Eighth anneversary of 9/11 (part II)

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Do you pay any attention to the news? Haven't you heard about all the terror alert bulletins that have gone out in the last couple days stemming from the arrest of Najibullah Zazi and several other Afghan nationals?

A press release just as they are holding hearings on sending more troops, spending more money?

Invading someones country, staying for eight years, is a declaration of war, Europe and America are open targets under the rules of war.

The kill ratio in Nam got 65,000 of us killed. There we had a sea coast. Nam was small and flat.

Afganistan is the top of the world, and only expensive air can keep it supplied.

There are 30 million Afgans, most are not involved in fighting, but if you start killing them, they will be.

The Russians were there with three times the troops, no restraints, and lost 15,000.

That is what felled the USSR.

The loss in Afganistan was the high point of the British Empire, then they decayed quickly.

Alexander lost the Empire he had won there.

The French, British, and Germans are talking of pulling out, this is a NATO operation.

We do not have more troops, we sent Reserves, National Guard, would you draft the Boy Scouts?

A Draft would also have to take the Girl Scouts.

I will make you a deal, we pull out, and the right wing gun nuts can invade.

This is nothing but defense contractor welfare, and we need welfare reform.

Nam makes Nike tennis shoes, the commie bastards, and we are fully in bed with the Chicom.

Then there is the civil war we are starting in Pakistan, 130 million, we should send John Wayne.

No one thinks it is winable, so our choices are losing and broke, or leaving strong tribes that will keep things as they always have.

If we left now most of those "strong tribes" would go back to providing a safe haven for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda where they could attack us again.

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Hence the purpose of the original topic.

Why was Zazi permitted to be in the U.S.?

You make an interesting point. If Afghanistan is a threat to the U.S. then it should be carpet bombed until it is no longer a threat to the U.S. It worked against Japan, no reason it should not work against Afghanistan.

ruven

A quarter million square miles? A population of 30 million, that is seven people per square mile.
Carpet bombing with 500 pound bombs would make craters that would hold water during the dry season.
The B52s were twenty years old during Nam, they are now over fifty, and are being kept for a one way trip. There are no bases anywhere near, Indian Ocean, so it would be long and slow, and expensive.

The outcome would be they would move to Pakistan, and take over. The tribal areas there are already part of Afganistan, and fighting the government that is only in power because of massive western support.

Result, a wider war, more enemies.

The Russians had a short supply line, they used everything they had on the ground, choppers, jets, and carpet bombing, they lost.

On the home front the government said that unemployment would peak at 8%, and the economy would recover two quarters ago. Their spending was based on those numbers, so they are coming up short on income, and now see 10+% unemployment for years.

As far as the great threat from one six foot six arab, even if he did have anything to do with 9/11, more people died in autos during the next few years, because they avoided flying.

Many more people died because of the Mexican drug trade. They do not put out press releases, but they kill a lot more people.

Mexico City has as many people as Afganistan, and it is a tight target for carpet bombing.

Perhaps we could dig a lake in Afganistan, and put some Battleships there.

Japan was nuked into submission to American will, which is slightly different to being carpet-bombed. The reason it wouldnt work is because all of the major conurbations in Afghanistan are technically friendly territory, and mountains are poor territory for nuclear warfare.... Who would there be to carpet-bomb/nuke?

O.K. Then chemically treat their poppy fields. That will put them out of business.

The point is there is no reasonable way that the U.S. can bring Afghanistan to heel without slaughtering the population. Is Afghanistan so dangerous we would have to do that?

Look at the history of the place. Alexander the Great could not conquer Afghanistan. The Brits could not conquer or control it. Neither could the Soviets. Why do you suppose the U.S. could?

The only real danger the Afghanistan could pose to the U.S. is to be a remote staging area for al Queda and other such like terrorist groups. I seriously doubt that the Taliban, as such, not working in conjunction with al Queda can do us much damage.

The U.S. has to do a much better job of keeping Muslims from coming into the U.S. itself.

ruveyn

The students of religion, the Taliban, were the force that beat the Russians with US support, and an agreeement that they would rule in a free Afganistan.

The production of opium had been brought to zero the year of the invasion. The Taliban did this.
Drugs are big and government business in the West, Nam was about who would control the Golden Triangle opium production, Afganistan is the same.

Since the invasion, production has been restored. Opium has been a source of wealth and power since long before oil, and many wars have been fought to control the trade.

Britian invaded Afganistan for they were trying to shift production to India, which they sold at gunpoint to China, it was, an still is, a Royal Monopoly.

In America the drug trade is thought to be 50,000 truckloads a year, and the take 4,000 truckloads of hundred dollar bills, and not one of them has ever been found. Even the Mafia stays out of drugs, for that is the big gang's business.

When Britian lost the China market, the product showed up as tonics, Patent Medicines, in the US, then after the loss of India, comes the war in Southeast Asia for the second center of production.

Afganistan does not have a lot of fields, the best land grows poppies, and this invasion could place a base there and see the fields grew only grain, but they are more interested in the thousands of shipping containers of the finished product.

The goal of this war is to restore production, and gain control of the output.

It is a market that brings in billions a year, and has for hundreds of years.

Same old, same old, spices, drugs, oil, gold, blood.

Giggitty giggitty giggitty