Nine boys collecting firewood to heat their homes in the eastern Afghanistan mountains were killed by NATO helicopter gunners who mistook them for insurgents, according to a statement on Wednesday by NATO, which apologized for the mistake.
I hear we are turning a corner and just need six more months, though.
mb
More firewood for us! GO USA!
danimal
Cole, you’re a traitor for publicizing this. If you didn’t make this blog post, the Afghan villagers would not know that Americans killed these innocent boys. With this posting, it becomes even more obvious that you are objectively pro-Taliban.
/winger logic
PurpleGirl
What do “insurgents” look like? Can you tell by their clothing? By their hair? That they were carrying sticks of wood?
Their families are going to hate us forever.
licensed to kill time
That’s just fucking tragic.
Somehow I don’t think an apology will mean much to the families.
General Stuck
Long since we should have quit fighting a ground, or air war in Afghan. Pack up now and skeedadle, and if OBL returns and orders out a pizza, we can spike it with high fructose corn syrup, and he can die right along with the rest of us.
gene108
If the Afghans weren’t savage bloody terrorists, none of this would’ve happened. You don’t see civilized people attacking us. (/end sarcasm)
lacp
Hey, freedom isn’t free. If we don’t stop them from collecting firewood over there, we’ll have to stop them from collecting firewood over here. Under sharia. At the Ground Zero Mosque.
freelancer
Any kid who runs is an insurgent. Any kid who ignores the gunships and keeps picking up firewood is a well-disciplined insurg-
Screw it, there’s nothing funny about this. This is disgusting and it’s being executed in our names, with our money.
Carnacki
Never should have been this way. Should have been a Ma href=”http://www.wvablue.com/diary/4559/justice-vs-terrorism”>law enforcement matter from the beginning. God damn it all to hell.
Zifnab
@PurpleGirl:
Check out all the people who show up for the kids’ funerals. There’s your next group of insurgents.
Carnacki
So angry I broke my link
Alecmcc
@Zifnab:
Superb!
Dennis SGMM
If, after something like a decade in Afghanistan, the forces there are unable to distinguish between boys gathering firewood and insurgents then I’d say that it’s time to hang it up. We now have nine families and their clan, or clans, who are now implacable enemies. Well done, NATO.
fasteddie9318
OK, I get that this LOOKS bad, but they DID say they were awful sorry about the mixup and all. So, you know, it’s all good.
David Koch
This is sickening – when will NATO stop apologizing!
Rpx
Those kids could have used that firewood to club American soldiers to death. You guys don’t know shit about tactical operations in heavily wooded terrain.
Regards,
Wingnut armchair general
JPL
Bradley Manning faces new charges and could face the death penalty..
BGinCHI
I await the footage on Fox that shows an SEIU protester at the helicopter controls.
kdaug
@freelancer:
Roger that, except the last part. It’s the Chinese’s money.
What was that thing about a military/industrial/(corporate) complex again?
There’s a reason I ain’t got kids (and don’t want ’em). Things like this serve as a reminder.
cathyx
I’m sure the US government will pay the families off and make it all good.
General Stuck
The good news is, the withdrawal is happening albeit slowly, with our coming departure of the all important strategic points of the Pesh and Korengal valleys. Though it is past time for us to go, the Afghan peeps are likely to be in more danger from a triumphant Taliban, that they ever were from us. That is why they have, after 10 of bloody nonsense like this event, not taken up arms to throw us out.
edit – I should say non Pashtun Afghans regarding taking up arms against us.
urizon
Well, apology accepted. No harm, no foul.
freelancer
@BGinCHI:
Breaking: Fox reports even more footage of violence breaking out in Madison as the police clash with the protestors.
aimai
I want to recommend an absolutely marvellous book to everyone here:
Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Muslim Eyes by Tamim Ansary. It is a lively, almost conversational book about the world through Muslim eyes–that is, what would history look like if you just sort of placed yourself in the Islamic world from the get go and just saw what they saw, read what they read. I knew a lot of the history of Islam, Islamic law, and various Muslim cultures through other reading but I can honestly say that until reading this book I just didn’t really understand how it all fit together. Ansary is a Muslim from Afghanistan who has been living and working as a novelist in the US for many years–one of his odd jobs was to help the Texas school board put together its world history curriculum and he began thinking about how the entire world historical project would look from a Muslim perspective.
I can’t recommend this book too highly. It has really helped me understand the histories of all the countries in the news right now. And especially Afghanistan, Iraq, and Egypt.
aimai
singfoom
Well, I’m sure none of the family members might decide to fight the forces that killed their young sons/brothers/cousins/nephews.
I mean, that would be a crazy reaction to someone’s unjust death, right? Getting up and fighting so that wouldn’t happen again?
Man we need to get out of there. For this kind of idiocy and the death toll on our soliders. Anyone else here watched Restrepo? If you haven’t seen it, get your hands on it and watch it. That’s the reality of Afghanistan for our troops, and it ain’t pretty and it ain’t all that logical either….
WyldPirate
morzer would want Obama to call out the Marines..uh, ‘scuse me. More Marines.
Funny how the Obots ain’t raising hell at the man who has it within his power to end this shit pronto–and safe a lot of money to boot.
celticdragonchick
@General Stuck:
Pretty much.
We leave, and the Afghani civil war goes back to normal…fueled with opium money and easy access to Russian and Chinese weapons.
As always, the women and the children will be the victims.
What I fear is that in 10 years, we will be back to bombing what is left of the rubble after AQ reopens the training camps and starts blowing shit up around the world again..
What a fucking nightmare.
David Koch
@JPL: Thet Bradley Manning is a piece of ass.
celticdragonchick
@freelancer:
LOL!
I have a page up at LGF on the subject if anybody has a spare minute.
srv
Petraeus had said the parents killed these kids previously.
That gun camera video should be played on every network with his original comments in the background.
numbskull
@celticdragonchick: FWIW, the one Afghani I know still has her parents and other family living there. They all want the US to stay and keep fighting for the reasons you and Stuck note. They are not rich, but not poor — just shopkeepers whose kid made it out (via European university) before the latest war started. Her parents feel that they’re better off now and will continue to be so with the Taliban suppressed, even though their home was leveled at some point and they had to start all over (apparently the shop was salvageable).
The Moar You Know
Proving once again that the 20mm GAU Gatling cannon can solve anything.
Arclite
Well, sticks and cameras look like guns when you’re a couple miles out looking through a B & W camera. Maybe we shouldn’t be making life and death decisions a couple miles away looking through black and white cameras.
Also, they ran when the shooting started. Only the guilty run, obviously.
Get. Out. Now. Can it be made any more obvious that we’re doing more harm to ourselves that good?
Turbulence
@aimai: Since I love your writing, I just purchased a copy. Sounds like a fascinating perspective.
General Stuck
Obama fulfilled a campaign promise to try and rescue our botched Bushist mission in Afghan. He did that, and upon receiving greater knowledge as presnit and the futility of the situation, Now he is starting the pullout that cannot happen over night, and done safely and not in a way that will cause even more grief to occur for the average Afghan.
You didn’t vote for something else with Obama, not on this one.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
This reminds me so much of those particular Israelis and American Jews who like to complain about Palestinian anti-Semitism, to whom I tend to reply: Do they hate us for our noses? Or for Israel’s boot on their neck?
When they complain about the anti-Israel rhetoric in some Palestinian educational material or on some Palestinian media, I reply: Do you think they wouldn’t have noticed how shitty we’ve made their lives if no one had told them?
Yeah. Killing children has consequences, and it tends to involve hate….
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
It also reminds me of the time that a CBS photographer was killed by the IDF because his zoom “looked like a weapon.”
Occupation tends to create these little misunderstandings.
celticdragonchick
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
Some parts of the world have much longer memories of things than we do. Hell, the American public cannot remember major events from one election cycle to the next.
In the Balkans, events from 600 years ago are still being fought over.
How long are we going to reap this particular harvest?
aimai
@Turbulence:
Turbulence, thank you so much for the compliment. You won’t be sorry you got the book. It is absolutely riveting and also, somehow, like just sitting down with a good friend who just knows a whole lot about this fascinating issue. I’m combining it with reading about Turkey and also reading a little Rumi on the side.
aimai
Turbulence
@General Stuck: Though it is past time for us to go, the Afghan peeps are likely to be in more danger from a triumphant Taliban, that they ever were from us. That is why they have, after 10 of bloody nonsense like this event, not taken up arms to throw us out.
Hey, having the Taliban take over won’t be all bad. At least child rape will be made illegal again and seriously punished.
I have to say though, I’m a little skeptical about random Americans speculating as to why Afghans have or have not decided to take up arms against the US Army.
@celticdragonchick: What I fear is that in 10 years, we will be back to bombing what is left of the rubble after AQ reopens the training camps and starts blowing shit up around the world again…
Why would AQ want to open a training camp in Afghanistan? Don’t they have everything they need in Pakistan?
I still don’t get why we should care about AQ running a training camp anywhere. It is not like the camps were particularly useful in executing 9/11.
General Stuck
@Turbulence:
Then you need to study up some on the Taliban before 9-11, where they would send out squads of assholes to certain villes, and would rape the wife, while the husband watched with a gun to his head, and then made the wife watch her husband being tortured and murdered. These are not nice people, and are deeply and sublimely hated in that country, even by many of their Pashtun tribes man.
I have to say you don’t know what you are talking about. This is a warrior culture in Afghan, and it wouldn’t matter if it was the US military, or the Soviet military, or the British, or one from Martians. There is a long history of them going wolly on occupiers they don’t approve of, and successfully showing them the door.
aimai
@General Stuck:
“villes?” What is this, vietnam redux? Look, the Taliban are horrible, evil, sure but we aren’t doing anything that will ever get rid of them. The only people who can ever fight off the Taliban are their own brothers, fathers, uncles, wives, and children–the Afghan people themselves. No outsider will ever do it. I don’t care how horrible they are, or how awful they are to women and children (they are awful) we can’t end the Taliban. We can only add to the tally of people killed by killing civilians mistaking them for the Taliban, as well as killing Taliban. Its time to get out and leave the Afghans to fight their own battles. AQ isn’t coming back there–they have Pakistan and they have other fish to fry.
aimai
PurpleGirl
@Zifnab: Unfortunately, I know you’re right about that. Our stupid actions are creating the emotions that will lead to more hatreds in the future.
Turbulence
@General Stuck:
General, I hate to tell you this, but I’m quite aware that the Taliban are some profoundly evil folk. I’m just saying that they seem to hate child rape, unlike the current Afghan government that we’re supporting, which is very enthusiastic about it.
I have to say you don’t know what you are talking about. This is a warrior culture in Afghan, and it wouldn’t matter if it was the US military, or the Soviet military, or the British, or one from Martians. There is a long history of them going wolly on occupiers they don’t approve of, and successfully showing them the door.
During the Soviet occupation, lots of Afghans didn’t fight back. I don’t think it makes sense to say that Afghanistan has a single unitary “warrior” culture. It has a bunch of different cultures. Some of them have a warrior ethos, but even in those cultures, most of the people aren’t warriors and have no interest in fighting.
Ep1phany42
@cathyx: Yeah. And then they’ll use Uncle Sam’s blood money to buy guns. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
General Stuck
@aimai:
I was responding to the nonsense of saying or thinking the Taliban returning will not be so bad. The rest of your comment is simply restating what I have already stated in this thread that it is time to go, and my comment to turbulence had nothing to do with that fact. You are arguing with a strawman.
Turbulence
@General Stuck: I was responding to the nonsense of saying or thinking the Taliban returning will not be so bad.
Read my comment please. I said “it won’t be all bad” on account of fewer child rapes. That’s totally different from saying “it won’t be so bad”.
General Stuck
@Turbulence:
You are trying to paint a picture of when we leave, things will get better for the Afghans. That is bullshit, but that has nothing to do with the need for us to go, which we should.
And your comment about terrorists training camps being not so bad, if not spoof of some kind, is one of the stupidest comments ever made on this blog.
General Stuck
@General Stuck:
LOLwut?
agrippa
To make a long story short:
Finding an exit strategy is long overdue.
Turbulence
@General Stuck: You are trying to paint a picture of when we leave, things will get better for the Afghans.
No, I’m not. I’m pretty damn sure that life in Afghanistan will be awful after we leave just like it is awful right now.
Look, you misread my comment. Everyone misreads comments now and then. But grownups can recognize when that happens, say they made a mistake and move on. If you don’t have the guts to do that, that’s fine.
And your comment about terrorists training camps being not so bad, if not spoof of some kind, is one of the stupidest comments ever made on this blog.
Can you explain to me why the US government should care about a training camp in Afghanistan?
I mean, if you want to teach some terrorists basic military tactics, it helps, but such terrorists are useless unless you can get them into the US. And if you can get them into the US, then…they can do the exact same training here. And even then, what does it allow them to do? Shoot up a shopping mall? You don’t need 6 months practicing in a training camp to know how to fire an automatic weapon….
General Stuck
@Turbulence:
Yes, I did misread it, but then the correct reading is just as numbnut as with putting the “so” in it. And I know about the warlords and their penchant for child rape, but I have no real reason to believe the Taliban would be any better. But likely more entertaining with ritual executions at the national soccer stadium again for women showing an ankle, or men with poorly trimmed, or good enough beards.
Again, the picture you are trying to paint of life overall not being that much different, with these half ass anecdotes is just simply wrong. It will be much worse. But that is not a reason for us to stay. That is separate, and we need to go.
You are setting new standards for stupid comments on this blog, don’t stop now.
Cris
General Petraeus: “These deaths should have never happened.”
I’m always reminded of Howard Zinn’s little analogy, of somebody who drives his car at 70mph along a crowded sidewalk, then looks back at the bodies and says “I wasn’t meaning to hurt anybody.”
Villago Delenda Est
General Petraeus: “These deaths should have never happened.”
What he meant was, “These deaths should have never been reported.”
I understand that the renewal on the six month lease is up again soon. Again. Also.
Turbulence
@General Stuck: I have no real reason to believe the Taliban would be any better.
Well, one Afghan says: “If the Taliban were still here, that rapist would have already been executed by now. It would have been a lesson for all. If there is no law, and the government does not listen to people’s complaints, then it is better to go back to the Taliban era. At least then we had justice.”
If you don’t trust one Afghan, you could read this account which says:
You know, for a guy who is so ignorant about Afghanistan, I really don’t see where you get off explaining to us what the refusal of some Afghans to fight against the US Army means or doesn’t mean.
harlana
Chris Matthews just had a serious meltdown
numbskull
General, he’s not trying to paint a rosey picture. You misread him and now you’re digging a deeper hole.
Numbskull has spoken! It must be so!
Villago Delenda Est
@celticdragonchick:
See Battle of Kosovo for the prime example of shit that is never, ever fucking forgotten.
celticdragonchick
@Turbulence:
Yeah, I heard about that.
We stay…and sick pedophile bastards continue to do horrible things to children.
We leave…and they still keep doing horrible things until possibly the Taliban set up shop and start executing them…and executing uppity women in the soccer stadium, cutting off limbs and burying people up to the chest before stoning them to death.
Sometimes I fucking despair of our species.
celticdragonchick
@Villago Delenda Est:
That is what I had in mind.
General Stuck
@Turbulence:
I know it chaps your ass some, to believe that average Afghans would rather us not leave, but history hammers your smarmy bullshit on speculation why the Afghans are not fighting our occupation. They fought every other one, but somehow, not fighting our presence there could mean something else, What? who knows?/
And I said, I knew about the practice of raping children in the Afghan culture. The Taliban once outlawed opium production, and now they get much of there money from that very thing to fund their insurgency.
And even if granted, the idea that Taliban would not allow child rape, I mean wtf why would you even mention it in this thread as a coy suggestion “it would not be all bad”/ In light of all the other raping, pillaging, and plundering of the Taliban, not to mention treating women like misbehaving dogs that need to be put down.
General Stuck
@numbskull:
Don’t be such a numbskull.
soonergrunt
@General Stuck:
They absolutely wouldn’t. Boy buggery is a feature, not a bug, of conservative Afghan culture.
Just google “Afghan thursday” and take my word for it, that most of the sites that you see there are pulling their punches.
Afghan law and culture is pretty clear cut about the right and duty of a guilty party to apologize and make right a wrong. That law and culture specifically calls for cash, if the wronging party has it. We always pay more than required. That doesn’t ease pain by any stretch, but it does honor cultural imperatives. All that uninformed wild shrieking about Afghan revenge is both funny and sad to someone who actually studied the culture. The wronged side has a duty of honor to accept honestly offered apologies and reimbursement that is within the capability of the wronging party to make.
I personally don’t think Afghanistan is really doing a lot to further US national security, but I’m under no illusions about what will fill the vacuum after we leave, if the GOA can’t protect the people and itself.
I suppose that it’s a good thing the runways on Diego Garcia are long and well built. We’re going to need them even more if the talibs take power again, because the only difference between AQ and the Afghan talibs is scope of goals.
I generally stay out of these threads because there’s almost never anything to be gained by attempting to discuss this stuff with people around here. There’s what I know, there’s what I believe, there’s the facts of the situation, there’s uninformed blather, there’s hyper-emotional stupidity, and then there’s Balloon-Juice on Afghanistan which is about 95% of the last two. Trying to actually address people on these subjects is very much like discussing economics with a teabagger, which in turn is like trying to teach a monkey to do algebra–a whole lot of screeching and flinging shit, a couple of wasted hours, and the monkey still doesn’t understand.
Blue Carolinian
Clearly, the term “civilian casuality” was completely unknown in Afghanistan until October, 2001.
General Stuck
@soonergrunt:
Same here, If you comment, out come layers of ideological dogma you end up wasting your time answering. I thought what I first stated was fair and succinct, and objective, but should have known better. It is why I try to stay out of Israel/Palestinian threads as well. But thanks for showing up with your knowledge on this topic that is certainly superior to mine.
MikeC
@danimal: As a retired military person, you are full of $%##. The war is always lost when you lose the local support. Killing them does not engender support. NOT reporting this is UNDemocratic. The very thing I served to protect and for you to abuse.
SiubhanDuinne
@aimai:
Thanks for the recommendation, Aimai. It’s already on my Kindle. Looking forward to the read.
Might it be an interesting BJ book discussion selection at some point? I suspect it’s going to remain relevant for a lo-o-o-o-o-ong time.
soonergrunt
@General Stuck: My knowledge is fair. There are others who are a hell of a lot smarter than I am, and of the ones I follow, not all of them agree on what to do.
I try to keep learning, though. Best I can do.
Mike in NC
The Fabulous Friedman Unit!
Mike in NC
@soonergrunt:
What a surreal place that was to visit for three weeks back in ’88. The conventional wisdom was it would quickly turn a person into either a jock or an alcoholic, because there was absolutely nothing to do off-duty but work out or drink in one of the several bars.
As for the runways, escorts would always claim that they could “neither confirm nor deny” exactly what was stored in all those ammo bunkers next to them.
Pococurante
Fortunately it is completely unheard of for the Taliban, or Hamas for that matter, use civilians at threat of death as human shields.
The Taliban has never threatened villagers, executed their men who refused to pick up arms, taken over their towns, turned their fields and buildings into oversized mine fields.
No. The US takes delight in killing children, mothers, and fathers.
It’s the only inevitable answer.
soonergrunt
@Mike in NC: I spent a year of my life there one week in May, 1992.
That place sucks. It’s not in the ass-end of nowhere there, but you can see the ass-end of nowhere with a good pair of binos.
It was groundhog day there before the movie.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: The payments were called “Solatium Payments” in another AO.
stuckinred
Apparently the google reveals that they still are.
stuckinred
@MikeC: It was snark.
liberal
@aimai:
liberal
@liberal:
Meant to add, “FTW”.
Jon denko
On all the news channels this was reported as General apologies for US killing of 9 civilians.
Foreign news reported the facts and interviewed people in the village this happened.
Afghans know exactly what happened.
PIGL
No comment to any one particular, but I wish the USA would get over itself. The Taliban may be stone evil, and horrible things may happen to hundreds of thousands of innocents if US forces leave. You should have thought of that before arming the extremists back in the 1980s to fcuk with the Soviet’s who were, in point of fact, dragging Afghanistan into the modern age.
There may well be good that should be done in Afganistan now, and evil that should be prevented. But not by you (or us Canadians, for that matter).
We need to get the hell out, and send money in reparations forever, to do whatever good may become possible.
Nobody died and made us God.
Fuzz
Someone up above mentioned that not everyone fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, that is honestly just not true. At the height of the war there were 2 million Afghans fighting against the USSR, and even the 300k Afghans working with the Soviets in their army or police were completely compromised by infiltration and collaborators. The best estimates right now, from independent sources and the military, are that there are roughly 50,000 Taliban in Afghanistan. The Afghans like us a hell of a lot more than they liked the Russians.
I disagree with the FTW comment for the idea that we aren’t doing anything that will get rid of the Taliban. Will they be completely gone and formally surrender? No, guerillas rarely do. However our whole mission there is to build up the Afghan government and security forces so that they’ll be able to fight them without us. If you kill enough of the Taliban, keep them out of the villages and protect the villagers, then at a certain point they’ll see that they gain more from working with us than with the Taliban, that’s the whole idea behind what’s going on there, especially in the south in Helmand and Kandahar. Deny them their base of support.
Pococurante
@PIGL: Yes but the 1980s were twenty to thirty years ago and so your comment, at best, is unhelpful.
Not at best, it is simply concern trolling.
Fuzz
@PIGL:
They came to us. We aren’t God and we know it, but when you literally have 3,000 people die in an attack that originates in Afghanistan that kind of makes it our problem too. And just as an FYI, it’s a common misconception that we did a lot to aid and train the Muj back in the 80s, we really didn’t, we gave them stinger missiles towards the end of the war, that was it, Charlie Wilson may have gone there for lots of photo ops but as far as substantive help we did nothing dramatic until the end. Pakistan, the ISI and the Saudis did way, way more than us. We weren’t even training them. This idea that we brought it on ourselves is mistaken. I also love the idea that the Russians were dragging them into modernity, they were there to support their appointed dictator (their new one, they killed his predecessor with paratroopers) and nothing else.
Blue Carolinian
If someone says “the US armed the Taliban in the 80s” (or Al Qaeda) then you can safely discount their opinions on Afghanistan, because its a tell they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Saying the Russians were making Afghanistan “modern” is even worse and downright offensive.
Blue Carolinian
Other “tells” someone is talking out of their ass:
If they say Afghanistan isnt a “real” country.
If they say they never had an effective central government (they did from WWII until 1979, among other periods)
If they use the phrase “graveyard of empires”
If they say it “bankrupted” the USSR.
liberal
@Fuzz:
Yes. And my FTW comment notes that this will never ever happen.
liberal
@Fuzz:
The attack itself did not literally originate in Afghanistan. OTOH, IMHO there was certainly enough connection to make our attack on Afgh in the wake of 9-11 legal. (Unlike the invasion of Iraq, which was naked aggression.)
However, that being said, you have to address the cost/benefit question. That it was legal to attack in 2001 does not make it wise for us to still be there in 2011. The fact is that we’ll never establish a stable, friendly Afghanistan. The further fact is that AQ itself isn’t that much of a threat, not nearly enough to justify spending…what is it now, about $100B/yr? And to the extent AQ is a threat, it’s currently a dispersed threat.
Not to mention that the fact that our ostensible ally Pakistan still supports the Taliban in many ways. Or that our presence in Afgh and related efforts in Pak appear to be destabilizing Pak, and fully “losing” nuclear-armed Pak would be a far greater cost than any purported benefit of denying the Taliban control of Afgh.
Blue Carolinian
Liberal, you’re right we’ve largely accomplished our goals and that is why Obama is slowly and securely getting us out. Of course it makes zero sense to have a long term presence or permanent bases there.
I don’t even see the Taliban coming back honestly. Al Qaeda is really on the ropes (See:Peter Bergen).
PIGL
@Pococurante: “Concern trolling”. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
PIGL
@Blue Carolinian: “worse and downright offensive”. Might be, except for the fact that it’s true.
PIGL
@Fuzz: ah.@Fuzz: and how many Afghani’s are you prepared to kill to achieve this happy result?
PIGL
I notice that the argument has shifted from the noble defense of woman, young boys and (for all I know), statues of the Bhudda) to self-defense and vengeance.
Could y’all please make up your minds what justifications we are supposed to find convincing?
Blue Carolinian
Uh, no, it isn’t true.
Stuff like this makes me fear for the educational systems of the western world.
Blue Carolinian
“Afghanis”?
Uh…
soonergrunt
@PIGL: He’s got it precisely correct.
It will continue as well, after we leave and bad shit happens with us being blamed for that too in whatever mental gymnastics it takes to get there.
It’s rather tiring, being the center of evil whenever we don’t use our military/economic/industrial power in a manner precisely aligned with the national interests or moral imperatives of other western countries.
Very shortly, like in the next day or so if it hasn’t happened already, there will be a great hue and cry from Europe about the need to ‘do something about Libya.’ This will, as it has in the past, be delivered with meaningful statements about how only the Americans can do it. It will also, as it has in the past, be accompanied by opinion pieces in European newspapers, many by retired generals of various European armies about how the European powers need to keep a tight reign on the Americans, lest we get out of control or whatever, followed at last by lots of stuff in these same newspapers and websites, when something goes wrong as it inevitably will, about American cowboys going too far, or the Americans not doing enough or what-have-you. Thus following a pattern that is entirely predictable mainly because it’s the same pattern that’s played out since the mid to late 1980s, and probably before that, but that’s when I became politically conscious.
Lebanon
Somalia
Bosnia
Kosovo
Afghanistan in the 80s and the 21st century
Blue Carolinian
Soonergrunt–
You forgot Pol…I mean, Darfur.
Corner Stone
@Blue Carolinian: Love people like you.
Keep it up dog. You’re reliably setting the baseline we should all adhere to.
Blue Carolinian
The worst legacy of George W. Bush is that now whenever there is really good humanitarian reason for intervention, it will be discredited because of Iraq.
Thanks a lot, jackass.
PIGL
@Blue Carolinian:@Fuzz: Ah. It was the Saudi’s and Pakistanis, who in 70s and 80s had no connection whatever to the USA. As for Stingers, those just shoot down helicopters. What possible use would they have been against the Soviets. Really just shiny, expensive bubble gum.
Stefan
General, I hate to tell you this, but I’m quite aware that the Taliban are some profoundly evil folk. I’m just saying that they seem to hate child rape, unlike the current Afghan government that we’re supporting, which is very enthusiastic about it.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. The Taliban are quite proficient and happy child rapers. How else, for example, would you get a 12 year old girl married to an adult man without it being child rape?
soonergrunt
@Blue Carolinian: Yeah. I forgot Darfur.
We get blamed for that one too. It’s closer to Europe, just like Libya and the instability is an actual threat to European security, unlike our own. Somehow it’s our fault that Europe couldn’t put on their big boy pants and do it themselves.
@Blue Carolinian: As a veteran of Somalia and Bosnia, fuck a humanitarian intervention. Almost never does us any good at all. Somebody there will try to kill our people because they like for the others to die. Serbs vs. Bosniacs/Kosovars, Habr Gidr vs Everybody Else, etc.
Nobody there remembers we kept them from starving to death or being executed. They remember that we didn’t give them big-screen TVs and hand-jobs.
soonergrunt
@Stefan: You think they only stick to the girls?
the Afghan saying of “Women are for procreation, boys are for recreation” comes to mind immediately.
Fuzz
@PIGL:
To say that we had no connection with the Pakistanis and Saudis shows how uninformed you are about this stuff. Our cooperation with Pakistan’s army didn’t end until they tested their first nuclear device in the 90s, until then it was commonplace to have Pakistani officers at the command and staff colleges and even regular Pakistani soldiers training at Airborne school, ranger school, sniper school, etc. And also fwiw, the connections with the kingdom began in the FDR administration and US companies had a large presence there starting in the 60s. When you know so little you should try not to sound so condescending. The stinger missiles on their own didn’t turn the tide of the war either, it was more that rather than doing counter guerilla operations the Russians were holed up in bases in population centers and would only venture out to launch huge offensives that killed everyone in sight. They’d ceded any gains they’d made to the muj by leaving the rural areas. Plus by 85 Gorbachev had told the army to leave ASAP, before the first missile ever even made it into Afghanistan
General Stuck
@Stefan:
Good point. All around, It ain’t Kansas.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Zifnab:
Check out all the people who show up for the kids’ funerals. There’s your next group of insurgents.
And if one of them does end up blowing up a bomb in an American city sometime, will you blame them?
If there were troops of an occupying alien nation who killed one of the members of my family, I’d be happy to acquire a hunting rifle and see if I could take a furtive potshot or two in retaliation. And I wouldn’t necessarily restrict it to soldiers from that country either.
sparky
@General Stuck:
nicely done–four utterly untrue sentences held together with half-truths, suppositions and fake objectivity. you are, i must admit, an excellent propagandist. one suggestion: dunno if i would structure that last sentence like that. it looks a little lonely out there. is it a conclusion? argument? who knows? hmmm, maybe it is better to leave it as is–keeps the jello on the wall factor high enough to deflect any attempt at comprehension. kudos!
Mike in NC
@soonergrunt:
I heard this a lot from Old Salts during a Persian Gulf deployment. Apparently a widespread attitude in the Middle East.
Viva BrisVegas
@soonergrunt:
That’s what the beards are for, to sort out the pitchers from the catchers.
General Stuck
@sparky:
Well, we can’t all be paragons of truth like you sparky.
Now who do you troll for, I forgets?
Fuzz
@liberal:
I actually largely agree with you about AQ, I think that Obama really was just trying to give it one last push before we start drawing down, and I also agree that if anything the AQ franchises or subsidiaries or whatever you call them in Yemen and Somalia are likely more dangerous than the guys in Pakistan. Another thing I totally agree with is Pakistan, at least in Iraq we weren’t paying the Iranians billions to kill our guys. The thing is though, if counter insurgency really works, Pakistan won’t matter. If we win the respect of the Afghans and they help us, even just by giving intel or not supporting the Taliban, it won’t matter if the Haqqanis and Hekmatyar and all them are given a sanctuary in Pakistan because they’ll have no base of support. This upcoming spring and summer will really show whether or not the fighting of the last year or two has had any major effect on the Talibs ability.
I think at this point, one of the reasons for the escalation is to have a stronger hand in whatever future negotiations we (or more likely the Afghan govt) has with the Taliban. We all know this is going to end in a settlement and Obama and the generals want to make sure they have a strong hand. If you believe the reports from Kandahar and Helmand in the NYTimes, it might actually be working. The Taliban leadership in Pakistan was shocked by the amount of casualties we put on them and many TB foot soldiers were really shocked and morale plummeted.
Blue Carolinian
Ah, no clusterfuck thread is conplete until an Internet Tuff Gai chimes in.
And now that he has, I’m going to go celebate a win in ACC ball.
soonergrunt
@Mike in NC: I first got to Afghanistan on forward detachment, and I out with the guys my unit is replacing. We get to the forward base in Jalalabad, and we occupy quarters. The first night, my opposite number in the outgoing unit takes me around the perimeter and shows me the towers and the wall around the compound. He explains that there’s always an American in the North tower because you can see the entire perimeter from that position. The Afghans man the other two towers and the walls. You have to visit the positions a couple of times a night to make sure ANA aren’t sleeping (something you have to do with US Army. Soldiers are soldiers the world over.) He mentioned something about it being Thursday and with services tomorrow for the Afghans, I might see something funny. I wasn’t totally clueless, but I wasn’t expecting what came later.
So he leaves me in the tower and goes out on a check. After about twenty minutes, he calls me on the radio and tells me to check the base of my tower with my night vision.
I do, thinking there’s an animal or something, and I see two ANA going at it like that movie “brokeback mountain.”
I’m like “well, there’s something you don’t see much back home.” He’s laughing his ass off. I can see him across the perimeter doubled over.
So I went back in the tower and took the cap off a 5-gal water can. I emptied that whole thing off the platform, and head some yelping and scrambling. I never had to deal with anything like that the rest of my tour.
Stefan
And just as an FYI, it’s a common misconception that we did a lot to aid and train the Muj back in the 80s, we really didn’t, we gave them stinger missiles towards the end of the war, that was it, Charlie Wilson may have gone there for lots of photo ops but as far as substantive help we did nothing dramatic until the end. Pakistan, the ISI and the Saudis did way, way more than us.
Oh for god’s sakes, who do you think was goading and paying Pakistan and the Saudis? We were.
El Cid
@soonergrunt: Were the Europeans urging the US to decide to pursue Aidid as a strategy? That was something very different than the support of the UN mission.
El Cid
The US gave over half a billion dollars a year to the mujahideen, as well as coordinating major CIA training programs. The CIA also worked closely with the ISI on organizing and training. To portray the US role in this war as minor is just silly.
SRW1
You’re not getting the real tragedy of this, John Cole: If those Afghans weren’t such backward people they would have central heating and none of this wood collecting business would have been necessary. Clearly, they brought this on themselves.
DPirate
Too bad these kids weren’t white. We might send money if they were.
soonergrunt
@El Cid: The UN wanted Aidid gotten.
The nominal reason was that Habr Gidr had attacked a platoon of Pakistani UN peacekeepers previously.
This is the same UN that was run by Butros Butros Gahli, the former foreign minister of Egypt. When Gahli was the FM, Egypt had brokered a government in Somalia in which their own puppet was installed. That man was overthrown in the coup that led to the total governmental collapse. That coup was staged by Aidid, who was a general of the Somali army at the time.
The book Blackhawk Down by Mark Bowden covers most of the events in the months and years leading up to the day that was the subject of the movie. Even if you skip the rest of the book, the first couple of chapters that explain how we got to that point are critical to understanding the events of that day, and the whole of the disaster of US/UN intervention.