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Originally Posted by Listener2307 A preposterous suggestion. It was always up to us to go get him, and that's what we did.
The doctrine of preemptive strike should remain in force. America has many friends and many spies. If someone is training terrorists, then the training site with its leaders needs to be taken out no matter where it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk
That that is something far more technologically feasible now than it was twenty years ago. That's what kept the body count in Afghanistan as low as it was (compared to other such US actions).
You make an awfully important point. The US attack on an Iranian general made that perfectly clear. He was hit while riding in a car at the airport in a foreign country. The result ...... It "escalated tensions" between Iran, who chanted in the streets and Americans who were instantly safer without the general.
Frankly I don't understand how you can "escalate tensions" with an enemy who is willing to die in suicide attacks.
The appeals for relief for Haitian earthquake victims are already widespread; I have received an appeal from, of all groups, American Jewish World Services (link). Well-intentioned people will no doubt open their wallets. At some point, similar help in Afghanistan will be needed. Given the lack of a competent, transparent government to distribute the assistance, the moneys will disappear. There are plenty of greedy hands perfectly willing to take advantage of the goodwill of the generous.
More ominously, the Taliban, when it governs, participates in or permits the use of territory to launch devastating attacks, September 11, 2001 being a prime example. The original impetus to colonialism was, in part, economic greed on the part of the West. But also in part, piracy and other attacks were motivators. The sailing trips around the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, and eventually the building of the Panama Canal were motivated in part by hostilities emanating from Africa and Asia. The West's response after the September 11 attacks hinted at a return to some kind of control by the West in some of these areas. Are we in for a repeat?
We have little interest in exploiting Afghanistan and similar failed states. A "debate question" is by what method does the West protect itself?
Are you crazy?
The British couldn’t control Afghanistan and they certainly knew how to Colonize
Are you crazy?
The British couldn’t control Afghanistan and they certainly knew how to Colonize
I have to smile at the pure logic behind your answer.
Colonies were mostly established in places where there was economic benefit. I'm sure there were exceptions, but for the most part that statement is true. Tiny Belgium establish "Belgium Congo" for economic purposes and killed millions of people - mostly by working them to death.
I did like America's approach in Afghanistan. The philosophy was well expressed by Clint Eastwood in "The Unforgiven" when he promised the town that if they did not behave he would "come back and kill all you sonsabitches" (Thunderclap follows). Genghis Khan had a similar approach which he used to great effect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv_cBlJHW98
We have little interest in exploiting Afghanistan and similar failed states. A "debate question" is by what method does the West protect itself?
Let's turn that question around.
By what methods do colonized countries regain their nation's right to sovereignty?
I would suggest that the French learned a very good lesson from Vietnam. Not to mention lessons they French ultimately learned in Algeria, a country in which they used brutal tactics, including genocide, to colonize -- https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/o...st-colonialism .
What lessons did America learn in Vietnam? And in Korea? And in Afghanistan?
To get back to your question: I would say that the lesson learned is NOT to colonize. Seek other means to protect oneself.
Afghanistan was quicksand for this country. 20 years, 6,000+ American lives, and a price tag of about 1 trillion dollars, although some estimates are much higher.
By what methods do colonized countries regain their nation's right to sovereignty?
I would suggest that the French learned a very good lesson from Vietnam. Not to mention lessons they French ultimately learned in Algeria, a country in which they used brutal tactics, including genocide, to colonize -- https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/o...st-colonialism .
What lessons did America learn in Vietnam? And in Korea? And in Afghanistan?
To get back to your question: I would say that the lesson learned is NOT to colonize. Seek other means to protect oneself.
Afghanistan was quicksand for this country. 20 years, 6,000+ American lives, and a price tag of about 1 trillion dollars, although some estimates are much higher.
Colonization was almost never about self protection. They are two different subjects.
America is not trying to colonize South Korea, is it? ........... And America did not try to colonize Afghanistan. Afghanistan proved itself to be a staging ground for attacks on America. That did not suddenly go away and the day may come when we wish we had people and spies in that country.
...
America is not trying to colonize South Korea, is it? ........... ... .
Maybe we did. I can argue we did colonize S. Korea as our heavy industry and manufacturing went there to take advantage of cheap labor and lax environmental and labor laws. IIRC we had something to do with keeping friendly governments into power to keep trade flowing from S. Korea to the USA. Same for Taiwan. Both of them exported steel and goods to us while we imported unemployment and decimated towns. Wall Street got fat, Pittsburgh, et al, turned to rust. We didn't colonize outright but did so through the power of the purse strings aka Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand."
For S. Vietnam I do recall reading in the papers, in the 1973 timeframe, how Shell Oil was beginning to explore for oil in/around S. Vietnam. My thoughts in my young brain at the time were . . . hmmmmm . . . this is very interesting. Royal Dutch Shell, commonly known as Shell, is a British-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, and incorporated in the United Kingdom as a public limited company. If anyone knows how to colonize places it's the Brits and the Dutch; they're masters at that and at playing the divide and conquer games that keep the mideast aflame and keeps Americans at each other's throats.
In Afghanistan we know that it has perhaps $1T in rare earth minerals which are a key building block needed to make batteries for electric cars, smartphones, etc. China has a border with Afghanistan and is a major player in the race to obtain large amounts of rare earth minerals. No matter who rules Afghanistan going forward, that place is going to get a lot of attention. Meanwhile, China is out colonizing much of the world by investing in infrastructure projects like their widening of the Panama Canal and their Belt and Road Initiative to pay for building world trade routes into China.
The world has lost its appetite for colonization at the point of a bayonet, it has more clever ways to colonize via toxic capitalism.
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Last edited by Mike from back east; 08-21-2021 at 10:36 AM..
Excerpt: "...an eager young journalist named Winston Churchill, who traveled with British troops some 125 years ago as far as the northwestern limit of British India — land that would become Pakistan. There, at a line Britain had drawn between its dominion and the mountainous lands beyond, Churchill observed tribal fighting that had gone on for all recorded time. Through countless feuds and truces, bargains and betrayals.
Churchill recognized the Pashtun tribes would never honor a Western line through their ancient territories. Observing the fighters known as Talibs — passionate and violent young men afire with religious fervor — he concluded that their holy wars were endless. Talib. Taliban. Endless.
Everything the United States should have known was knowable before we plunged without planning into the graveyard of empires. It is a gift to be able to learn from the mistakes of others. The original authors of the American engagement in Afghanistan — Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld — were not gifted in this way. They chose not to learn, or to ignore what they learned, or to think that they were somehow different. . . . . "
Bottom line: Colonizing Afghanistan is a rendezvous with misery. Our Ivy League educated foreign policy community should've known this and kept us out of there.
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Blaming the Afghanistan debacle on Bush & Co. and saying we never shoulda been there is just silly.
That part of the conflict was over and there was a stable governing taking place. But that was a few weeks ago.
America, in the person of Biden, screwed it up and thousands of people who were safe last month are no longer safe.
Actually, I had no idea there were so many Americans living in Afghanistan. But there are, and their safety should have been a concern and consideration.
"Learning from history" is a point made by zealots on one side or the other. If everyone "learned from history" The American Revolution would never have taken place, WW2 would not have been fought, no one would ever go to the moon, and on and on.
The age of colonization should remain in the history books.
This is not America's problem. In the case of Afghanistan. What a mistake. Back after 9/11 we should have ordered the Taliban to bring forward OBL or we would nuke or bomb the country until nothing was left of it. We would have saved a lot of money and a lot of American lives and solved the Afghanistan problem forever if they did not give us OBL.
The Taliban would know that was an empty threat. In response to 9/11 the U.S. commits a heinous crime against humanity on millions of innocents? They're not stupid.
Colonization was almost never about self protection. They are two different subjects.
America is not trying to colonize South Korea, is it? ........... And America did not try to colonize Afghanistan. Afghanistan proved itself to be a staging ground for attacks on America. That did not suddenly go away and the day may come when we wish we had people and spies in that country.
First of all, the title of the thread suggests that Afghanistan could be solved by a return to colonization.
So you are suggesting that we stay what, another 20 years? Spend a couple of more trillion dollars? Perhaps we should stand guard over every Middle Eastern country where someone has come from that has conducted a terrorist attack: Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, and Yemen...and more. Just saturate the world with American troops, after all, it's worked so well thus far.
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