Afghanistan doesn’t look pretty, and this cuts awful close to home for a teacher.
Teachers are the main targets. Some have been beheaded, others shot in front of their classes.
The years of fighting the Russians, the subsequent civil war and Taleban rule has produced a “lost generation” in education. International agencies and aid organisations speak of their difficulties in finding qualified people to run projects.
Now another lost generation is being created. The education system of modern Afghanistan is anathema to the Taleban and Islamist extremists because it is inclusive of girls, and offers secular subjects for study. They have declared that only madrassas (Muslim religious schools) meeting their approval will be allowed to operate.
Shooting kids on playgrounds? Butchering teachers for daring to instruct girls? When we fail to protect a whole generation like this, face it: you’ve lost the war.
Well we went in with a plan for militarily defeating a country and not obliterating an ideology. The first bit just takes tanks and missiles. The second has never been successfully attempted, except through genocide. Our hubris is astonishing.
And of course, we can count on our wonderful Demublican Party establishment to be vewwy vewwy quiet and never even try to make an issue of this clusterf–k.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/45793&rss=1
I guess we just should have left the Taliban in place. They’re too mean. Maybe if we apologize they’ll leave us alone?
I hope. I hope. I hope.
NatureShould’veCulledMe wins this week’s Strawman Award!
If you’re going to invade another country you’d better God-damned well have realistic plans for occupying and reconstructing it. We didn’t in Afghanistan (whose invasion I supported and would again) or in Iraq (which was no threat to us.) And it’s in considerable part BECAUSE of the cost in blood and treasure of the Iraq clusterf–k that the Chimp Administration never committed more than a tiny fraction of the resources that would have been needed to do a decent job in Afghanistan. With the result being the resurgence of that wonderful Taliban you pretend to be so concerned about, amomng many other evils besetting the unfortunate inhabitants of that country. But hey, it’s right that they should suffer for the greater good of the Rethuglican ascendancy!
By the way, when do you suppose we’ll capture Osama? Remember him?
If Bush had not been so fixated on getting his war on in Iraq, we would have easily had the military and civil resources necessary to do the job of nation-rebuilding right in Afghanistan the first time. Instead, we’re now dealing with two failing exercises in nation-building, with no hope in sight for success in either place. The fact that Bush had to make a “surprise” visit to Afghanistan only serves to show how unsafe the place now is.
I guess we just should have left the Taliban in place. They’re too mean. Maybe if we apologize they’ll leave us alone?
I hope. I hope. I hope.
1. So I guess this statement means that you are objectively pro-murder of students and their teachers. Thanks for clarifying that.
2. If you think the Taliban are actually gone in any meaningful form, then you are an even bigger fool than your postings here would suggest. These killers are the Taliban, even if they don’t call themselves that anymore. If students and teachers are being shot for the crime of promoting and pursuing non-fundamentalist educations, and if women are still more or less prisoners in their own homes or property of their husbands / brothers / fathers, then what exactly did “we” accomplish there? And how do you think we could achieve an actually desirable result?
Painting schools may be swell PR, but it isn’t worth all that much if attending or working in one is essentially a death sentence. Tool.
Nation building?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0301/dailyUpdate.html
“85 percent of those [US soldiers currently in Iraq] surveyed believe that the US’s main mission in Iraq is to retaliate against Saddam Hussein for his role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”
Im sure someone who thinks their role is revenge is going do do well at nation building.
There are evils in that part of the world. I don’t think we can eradicate them fully. The idea is to set a representative government in motion. It’s best to think of the bad guys as thugs. They’re like the mafia. If the mafia were doing terrible things in Italy, we wouldn’t give them any legitimacy.
There are evils in that part of the world. I don’t think we can eradicate them fully. The idea is to set a representative government in motion. It’s best to think of the bad guys as thugs. They’re like the mafia. If the mafia were doing terrible things in Italy, we wouldn’t give them any legitimacy.
Are you proposing to correctly identify and kill all these “thugs” or just give them all the vote?
I may need to update my eyewear prescription, but I think I’m seeing lots of straw men flying around.
face it: you’ve lost the war.
The battle against Islamic extremism is going terribly, thanks in large part to the Bush administration’s brazen incompetence and reckless stupidity, but to say we’ve lost the war is premature and defeatist. We can’t afford to lose this war; Islamic extremists are threatening to bring a large portion of the world into a hellish Dark Age of religious tyranny. The stakes are too high to give up and run home with our tails between our legs.
Unfortunately, Dubya decided it was more important to run off and invade Iraq over imaginary WMD’s rather than focus on wrapping things up in Afghanistan. The resulting diversion of money, manpower and resources into Iraq has been a disastrous setback for Afghanistan. Dubya’s tendency to appoint inexperienced ass-kissing ideologues to oversee nation-building certainly hasn’t helped either.
Despite these numerous failings, it is imperative to continue, and intensify, the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. Remember, the barbarian fanatics who are shooting children and butchering teachers used to be running the country; now they are outlaws. That at least is something of an improvement.
For more about what is going on in Afganistan go here
http://www.rawa.us/sep11-02.htm
The RAWA is fighting peacably against fundamentalist terrorism. The number of articles written from Afganistan about what is going on there is just incredible. From American incompetence in reconstruction projects to the fact that today only ~ 15,000 US military are on the ground in Afganistan. And they are being redeployed to Opium poppy eradication efforts. Absolutly brilliant (sarcasm). On the bright side RAWA is a womans organization and one of their woman has more courage than the entire Bush admin.
All of the previous posts are pretty much Right On.
JIM
Jessica Stern’s book Terror in the Name of God talks about education being the biggest enemy to fundamentalism and recruiting suicide bombers. It seems to straight-forward; teach people about the world at large with no agenda-driven political hate-mongering and you’ll get well-rounded people who value their lives too much to strap a bomb to their backs. Educate women that their lives are worthwhile and they don’t have to be subjected to horrible abuse and they realize that international human rights actually mean something.
Religion knows: keep people stupid and under your thumb and you’ll control an entire generation.
Put some pressure on your buddy Musharraf, and watch the Taliban evaporate.
I am very curious to what changes we may see happen, now that a Canadian general has taken command. In reality the best we can hope for, is to help a nation that wants a stable country. There really is no winning of a war (in the traditioanal sense)that can occur. It is about providing Afghanistan the assistance they need so they can help themselves.
I note that our (British) troops have a different priority-set: They have said that the opium is secondary – “We are going to concentrate on security, and stopping the Taliban”
Pity we are not sending Ghurkas!
Possibly no members of the Religion of Peace ™ are interested in western values. But then, on this issue, you could have said the same about the Democratic Party.
This is all very sad (and just a tiny bit funny), because we (the US) helped bring the Taliban to power. We and Pakistan figured it would help stabilize Post-Soviet Afganistan (which was in chaos)…well it did, only with dire consequences (Al Qaida).
HistoryRepeats,
Now that’s very interesting. The Taliban came to power in 1996. So, you must be bashing Clinton’s policy. I know you guys do your best to put Bush down, but I rarely see anything about Clinton. Didn’t the Cold War have anything to do with it?
http://www.iwpr.net/?p=arr&s=f&o=260014&apc_state=henh
Where the Taliban train.