Battlefield is where you find the battle.

[Plane]

   http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/world/europe/supplanting-the-symbols-of-warfare.html?action=click&contentCollection=Europe&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article


       Is fighting lone wolves a trend?

       Does smashing Al Queda and Isis reduce the lone wolf at all?


         Bashir Assad is attracting a lot of the attention we would be getting, but it is hard to thank him.
   

[Xavier_Onassis]

Dying for anything as odd as whatever ends up ruling Syria is a waste of a life for any Westerner.

You have to be some sort of insane to want to risk your life in the chaos that is Syria. Lebanon's Civil War lasted forever, and did not result in anything better than Lebanon had before it all started. It mostly served as a very dangerous way to rid Lebanon of its suicidal fanatics.

Syrians have a reason to fight and die for Syria, perhaps, but why anyone from Europe would want to get involved is a real mystery to me.

[Plane]

Because this war respects no boundaries.


The boundaries set early in the previous century are indeed one of the proximate causes .


It has visited us at home and in every European country , India, Bali, Australia, Philippines, etc...

What did we learn from the time that we left the Taliban unmolested for a decade ?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Before Brzezenski got the Saudis to send missionaries to Afghanistan, there were no Taliban. Afghan society was self -sufficient and the country was modernizing in the same way Turkey did.  Just like there was no Mara Salvatrucha before that evil asshole Reagan sent all those arms to the Fascists of the Arena Party in Salvador. The rightwing asshole military industrial complex creates its own villains and then sends us the bill for the arms and stuff to defeat them. And they are not much effing good at defeating them.

[Plane]

I didn't hear of Zibignew Brzezenski asking the Saudis to send missionaries to Afghanistan.

You're sure on that one?

[Xavier_Onassis]

I am sure of this. It's not like they publicized it.





 Brzezinski: According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, [on] 24 December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the President in which I explained to him that in my opinion, this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

    Question: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

    Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

    Question:When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

    Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

    Question: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

    Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War? ( “The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan, Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser”, Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998, published in English, Centre for Research on Globalisation, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html, 5 October 2001, italics added.)

Consistent with Brzezinski’s account, a “Militant Islamic Network” was created by the CIA.

The “Islamic Jihad” (or holy war against the Soviets) became an integral part of the CIA’s intelligence ploy. It was supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia, with a significant part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:

    “In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166 … [which] authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies — a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987 … as well as a “ceaseless stream” of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan’s ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There, the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels.”(Steve Coll, The Washington Post, July 19, 1992.)

You wanna see your hero Reagan sitting with the future Taliban?

[url]http://www.globalresearch.ca/al-qaeda-and-the-war-on-terrorism/7718/url]

When unemployment in Saudi Arabia increased in the 80's, jobs were given to university dropouts in the Religious Police, where they were indoctrinated. It did not take too long for these newly trained fanatics to realize that the Saudi Royals were corrupt and infected with Western vices. To get rid of them, they were sent as missionaries
and aides to the mujahedin in Afghanistan, to fight the Soviets. When the Soviets left, Afghanisytan had been devastated, and these fanatics and their converts focused on anti-US materialism.

[Plane]

  Hmmmm...

  There is a new fact for me to ponder.

  But so far I still agree with Berezniki reducing the Soviet threat was worth doing.

  After all the Soviets could have totally ignored Afghanistan and had little problem, it was their own policies that made them vulnerable to this. 

    This is more aggressiveness than I would have ever credited president Carter with, which means I already liked him , but now better.

[Xavier_Onassis]

It was disgusting and inhumane to completely trash Afghanistan to do this.  Right up there with Auschwitz and Treblinka.

The immorality of this is overwhelming.

The Soviets could NOT have ignored this, as the goal was to set off jihadi attacks of Muslim fanatics into Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and the Muslim parts of the Russian Federation itself.  The borders were porous, there were migrations of around a hundred thousand people back and forth from Afghanistan to Central Asia every year.

Carter was a basically a nice guy, but too gullible. His faults were paying attention to a monster like Brzezinski and a deceitful treacherous creep like Kissinger. Kissinger has always been an Exxon employee, and he set up Carter for the Iran hostage crisis, as well as the underhanded dealing with Reagan and his creeps to destroy Carter and release the hostages only after carter was out of office.

If there ever were two creeps that deserved being set up against a wall and shot, it was Zbiggy and Kissinger., May God rot them both.

[Plane]

  Where does the buck stop?

   Vietnam was used pretty badly for the purpose of killing a half million Americans .

    The sheer evenness and reciprocity of the ruthlessness is staggering.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The US went to Vietnam voluntarily.

Those who died, died for no good reason.

[Plane]

  Yes, due to the policies we had at the time. To defend democracy, after the debacle of China there had to be a line drawn. If Vietnaqm had not been fought , there would have been a fight later with less on our side and more on theirs.

  It is really hard to find anything dissimilar between the set up of Vietnam as a quagmire for the French and the US and the set up of Afghanistan as a snare for the Soviets. 

    Callous and ruthless I grant you, but just as effective east as west.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Both were useless wastes of lives and money.
Those who lost the most were the Vietnamese and the Afghans.

[Plane]

Cat's-paws are volunteers on the leadership end.

Or dupes if you would rather.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

[Plane]

That is interesting.

If you do not know what a cats paw is , you must not often discuss the conduct of war.

Have you heard of a "stalking horse" or a "paper tiger"?

These would be euphemisms for things that no one wants to be when war threatens.

A cats-paw is a stooge that carries the attack forwards and hides the blame from the world  of the true instigator , who would be the greater power that put them up to it.

A stalking horse is some unfortunate entity given the task of appearing vulnerable and taking the trail ahead of the stronger entity, to draw the enemy into an attack it might win if the stalking horse were alone, but that the enemy would not attempt on the greater power.

A paper tiger is a brave front on an empty threat.