At least 21 killed in Afghanistan attacks

[JohnBrowdie]

ugh.  I thought kandahar was "pacified" last year.  and the year before that.  and the year before that.  I sense a pattern here.

big brave bastards.  killing women and children.  and the dumb ass afghans don't know who's side they should be on.

At least 21 killed in Afghanistan attacks

KABUL, Afghanistan -- At least 21 people were killed in a series of attacks across Afghanistan on Saturday as a U.N. agency announced that May had been the deadliest month for Afghan civilians since 2007.

At least 15 civilians, including children and women, were killed when their crowded minivan struck a landmine in the restive province of Kandahar.

The dead were eight children, four women and three men; another woman was injured.

Kandahar is a southern province that's known as the birthplace of the Taliban movement. It shares a border with the Baluchistan province of neighboring Pakistan, which is believed to be the safe haven for the Taliban leader Mulllah Omar and other senior commanders.

In a separate incident, a suicide bomber blew himself up and killed a senior police commander and three others in the eastern province of Khost.

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[jafo2010]

You can continue to live in this naive denial that we are accomplishing something in Afghanistan, but when the Taliban controls 80% of the country, one can safely say that they can come and go as they please, kill whomever they wish, and pretty much laugh hard at the ineffective coalition led by the idiot Americans.

Obama has continued this failed Bush policy, largely to avoid a coup JFK style, and the military industrial complex keeps making billions.....oh joy!

[JohnBrowdie]

I haven't mentioned this before, because I support the goal in afghanistan, if somewhat hesitant about the method.  but I was doubtful about a surge in afghanistan a couple of years ago.  here is one example.

I am strongly in favor of conducting the war on terror as a military operation, not a police action.  troops on the ground conforms to that view, hence I generally support the president's policy . . . although I find it fickle and half hearted.  and probably the result of his desire to not break YET ANOTHER policy he ran on incessantly in 2007 and 2008, towit;  iraq bad, afghanistan good.

[jafo2010]

If you were a little older, and did not focus primarily on your GI Joe when Vietnam was going, you would realize that both Iraq and Afghanistan are Vietnams II and & III, and the only difference is a volunteer military.  If the guys in Iraq and Afghanistan were drafted, we would have riots in the street, just like the 70s.  But since they are all volunteers, there is no effort afoot to persuade our military industrial complex led government to do anything different.

The goal in Afghanistan?  Are you for real?  What is that goal?  If it is anything other than defending the USA, then we are there for the wrong reasons.  Vietnams II and III will have a similar ending....DEFEAT!   ....that is, if you consider Vietnam a defeat....AND I DO!

It is a sad thought for me, all our loyal folks in the military being sold down the river under the banner of US defense when in reality there is no objective in Iraq or Afghanistan beyond oil in Iraq and the mystery continues for Afghanistan.  Sure, we make it a little more difficult for al Queda to operate in Afghanistan...but what have they done.....taken the show down the road to Pakistan...our good allies.....HA!

What post 9/11 has proven is that the USA can be attacked, and the USA is virtually ineffective at doing anything.

Our WHACK A MOLE strategy in dealing with the radical Muslims is a LOSING STRATEGY.....

[JohnBrowdie]

there are virtually no similarities, no parallels, no vague resemblances between the war and terror and viet nam.  none.  zero.  any attempt to draw such a relationship reveals an extraordinarily superficial understanding of both.  

you can't just jump up and down and scream that it's the next viet nam every time some guy in the army fires his weapon.  you seem to conveniently forget (or perhaps ignore) the fact that we were attacked by terrorists.  the limp clinton policy (on everything other than interns or any other woman unfortunate enough to wander into perverse his cross hairs) on terrorism (the cole, the first attack on the world trade) created the environment that led to 9/11.  worldwide terrorism is not an issue for law enforcement.  if you want to get pissed off at someone, get pissed off at clinton.  at least george bush had the sense to realize that it was time to try something else.

 . . . and I never had a GI Joe.  I did have a steve austin action figure, though.  I thought he was cool.  especially after I found out he was married to farrah.  

[jafo2010]

The only thing I agree with on your naive presentation is that terrorism is NOT a police matter.  Yet every president, including Bush has largely treated it as such.

You were living in a child's world during Vietnam, and you simply do not understand the parallels, and there are many.

All your reading hasn't helped you understand that.

First, the objective that was frequently stated was to halt the spread of communism.  Well, we lost that war...literally.
And the objective in Afghanistan....well, it is not even as noble as the unsuccessful effort in Vietnam.  What is it exactly?  Fighting terrorism?  Please, that is poppycock for the masses.  If you buy what we are doing in Afghanistan as fighting terror, or whatever reason other than feeding the industrial military machine complex, than you just do not get it.

We will withdraw from Afghanistan and the Taliban will resume right where they left off.  Democracy will go out the window as one would expect in an Islamic state, and the terror network will continue in many countries not just Afghanistan.  It appear they are comfortably entrenched in Pakistan...don't you think?  Or do you want to continue your delusion and believe Pakistan is an ally?
Granted the architecture of this effort is different than Vietnam, but America getting involved in an action that has no objective that is obtainable, that is actively worked toward some accomplishable end...yes indeed, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are mirrors of one another.

The final chapters are yet to be written on Iraq and Afghanistan, but are known by those that witnessed Vietnam.  It is a repeat, and just because you lack the ability to comprehend this is a direct result of not having been there, lived it.

I knew a number of guys that were drafted and went off to Vietnam.  Not a single one of them felt like they were defending their country....quite the contrary.  This mindset is very different than one of the folks today who joins the military and intends to make it their life career.  The mindset of the folks in the military today is very different from those drafted in the 60s and 70s and shipped to Vietnam.

And as I have stated before, it could end up being a Republican that withdraws us from Iraq and Afghanistan, much like what took place in 1975 when we finally bailed.

And yes I can jump up and down and scream it is the next Vietnam when we continue to conduct our operations in the exact same manner Vietnam was conducted.  If we are going to engage in military actions, they should be done in such a manner to obliterate the enemy combatants, and not start planning on rebuilding what we have destroyed before you have conquered your enemy.  Does that make sense to you?  Probably not.  The bleeding liberal part of you, and you have that as part of your nature, will find some reason to argue my points.

I do not care if we render Afghanistan and Iraq complete wastelands, for a hundred years if necessary.  I would not invest one dime rebuilding anything until the enemy is vanquished.  Do you understand the concept of vanquishing an enemy?  Sometimes I wonder!

[JohnBrowdie]

it's a silly and ultimately unproductive line of argument to insist that since I wasn't 50 years old during viet nam, that I somehow don't know anything about it.  were you alive during the civil war?  the revolution?  then how can you possibly claim to know anything about them?  have you ever been to egypt?  then how do you even know that it exists?  saturn?  no such thing.  never visited the place.  and witches?  saw one thursday.  I am sure of it.  so they exist.

it's just preposterous.

human knowledge wouldn't have progressed beyond the dark ages if we allowed ourselves to be so handicapped.

[jafo2010]

It is you that cannot see the parallels of Vietnam to the present idiotic conflicts we are engaged in.  I am one of many making these parallels, and I was not 50 during Vietnam. but I opposed that engagement too.

I oppose any effort utilizing our military that does not have as the primary objective while waging war the utter destruction of whatever enemy we are engaging.  Without that objective, our youth die in vain.  You cannot see it, then sad for you.  Send those boys to die for nothing.

Perhaps you do not understand what lies ahead, but for those that witnessed Vietnam, we all to well know what will happen.  We will withdraw from both Iraq and Afghanistan, just like Vietnam.  There will be no victory, and certainly no sustained democracy, for as I have explained, in these Islamic states, democracy is in many ways anti-Islam.

You will only comprehend what I am saying when it happens.  And it will happen in your life time.

The democracy and republic you love so dearly, do you think it would survive if there were a majority population of Islamic followers in the USA?  Even being a relatively small part of the USA population and they are pushing for the acceptance to Sharia Law.  I suppose you support that too?  Once the occupation of these countries end, watch and see how long democracy lasts.  What a joke!