February 16, 2004

• To better Afghanistan we must invade Iraq to seize weapons of mass destruction and take out Saddam Hussein. 9/11 taught us we must never let this happen again. Saddam hates freedom and can strike Britain within 45 minutes.
• We've invaded 2 countries recently - Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan had the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden's minions, who more than seemed to be targeting societies who didn't agree with them and willing to use violence against us/them. Iraq had Saddam Hussein, who was a beast, but apparenty hadn't the ability to target societies outside of his county. So we are going to spend billions dollars to bring democracy (whether it will work with all their tribal traditions or not) to Iraq, and very little to stabilize Afghanistan? Is the latter less of a threat than the former? I read all the Iraqi blogs, which mostly give us props for taking Saddam out, and I hope we do the right thing for Iraq, as difficult as it may be. But why did Afghanistan seemingly disappear from US radar? homunculus's links make it clear that they're in desparate straights. Is our lack of involvement due to their government's disinterest or ours?
• Don't worry. We have good, god fearing people in our government. People who will do the right thing(tm). It's comming, don't worry about it, everything is going to be O.K. .............
• path: Some random thought on the relative positions on the radar: 1/ Various significant figures in and around the administration have "making the Middle East safe for Israel" as their primary agenda. Some, like Richard Perle, have managed to leave the impression with many they consider US domestic and international interests as secondary to those of Israel. 2/ Various people in the present administration were intensely interested in going after Iraq long before the WTC bombing gave them the opportunity to sell it to the public. Afghanistan, for them, was a diversion, a response to a specific event. Iraq has been a key element in their game plan for some time. 3/ Iraq could be relatively easy to put in shape, as these things go. Under Hussein, it was a brutal dictatorship. It was also a secular state with an excellent tertiary education system. Prior to 1991 it had a relatively affluent population. Women's rights were vastly better than most of the region. Most of the things Westerners would consider unpleasant about many regimes in the area - extremist theocracies, brutality toward women, poor education - simply were not problems. Post Gulf war sanctions hit a lot of that, and, unfortunately, the removal of Hussien has set women back with the rise in power of religious factions. But compared to Afghanistan, which has no real tradition of nation-wide government, no real tradition of education, and long-standing abuse of women, trying to build something that looks like, say, Turkey, is a cake walk. 4/ The rewards for success are greater. If the Taliban were to become a threat in Afghanistan again, the US could do what they did this time around: obliterate them from the air (and large chunks of civilian infrastructure and civilians, but that's a price the US administration is prepared to pay). Other than that, what's the value of Afghanistan? Precious little. Iraq has huge oil reserves, and is an cherry ripe for the plucking economically. The privitisation of services, using millitary victory to re-align the Iraqi economy with US interests (right down to preferred mobile phone technologies!), could be a big win for some sectors within US.
• Oh, yeah! I keep forgetting we don't do things out of the goodness of our hearts.
• Huh? You mean ANOTHER U.S. invasion/intervention/bombing didn't end up leaving the country a wonderful rich happy capitalist democratacy? I can't believe we try so hard to help these people out and some disgruntled bastards over there always end up screwing things up! Well, at least Iraq went so perfectly and is all improved already!
• People sometimes do things out of the goodness of their hearts. Institutions, not so much.
• If the Taliban were to become a threat in Afghanistan again, the US could do what they did this time around: obliterate them from the air (and large chunks of civilian infrastructure and civilians, but that's a price the US administration is prepared to pay). Other than that, what's the value of Afghanistan? That is the value of Afghanistan, just ask these guys.
• U.S. Aides Hint Afghan Voting May Be Put Off
• Karzai vows 'elections on time'
• Ouch.
• Afghanistan's first post-Taleban elections have been postponed until September.
• The Other War: Why Bush’s Afghanistan problem won’t go away.
• U.S. is lost in Afghanistan
• Afghanistan unlikely to meet Washington's September elections deadline
• US raid 'kills 20 Afghan Taleban'
• Whatever happened to Mullah Omar? This is the most recent BBC news story on him, and thats months old.
• Warlords, Drugs and Votes
• The Bride Price
• Great comment on MeFi.
• Afghan opium cultivation hits a record
• I wallowed, lonely as the stoney soil, That blankets so much Afghan land, When all at once I saw a band, A host of poppy-pickers at their toil. They bent above the fuzzy stems With knives in hand, and all To make the poppy juices flow, and gum Adhere, that will be sold as opium.
• Afghanistan to reconstitute religious police
• "After 9/11, I told America it couldn't bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age -- it was already there. Since then, the story of my country has been one step up, two steps back."
• Pakistan 'Taleban' in peace deal
• An Afghan Symbol for Change, Then Failure
• Pakistan 'Taleban' in peace deal Yeah well "stopping the Taleban" sounds all well and good, but if you haven't noticed we're a little tied up (urg) currently (oof) in the real terrorist (arg) homeland of Iraq. . . where the 9/11 terrists came from?!?! Dubya! Spine of steel! (ack)
• More on the truce.
• IT'S ALL CLINTON'S FAULT!
• Return of the Taliban
• Five Years Later: Afghanistan Reverts To Breeding Ground For Terror
• Thank your for these links, H. They are important reads, and your efforts do not go unappreciated.
• Werd!
• Sarah Chayes on Life in Afghanistan After the Taliban and Why She Left NPR
• *throws r-dogg a bone*
• But what happened was that our other motivations of the so-called war on terror ended up trumping those goals, so that instead of supporting thoughtful, educated leaders and helping bring them to power and helping develop that capacity for leadership, we basically recruited thugs, who were supposedly helping us in the war on terror and were meanwhile abusing, robbing their own citizens. And so, what you see now is just a terrible disaffection. It’s not an ideological opposition to the United States as a Western country. It’s just exasperation with the government that we ushered into power. Wait wait wait - she's saying that this US Gub'ment, this ShrubCo Huggernaut has somehow failed to institute meaningful change successfully?? Lies!
• Canada troops battle 10-foot Afghan marijuana plants
• Al-Habi's not here, man.
• In the Land of the Taliban
• “Shrapnel from a Taleban mortar blew off one of my testicles soon after the fighting started”
• The Bush War on Afghan Drugs
• That was a great read. Thanks for the link homunculus!
• The Senate Foreign Relations Committee did get schooled on poppies, but with respect to the drug war, they are still on the nod(Realvideo).
• "I" is for "Infidel"
• Taliban, Al-Qaeda Resurge In Afghanistan, CIA Says
• Seems the CIA has finally gotten around to reading the media reports, then.
• Breaking Our Word…
• Nato urged to plan Afghanistan exit strategy as violence soars
• Disembowelled, then torn apart: The price of daring to teach girls
• he was part-disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls . Yet another mission accomplished...
• That Other, “Good” War
• "What’s the most inspiring story of entrepreneurship that you’ve heard in 2006? My answer does not involve two guys in a garage who sell their company to Google for $1.6 billion. No way...my answer is a woman who runs a soccer-ball factory in Kabul, Afghanistan."
• Commanders seek more forces in Afghanistan
• How to solve Afghanistan's drug problem: Legalize It.
• Women come last in Afghanistan
• Afghanistan in Headlines
• In the case of Afghanistan, the question remains: What ever made the top officials of the Bush administration think that they could succeed in conquering and occupying Afghanistan, when so many others from Alexander the Great to the imperial British and the imperial Russians failed so dismally at the same task? Post-9/11 it seems the likely front for an attack. We can do nation-building right? Just outsource it to Halliburton. Congress'll roll over for it.
• Watching Afghanistan fall: Stationed with a battle-scarred U.S. Army troop in the mountain region where Osama bin Laden supposedly hides, with the insurgency on the rise, I witnessed why the other war is going to hell
• "BO-OM! BO-OM! BO-OM! Tat! Tat! Tat! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! " Man, it's just like being there.
• The Other War. And yet I can't help but feel that invading Iraq was perhaps not the wisest move we could have made as a nation.
• The inability to know how many and who was killed has made it hard for U.S. forces to identify whom they are fighting -- Arabs, Afghans or other groups. Perhaps aliens? Heck, just kill 'em all! No need to worry, really. I'm just waiting for the next terrorist attack on US soil. We'll run into Afghanistan and attack just like it was 2001. Then, it'll only be a quick hop-skip-and-a-jump into Iran. Easy as 1-2-3. It's the proven template!
• A "New" Taliban Proving Deadly to NATO Forces
• Afghanistan: The Other War
• That was a good program -- gave an excellent view of how things play out on the ground. Or not, rather.
• Marines Killed Civilians, U.S. Says: Military Reports 10 Afghans Died And 33 Were Hurt
• ABC’s Paul Harvey Compares ‘Women And Children’ Killed In Afghanistan To 9/11 Hijackers
• “Since the invention of the aerial bomb five wars ago, there have been no civilians.” That's some bomb.
• Feminists Yanar Mohammed of Iraq and Dr. Sima Samar of Afghanistan on the Dire Situation for Women Under U.S. Occupation and Rising Fundamentalism
• This is How It’s Done
• Brave woman.
• Interview with Malalai Joya
• Taliban Graduation Ceremony
• War And Other Peoples’ Children
• Taliban Spreading, Pakistani President Is Warned
• Her Sin Was That She Wanted To Learn
• The Iraqization Of Afghanistan
• In Afghanistan as well as Iraq, the military is running out of doctors to patch up wounded troops—and civilians caught in the crossfire. One doctor's frontline diary from Kandahar.
• It's easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan: Simultaneously stressed and bored, U.S. soldiers are turning to the widely available drug for a quick escape.
• How the ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan Went Bad
• With Iraq pullout in full swing, Britain turns its focus to Afghanistan
• Internet is "the new Afghanistan": NY police commissioner
• Afghan Police Are Set Back as Taliban Adapt: Over the past six weeks, the Taliban have driven government forces out of roughly half of a strategic area that American and NATO officials declared a success story last fall
• NATO Staggers in Afghanistan as Some Can't Fight On
• NATO 'losing' fight in Afghanistan
• US Air Strikes in Afghanistan: A “Macabre Kind of Calculus”
• Urgent action is needed to avert humanitarian disaster in Aghanistan where millions face "severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa," the international aid agency Oxfam said.
• Afghanistan 'falling into hands of Taliban'
• The Iraqification of Afghanistan
• Into the Valley of Death: A strategic passage wanted by the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley is among the deadliest pieces of terrain in the world for U.S. forces. One platoon is considered the tip of the American spear. Its men spend their days in a surreal combination of backbreaking labor—building outposts on rocky ridges—and deadly firefights, while they try to avoid the mistakes the Russians made. Sebastian Junger and photographer Tim Hetherington join the platoon’s painfully slow advance, as its soldiers laugh, swear, and run for cover, never knowing which of them won’t make it home.
• Army Social Scientists Calm Afghanistan, Make Enemies at Home
• Inside Gino Strada's Emergency War Victim's Hospital, Kabul Afghanistan
• Robbing Peter to pay Paul
• Afghan Student Sentenced to Death After Downloading Report
• Insurgencies spread in Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Killing ourselves in Afghanistan: In a secret meeting with a Taliban commander, I learned how Bush administration aid to Pakistan helps fund insurgents who kill U.S. troops.
• 40% of Afghan aid returns to donor countries, says report
• Depressing War-On-Terror Fact Of The Day
• Rate of Violence Skyrocketing in Afghanistan
• "What About Afghanistan?"
• Insurgent attack frees hundreds from Kandahar prison
• US forces abandon Wanat outpost in Afghanistan after fierce Taleban attack
• Obama is saying the wrong things about Afghanistan
• Right at the Edge: The Taliban and Al Qaeda have established a haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the Afghan border. This is where the war on terror wil be fought – and possibly lost.
• How We Lost the War We Won: A journey into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan
• Acid attack on Afghan schoolgirls Appalling.
• Jesus, unfucking-believable. Such insanity.
• The Archipelago of Fear: Are fortification and foreign aid making Kabul more dangerous?
• Taliban blow up Christmas turkeys destined for British troops
• Little Blue Pills Among the Ways CIA Wins Friends in Afghanistan
• The Afghan Scam: The Untold Story of Why the U.S. Is Bound to Fail in Afghanistan
• Obama ready to cut Karzai adrift: As support for Afghan leader wanes, rivals go to Washington for meeting with new President
• Obama's Vietnam? Friday's airstrikes are evidence Obama will take the hard line he promised in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But he should remember what happened to another president who inherited a war.
• Military official: ‘Frankly, we don’t have’ an end game in Afghanistan.
• Combat Outpost: As US and the UK forces struggle for a way forward in Afghanistan, John D McHugh's unique film from one of the US military's most dangerous outposts shows just how western forces are losing ground to the Taliban
• Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which "legalises" rape, women's groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.
• Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry
• Landays: I call. You’re stone. One day you’ll look and find I’m gone.