U.S. Public Tiring of Afghan War, Opinion Growing that It's Not Worth the Cost

[Plane]

<<The Taliban advantage , you don't get tired of being threatened.>>

Sorry to be so dense, but how would this relate to a 7% drop in Republican support for the war since April of this year?

Our military effort requires the support of the people.

The Taliban doesn't.

[Michael Tee]

OK, thank you.  I would never have gotten that meaning on my own, I was concentrated on threats felt by the American public and threats felt by the Taliban.  I never considered threats to the Afghan people themselves.  Don't know why I missed that.

While I'm not sure that all opposition to the foreign troops is necessarily Taliban, are you saying that the Taliban doesn't have much whole-hearted, non-coerced support in Afghanistan, and if so, what do you base that opinion on?

[Plane]

OK, thank you.  I would never have gotten that meaning on my own, I was concentrated on threats felt by the American public and threats felt by the Taliban.  I never considered threats to the Afghan people themselves.  Don't know why I missed that.

While I'm not sure that all opposition to the foreign troops is necessarily Taliban, are you saying that the Taliban doesn't have much whole-hearted, non-coerced support in Afghanistan, and if so, what do you base that opinion on?

That they use threats , what elese ?

[Christians4LessGvt]

are you saying that the Taliban doesn't have much whole-hearted, non-coerced support in Afghanistan,
and if so, what do you base that opinion on?

Michael I assuming women make up roughly have the Afghan population...do you think most women support
forbidding Afghan girls going to school?...support barring women from working outside the home?....support women
being prohibited from leaving their home without a male relative?.... support punishing women that leave the house
without a male relative by being beaten and/or shot?...Do Afghan women support the Taliban barring women wearing
fingernail polish to the point that if they are caught wearing fingernail polish they risk having their fingertips chopped off?

[Michael Tee]

<<That they [the Taliban] use threats , what elese ?>>

Have you ever heard of a resistance force that did not need to use threats?

Both the French Resistance and the anti-Fascist Italian Resistance used death threats against collaborators, usually to good effect.  The French Resistance would leave funeral wreaths on the doors or doorsteps of collaborators or their parents, or sometimes sent tiny wooden coffins to the homes.

IMHO, the use of threats is more of an indicator that there are collaborators among the population, not necessarily that the entire population is against the resistance forces.  Normally, one could assume an inverse relationship between the severity of the punishment threatened and the popular support enjoyed by the issuer of the threat, but in Afghanistan, horrific punishments are a tradition of long standing, and all sides would probably issue blood-curdling threats routinely.  See the Kipling poem,  The Ballad of the King's Mercy.   A mere threat to kill someone and burn his house down would look like the work of a pathetic little wimp, not of someone to be feared.

[Plane]

So American threats are weighed against Taliban threats and found wanting?

[Michael Tee]

<<Michael I assuming women make up roughly have the Afghan population...do you think most women support
forbidding Afghan girls going to school?...support barring women from working outside the home?....support women
being prohibited from leaving their home without a male relative?.... support punishing women that leave the house
without a male relative by being beaten and/or shot?...Do Afghan women support the Taliban barring women wearing
fingernail polish to the point that if they are caught wearing fingernail polish they risk having their fingertips chopped off? >>

What you are forgetting, CU4, is that most Afghan women live in the countryside and are the products of a very conservative, traditional society.  I'm sure that there are plenty of women who want to be liberated, plenty (especially among the older women) who don't, who like the old ways (which most Americans can't even describe) and that the female population is probably divided, mostly on generational lines as to how much liberation they think is right for women and girls.  I'm also sure that a likely majority of conservative, traditional Afghan men in the countryside do NOT want to see all the "reforms" and "women's lib" that Western infidel foreigners are so keen to bring to the Afghans, at gunpoint if necessary.  Overall, I don't see how those in favour of reformed women's rights are in any kind of majority, simply because the women are divided and the men would probably on the whole, be in favour of keeping women under what we would consider to be medieval restrictions.

Under Communist rule, women in the capital were totally liberated.  They attended university, wore miniskirts and makeup, went bareheaded and were treated as the equals of males in all respects, as good Communist theory demands.  NONE of these reforms for women seemed to endear the Communists or their Red Army defenders to the general population, and the foreign infidels were ultimately driven out.  It seems to me that there has to be something more in the mix than women's rights to win the general population - - or the gun-bearing portion thereof - - over to the side of the foreign invading infidel army.  So far in history, no foreign invading infidel army seems to have figured out what that something is, and my guess is that it just does not exist.

[Michael Tee]

<<So American threats are weighed against Taliban threats and found wanting?>>

Obviously there are more than threats to be factored in here.  Hatred of invading foreign armies, for one thing.  Revenge for civilian dead for another.

[Plane]

<<So American threats are weighed against Taliban threats and found wanting?>>

Obviously there are more than threats to be factored in here.  Hatred of invading foreign armies, for one thing.  Revenge for civilian dead for another.

It is mostly threats , made...

and threats fullfilled.

[Michael Tee]

<<It is mostly threats , made...

<<and threats fullfilled.>

Really?  The sources I've read that account for the success of the Taliban seem to dwell on the fact that they have delivered a justice system that is swift and incorruptible, as opposed to the government courts that are infinitely bribeable and drag on forever.  The Afghan public seemed to appreciate that. 

I am sure that threats also play a role in any resistance movement's success.

[BSB]

The Taliban: Heroic resistance fighters. Deliverers of incorruptible justice.

Excuse MT, he smokes dried reindeer dung to avoid reality.

[Michael Tee]

I don't smoke anything these days, certainly nothing that would help me characterize America's army of mercenaries as heroic fighters for the freedom of the third world.  


We've just seen some of those fucking ass-hole thugs in action in the New Baghdad massacre, thanks to Wiki Leaks and how soon we forget.  It's a big game to those gutless wonders laughing and joking from the safety of their helicopter as they gun down innocent civilians in the streets.  The Army, BTW, is not prosecuting any of those Nazi thugs, but they are sure as bitchin hell going after the poor bugger who leaked the tapes.  They like their heroic fighters portrayed as BSB would like them to be seen, not as they really are.

I don't romanticize either side in this conflict and never did.  But the pretensions of the Americans to moral superiority in all of their neocolonial wars of unprovoked aggression are really nauseating.

[BSB]

Nazies. Mercenaries. Neocolonial wars. Unprovoked aggression. Blah blah blah.

What a stupid johnny one note asshole you are. You couldn't get any further away from a neocolonial war of unprovoked aggression then our presence in Afghanistan.
 

[Xavier_Onassis]

It seems to me that the President is following the advice of McChrystal and other generals. The public gets tired of everything. They got tired of Afghanistan once the Russians left and that is when the Taliban took over. I hardly think that the tiredness of the public should be the determining factor here. Most of the public could not find Afghanistan on a map.

Karzai will have to make his government legitimate. The US cannot do this for him.
 

[Michael Tee]

Well, sorry to show such consistency in my views on U.S. aggression.  Sorry to use the comparisons that best apply, when I am sure you would like a little more sycophantic flattery when I try to characterize those low-life losers.  Unfortunately, reality (this time in the form of a Wiki-Leak) does tend to get in the way of your need for adulation.

Hey, how about this - - I could vary the routine.  Describe the U.S. military in one post as heroic defenders of the freedom and liberty of the planet, in the next post as hapless but well-meaning buffoons and in the next post as Nazi-like thugs. (Shit, that charge of "johnny-one-note" really stung!)

Well, you are right to some limited extent - - of all of your country's many pointless wars of unprovoked aggression, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan alone does at least have a plausible shred of pretext of casus belli (long since exhausted, BTW) so I probably should have to backtrack somewhat from my charge of "unprovoked aggression."  Although even that was handled in such a way as to reduce American credibility considerably - - when the U.S. demanded that OBL be handed over to them, the Afghans had insisted that the U.S. first produce evidence of his wrongdoing, something that every self-respecting sovereign nation normally does, and the U.S. attacked without even trying to comply with the request, rendering their actual pretext for the war somewhat suspect, IMHO.

Anyway, we're going to have this problem any time I comment on U.S. military intervention and its instruments.  I calls it the way I sees it.  Tell me, how would YOU describe those fucking scumbags?