Time to leave AFGHANISTAN? Karzai's sentiment is something Americans have difficulty grasping because we're so into fairness and loyalty, etc etc.......but, I guess he's as good as telling us to go when he says he'd side with Pakistan if we went to war with Pakistan. Obviously, there are many geopolitical reasons he almost has to say that, but how can it go over well with any Western country which has come to Afghanistan's aid, especially us?Also, I suppose most of you have heard Iraq's coming to Iran's financial aid in helping Syria's Assad survive.
Do you think we should bill Iraq for all we've done? How many were celebrating in the streets when Saddam toppled? How many were thrilled to be voting for the first time? How many appreciate that they have to worry less now about friends and family disappearing and never coming back? Mr. Z did some work in Iraq years ago and had an Iraqi colleague not show up for a meeting and was never heard from again. How much money does Iraq have after all the money we poured into that country?
Time to bill them? What do you think? And, if not, why not? For my commenters predictable enough for me to have to add that this isn't a thread on whether we should have gone into Iraq, anyway, please...we've done that; this isn't about that. We DID go in. We spent a TON of money and lost a TON of precious American blood. Think they should pay us?
thanks!
z
29 comments:
Hard to say. First, I would need to know what percentage of Iraqi's wanted us there in the first place, and/or what percentage are glad we came.
I'm honestly not too clear about that.
Kinda hard to invoice somebody for something they never asked for or wanted, even if we think it's 100% positive.
I don't anybody thinks Iraq has been 100% positive. Did you get that from my post?
But, ya...there are many things we've done which deserve payment if they've got money enough to be helping keep a dictator in Syria!
I believe it would be very easy to make lists of roads built, schools built, hospitals and equipment, etc etc...yes, I think there could be clearly defined items worth billing them for.
it's an interesting thing to consider.
Z - Yes, we should bill them.
But how do you put a price tag on the over four thousand lives of our troops - that were lost.
Sue, no way can we put a price on the lives. not possible.
@z - ...but, I guess he's as good as telling us to go when he says he'd side with Pakistan if we went to war with Pakistan.
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You're a slave to you tunneled cultural perspective.
In order for Karzai to be effective and powerful in his country, he has to build or maintain the public Afghan perception that he is not a puppet.
This means effectively biting the hand that feeds him, but we're cool with that because ANY powerful not-obviously malign system in Afghanistan will push us down the road towards GTFO.
Send them a bill. Then what do you do when they flip us the digit and make a further laughingstock out of us?
Iraq to America: 'Oh, please stay and destroy our infrastructure even more and kill a few more hundred thousand of our citizens. Lol!
"[W]hat do you do when they flip us the digit and make a further laughingstock out of us?"
A good excuse to lob them a thermo-nuclear present!
"[W]hat do you do when they flip us the digit and make a further laughingstock out of us?"
A reason to tell the troops that looting will now be allowed at a 50% tax rate to recoup the cost of the war.
Maybe a one thousand square mile piece of western Iraq for our new embassy (and military base) instead of a bill.
I say we cut our losses and just leave them to stand on their own. We have done all we can for them. Time to cut the purse strings.
Well, we were told very early on in this adventure that oil money revenue would more than cover the cost of the war.
So, in a sense, yes, we should invoice them.
And we should then invoice those that sold us that blatant lie after Iraq tells us to pound sand.
These wars are the definition of pure idiocy that just keeps on giving...
Ducky, I keep asking you to read the posts before responding, especially so nastily;
I said:
"Obviously, there are many geopolitical reasons he almost has to say that, but how can it go over well with any Western country which has come to Afghanistan's aid, especially us"
Ya, we deserve better than that; anybody can see that.
you said "make a further laughingstock out of us?"
When did you EVER care about that?
liberaldude...yup, you're liberal, that's for sure. Blinders and everything :-)
Conservative... I don't want an embassy there, do you?
Leticia, I'm thinking that, too.
Dave, and we were told by our idiot CIA that they'd be so happy if we ousted Saddam, weren't we. They must have ALL BEEN REPUBLICANS, right ? :-)
R W EXTREMIST: YIKES!
z, I wasn't nasty. Just stating a fact.
If Karzai looks like he's just an American stooge then he has no position vis-a-vis the factions in Afghanistan.
He's be a damn fool to say he's ask the Taliban and the warlords to go to war against Pakistan. Absolute insanity.
Everyone knows it and there isn't any point even drawing attention to it.
Well z, why don't we send them abill and watch while they nationalize the oil fields and cut the Russians and Chinese in on the deal.
That's the right wing way.
Write it in the dust and let the rain settle it. That will do about as much good as trying to collect one cent from a group of ungrateful goat herders who now run the government.
As for Afghanistan, after the comments made by their "idiot in chief" it is definitely time to tell him to kiss our butt, take everything we took over there and if nothing else dump it, bomb it to hell and back but make sure the fool can never use it against us or Israel.
The entire lot is a bunch of stone age , goat herding ingrates. Cut off their MONEY TODAY, not tomorrow and use it at home to guard our border. Unfortunately OUR "Idiot in Chief" will do nothing unless it can work in his behalf for re-election. The exact reason he followed Bush's plan to the letter on Iraq. criticized it but yet now takes credit for it. Maybe the goat herders can offer him a job after Nov. 2012.
Ducky: I can't discuss anything with you. Your ego keeps getting in the way.
sad.
Ticker "Unfortunately OUR "Idiot in Chief" will do nothing unless it can work in his behalf for re-election"
That is the definite impression,isn't it.
Now he's saying he'll act without Congress ... WE NEED TO HELP, WE MUST ACT IF THEY HATE YOU :-)
Works beautifully as a campaign push, doesn't? "Oh, LOOK, MR. Wonderful's going to pay our mortgage, hire vets and help our little Lucy to pay her college debt off...isn't he MARVELOUS? OH, and that MEAN OLD REPUBLICAN PARTY; they don't want him to DO that...how AWFUL!"
Nobody asks "Where the heck's he getting the money from?" and "wait, that's OUR Money, anyway, isn't it?"
And his dopey WH Correspondent Pfeiffer or something said that the Republicans just won't do ANYTHING, when he knows damn well that Boehner's been wanting to talk taxes with Obama and a mtg's scheduled for Friday on that and other things they can agree on....even as Pfeiffer whines to Wolf Blitzer that THEY JUST WON"T PLAY BALL!
Damn..it's ALL THE ELECTION and the COUNTRY BE DAMNED.$$$
"while they nationalize the oil fields and cut the Russians and Chinese in on the deal."
As far back as a year or more ago....they put out the oil contracts. And not one American refiner got a permit. Not ONE...yet the loons said this was all about OIL...and blood for oil. Now the same lunatics are here screeching we should bill them?
We're the US of saps and always have been. We're way too decent of a people to collect our justifiable debts. We let everyone off the hook after WW2 and only asked for enough space to honor and bury our dead.
We won't ever demand that of the desert rats...and that makes me happy. We've brought our soldiers home...not leaving them behind in some arab shit hole so they can be desecrated.
We need to learn something that the Russians taught us long ago...( and I consider the Russians the same stock as we are. Hell the damn czars were married off to all of Europe at one time or another) ...the Russians taught us that no western power will ever win in the ME. Or in Afghanistan where they savaged the Afghans....they had no such foolishness as ROE's to screw their troops with.
But...when the ruskies where there...we decided to fook with them in a CIA / undercover asswipe game. To embarrass them. We shouldn't have done that.
We should have seen the lesson that was handed them and we should have stayed out. Regardless of 911 too.
Next time...drones, hi altitude bomb runs and Seal 6 teams. Kill them quiet and don't leave anyone behind or any troops in their crummy countries ever again.
"let them destroy one another like the uncivilized savages they are."
The Saudis have to fall before that can happen. That's what I'd like to see. Then maybe we can finally realize that these bastards have never been our "friends" and that their Wahhabism stink can never happen here.
Then when gas climbs to $10 per gallon...like obummer wants...we'll see the light. And cut holes to drill in every square foot of America.
The Saudi's have to go next..as well as...or the only reason has to be...Wahhabism.
Z - 'it's all the election and the country be damned'
That's why we need to institute the one term only Constitutional Ammendment.
A person serves six years and then give someone else a chance.
Think they should pay us?
We should have settled this at the beginning. Part of their oil revenue all along should have come to us.
My nephew served 6 mo. in Afghanistan - then one year in Iraq.
So I asked him what he thought about the troops coming home from Iraq.
He said that it was good - but he hoped we didn't have to turn around and go back.
~~~
I told him:
We don't HAVE to go back.
Why do people think we have to go anywhere with our troops.
When are we going to take care of our problems at home?
"My nephew served 6 mo. in Afghanistan - then one year in Iraq."
I swear Sue....I'm not trying to be a prick...but...did you Thank him?
BTW...I was in Ramstein those same years as you.
Sue "A person serves six years and then give someone else a chance."
Good thinking...I'd never thought of a presidential term limitation, only Congress.
Chuck....Your comment wins today, that's for sure. Yes, we DEFINITELY should have set that up at the beginning. Then they could have said "No, we don't want you here anymore, so we won't be paying you...and by the way, thanks for seeing to it we had our first election, thanks for killing our madman, thanks for ..BUT, we're NOT paying you" :-)
Sue, I have never talked to any soldier or heard of one a friend knew personally who didn't think we did great work there.
Imp...maybe you and Sue sat next to each other at those big German restaurants where everybody sits together and had a beer. !
Is Chavez and the Sandanistas right wing duhkkky?
Sue talks wisdom with her nephew: "he hoped we didn't have to turn around and go back.
I told him:
We don't HAVE to go back."
That's the truth, isn't it? We don't have to do anything. As a nation we can sit by and allow others to threaten us with impunity, commit genocide, and invade other countries for their treasure.
We can be just as isolationist as you want. Let's bring our troops home from Bosnia, Kosovo, Korea, France, Germany, and Japan. In all of these cases we didn't have to do anything.
My brothers who were killed in these little, worthless wars (WWII and Korea), would be jockeying to get in front of the line to praise Sue's wisdom.
We could have just stood by and allowed the slaughter of millions more innocent people. Entire races of humanity would be effectively extinct.
Not one environmentalist (or Democrat) would complain about that. Idiots like Paul R Ehrlich and Dr John Holdren (Obama's science adviser) would be thrilled to see excess population wiped out by murder or abortion. (Forgive my redundancy.)
In the case of Iraq there were documented threats against our nation, reports from other nations about Iraq's threat, and genocide within its own border. Yeah, let's stay home and let the saintly Saddam Hussein launch his planned terror attacks, and finish off the Kurds.
As a nation, we have been fortunate that we can pick and choose our own fights, and liberate about 25 million tortured souls just in this last decade, alone! No other nation in history has had the positive influence on history and people as the United States of America.
Yes, Sue, let's stay at home and not venture beyond our borders. Let's let the Islamic crazies fly airplanes into our buildings, and only give them the equivalent of a traffic ticket. That's the smart thing to do.
Bob, your arguments for intervention are intriguing.
Secretary Rice never, never, said we had a clear and present danger in Iraq, rather a gathering threat.
Yes, Saddam was guilty as charged of killing thousands, if not millions of his own citizens.
Now as a liberal, I generally support the view that we should not allow other countries to kill their own. It is uncivilized.
And you make a good argument for action in saving possibly millions of innocent lives, much like we did in WWII and elsewhere.
My question is this, and I hope you see this and choose to answer.
How do we make the decision to act? When does horrible behavior from a leader against his own people justify a response from the USA?
Is there a threshold we must reach first before we act?
Or to put it another way, how come we choose to save the people of one country and not another?
We freed the people of Iraq from Saddam, but ignored the people of Darfur.
We helped free the people of Libya from their butcher, but are ignoring the people of Syria.
Lastly, if we believe we have a right, and/or responsibility to force a country to remake itself in our image, which may, in our opinion be good, would we affirm that right should another country assert the same right?
Just looking for you, or anyone elses thoughts...
Dave, I agree with pretty much everything you say.
We can go through the Iraqi war lead-up, and follow the strands of spaghetti that were real intelligence, perceived real intelligence, rumor, and downright falsehoods. You and I can do this in all honesty, and still wind up with our same, and opposite, positions.
The present reality is that we are most likely making a strategic mistake by leaving Iraq, distasteful as it is to stay.
As for a threshold to go to war, I have been struggling with that one for a while. To me, there are at least two dimensions to consider.
1. Risk For The Nation - Does the situation present a physical or economic danger to our nation, either in the present or future tense? If yes, then we certainly should act, and the sooner the better.
2. Risk For Other Nations/Populations - This is where things get sticky. It was laudable that Clinton sent the bombers after Milosevic, and it is a shame that we allow genocide in Africa.
The same people that advocated the Kosovo actions don't see the same imperative for Africans. There was no oil or gain for us in Kosovo, but the situation was hyped in the press so much we all felt that we had to do something.
Is our lack of sympathy for Africans reflective of indifferent press coverage, or do we not care about people of color?
I don't know, and I have no answer. It seems to me that if we can assemble a coalition to step on a Serbian mass murderer, we can do the same thing about African war lords and out of control Islamic jihadi's.
Our response to the murders of the Syrian people is shameful, and our reticence to act in Libya is, also. Not in either case do we have an economic interest, although we do have political interests, and moral considerations.
Our current President is not a leader of men. That's too bad, because we have historically looked to the President for direction. All we have is a perpetual campaigner.
Are we right, wrong, or just ignorant? I don't know, but am open for suggestions and discussion.
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