What in God's Green Goodness Are We Up To In Afghanistan?

also they won't be able to say that Obama's made less of an effort there than Bush, because that simply isn't possible

so Karzai promised "change" in his re-inaugural address; sounds hauntingly familiar.

and hooray for David Obey:

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=9126805

so how do we get rid of this warmongering fuck in 3 years?

self-therapy:

http://pol.moveon.org/afghan_timeline/?id=18131-1293854-VAebEWx&t=4

http://rethinkafghanistan.com/?utm_source=credopetition

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12/what-congress-should-ask-mcchrystal/

(in addition to What in God's Green Goodness ...)

so how do we get rid of this warmongering fuck in 3 years?

Palin/Beck '12!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU0DxJVWhGw

http://i49.tinypic.com/2nb7vv8.jpg

hisssssssssssssssssssssss!!

huh

I dunno how much to trust polling in such a country but still

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8464763.stm

Militants attack Afghan capital Kabul

is there a better afghanistan thread? anyway greenwald has been really enlightening lately imo - http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/05/afghanistan/index.html

damn cold

that is the all-purpose reaction to any greenwald piece

my brother's being shipped out there next month :-/

dude. i am sorry to hear that.

How to End the War in Afghanistan
By David Miliband
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23870

New information not good:

U.S. Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women

KABUL, Afghanistan — After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid.
...
Three women also died that night at the same home: One was a pregnant mother of 10 and another was a pregnant mother of six. NATO military officials had suggested that the women were actually stabbed to death — or had died by some other means — hours before the raid, an explanation that implied that family members or others at the home might have killed them.

Survivors of the raid called that explanation a cover-up and insisted that American forces killed the women. Relatives and family friends said the bloody raid followed a party in honor of the birth of a grandson of the owner of the house.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05afghan.html

There's also that crazy video that leaked today (via gov't enemy Wikileaks) about US forces gunning down civilians in Iraq, including some Reuters journalists...

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshowpics/5766554.cms

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/world/asia/07convoys.html?ref=global-home

For months, reports have abounded here that the Afghan mercenaries who escort American and other NATO convoys through the badlands have been bribing Taliban insurgents to let them pass.

Then came a series of events last month that suggested all-out collusion with the insurgents.

...

“We’re funding both sides of the war,” a NATO official in Kabul said. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was incomplete, said he believed millions of dollars were making their way to the Taliban.

Dammit, when we buy people, we expect them to stay bought!

that was just posted a few minutes ago i think, there was a related terrifying story i read in print this morning, lemme find it

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/world/asia/06warlords.html?ref=todayspaper

by golly we're gonna fix that place just you wait and see

i feel like there should be a different thread to put this in, but as this story unravels it's becoming one of the more heartbreaking things i've read this year. these people are honest to god heroes in every sense of the word

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/world/asia/10aidworkers.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

(has this been brought up elsewhere?)

Information is delivered as PowerPoint slides in e-mail at the flow rate of a fire hose. Standard operating procedure is to send everything that you have. Volume is considered the equivalent of quality.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/27/afghan_powerpoint_rangers/

Nine Afghan Boys Collecting Firewood Killed by NATO Helicopters

gruesome, horrifying, heartbreaking story. hearts and minds, we're winnin' em

I'M
SO
SORRY

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-07/u-s-defense-chief-gates-meets-afghans-amid-protests-over-civilian-deaths.html

analysis of taliban chant music

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a934337516&fulltext=713240928

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football [soccer], and cricket. Take the Rocket-Propelled Grenade launcher [RPG] on your shoulders. Oh youth, quit volleyball, football [soccer], and cricket. Take the Rocket-Propelled Grenade launcher [RPG] on your shoulders. Play with human heads instead of playing with balls. Play with human heads instead of playing with balls.

* Quit kids' games; take the RPG on your shoulders. Quit kids' games; take the rocket on your shoulders.

* Oh youth, quit playing volleyball, football, and cricket. Take the RPG on your shoulders. Take the RPG on your shoulders.

* You look good with the weapon and Moswak [herbal toothbrush] but not chewing gum and chocolate. Oh youth, Take the RPG on your shoulders.

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football, and cricket. Take the RPG on your shoulders.

* Purchase every worthless human for free (Kill the enemies.) Purchase every worthless human for free (Kill the enemies.) Take the RPG for on your shoulders.

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football, and cricket. Take the RPG on your shoulders. You will soon defeat the enemies. You will soon defeat the enemies. You only need to put some more efforts defeating them. Take the RPG on your shoulders.

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football, and cricket. Take the RPG on your shoulders.

* Behead by using the sword those people who open the country gate to the strangers. Behead by using the sword, those people who open the gate to strangers.

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football, and cricket. Take the RPG on your shoulders. Walk beside Ayubi [poet]. Don't be even late for a minute! Take the RPG on your shoulders. Don't be even late for a minute! Take the RPG on your shoulders.

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football (soccer), and cricket. Oh youth, take the RPG on your shoulders. Oh youth, take the RPG on your shoulders.

* The enemies have come in the shape of friends. They look like human beings but they are wild animals. The act of disuniting people stays in their blood and their messages are look like flowers but they are full of poison. They have come under the banner of the friends but they are murderers.

* The enemies have come in the shape of friends. They look like human beings but they are wild animals. I have always made the destiny of this country. I have brought happiness and beauty to my country. They have come under the name of sympathy but they are muggers. They have come under the name of sympathy but they are muggers.

* The enemies have come in a shape of friend. They look like human beings but they are wild animals. They are Jewish but half of them are idolaters. They are fire worshippers who came from East and West.

Thanks!

so this oughta be wrapped up pretty soon eh

Ask the Taliban

* Oh youth, quit volleyball, football, and cricket. Take the RPG on your shoulders. You will soon defeat the enemies. You will soon defeat the enemies. You only need to put some more efforts defeating them. Take the RPG on your shoulders.

tangential, but the words without borders afghan literature issue is out this month - link offers an overview. words without borders is pretty rad imo

Afghan authorities said on Sunday NATO had killed 52 people, mostly civilians, in air strikes against fighters, as violence picked up in recent weeks with the start of the fighting season.

Separately, the governor of Nuristan on Sunday said that 18 civilians and 20 police were killed by "friendly fire" during recent US-led air strikes against al-Qaeda-linked fighters in his troubled northeastern province.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/05/2011529102045125188.html

"the start of the fighting season"

Yeah, really!

It is kind of mind-boggling to realize there are 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. That's like a decent-sized American city.

Greenwald on those damn ingrates:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/05/31/afghanistan/index.html

Actually, the quote is "If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied."

http://counterpunch.org/mcgovern08082011.html

http://october2011.org/welcome

It's a big new expensive prison for Bagram, to hold prisoners sans habeas corpus rights:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/19/bagram/index.html

LBJ -- I mean BHO -- picked a good night to trot out the dazzling Al Green act.

American and other coalition forces here are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces, according to American and Afghan officers and a classified coalition report.

A decade into the war in Afghanistan, the report makes clear that these killings have become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort: the contempt each side holds for the other, never mind the Taliban. The ill will and mistrust run deep among civilians and militaries on both sides, raising questions about what future role the United States and its allies can expect to play in Afghanistan....

“Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history)” (said the report) .... Official NATO pronouncements to the contrary “seem disingenuous, if not profoundly intellectually dishonest,” said the report, and it played down the role of Taliban infiltrators in the killings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/world/asia/afghan-soldiers-step-up-killings-of-allied-forces.html

http://www1.rollingstone.com/extras/RS_REPORT.pdf

“Afghans protest when something is shocking and surprising,” said Joshua Foust, a fellow at the American Security project, a nonprofit, bi-partisan public policy and research institute based in Washington, DC. “But this is something that they are used to and expect. They consider all civilian deaths criminal. This is just more of the same.”

It may seem counterintuitive that Afghans will take to the streets, kill or injure themselves and damage their own property, to protest an insult to their religion, but maintain relative calm when their loved ones are killed.

Last week’s protests against the Quran burnings were not unique; in 2005, a story in Newsweek magazine that US soldiers had flushed Qurans down the toilet set off a storm of anger that left 17 people dead.

When a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that Muslims found insulting, embassies in Kabul were stormed, thousands rioted and several people were killed.

There have never been similar outpourings of violence against the deaths of civilians. For those, sorrow far outpaces anger, as Afghans resign themselves to the horrors of war.

The issue of civilian casualties has long plagued U.S.-Afghan relations. Karzai has railed against night raids that violate homes and sometimes target innocent individuals, airstrikes that sometimes go astray and cause numerous deaths, and operations that do not take adequate precautions to protect the civilian population.

The United States, while often expressing regret at the loss of civilian lives, considers such collateral damage to be the price of war.

“Afghans are not making the moral distinction we are,” Foust said. “[These shootings are] not a game changer, it is just another aspect of the same game.”

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/12/just_another_civilian_massacre/singleton/

so, business as usual through 2024...?

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2012/0502/Obama-s-agreement-with-Karzai-in-Afghanistan-short-on-specifics-video