in Syria? It's been talked about, but is there hard evidence to this? nt

[leveymg]

19. I believe most of the funds and foreign fighters are coming from KSA and the GCC states, just like

the several holy wars against the Russians and Serbs in the 1990s. As with the Saudi campaigns in Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Chechnya, we played a secondary but willing role allowing the Jihadists to do pretty much what they wanted -- including atrocious large-scale bombings of civilian targets -- with narily a cross word heard from the White House or Foggy Bottom. Langley, meanwhile, allowed many of the most notorious of these terrorists into the US with "CIA visas." Just like the 9/11 UBL cells.

We've apparently learned nothing.

[Fumesucker]

18. "Error" presumes that the result was not a desired one.

I think that may be a trifle naive..

9/11 is the best thing that ever happened to the MICC and the security state.

[leveymg]

20. I'm not naive, just allowing for a benefit of the doubt.

We are talking about people suspected of mass murder and state terrorism against their own country. A high level of proof of intentionality is required to make that charge stick. No question about their guilt of the lesser included charges of 3,000 counts of manslaughter and the war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq that followed.

[xchrom]

12. Du rec. Nt

[EmeraldCityGrl]

13. The war is quickly reaching it's inevitable conclusion.

The potential for the rapid escalation of American fatalities lies in the
decisions Obama makes in the next few weeks. He insisted on owning
this war and unfortunately this being an election year it may be a factor
that will cost him everything, and for what?