Civilian Deaths Rise As Afghan Fight Intensifies

[revelarts]

you clearly implied that he asked for 500,000 American troops......a dishonest implication.......I reject your comments out of hand.....

That's very convenient, throw out the baby with the bath water if that helps you comfirm your stance on continuing the war PMP.

your better than that I think.

[-Cp]

Martin, that was completely uncalled for.

Same dude that was recently selected as "member of the month"?

[Gaffer]

rev the difference between us is that you are willing to tolerate evil people for the sake of a short peaceful existence while I want to wipe out all present and future threats for a long term peaceful existence. Mine is the logical method but it is illogical to assume it can ever be achieved. What I want and what I get are two different things.

[revelarts]

rev the difference between us is that you are willing to tolerate evil people for the sake of a short peaceful existence while I want to wipe out all present and future threats for a long term peaceful existence. Mine is the logical method but it is illogical to assume it can ever be achieved. What I want and what I get are two different things.

I think that's very true. except I think long term peace works my way as well if not better.
Defining evil gets a little tricky some times to.
And maybe I'm not quite willing to run rough shod over the innocents to weed out all evil. And I'd like to make a distinction , as we do in our laws, between evil talk/people and evil acts. There are a lot Benign but evil people as well as Plenty of threats that fly out of peoples mouths that they never intend or have the capacity to follow through on it.

It's a dangerous world. with plenty of evil, beating the crap out of everyone that doesn't like us is a big job.

I think Ghandi, MLK (and St Patrick in Ireland, great story) won a certain amount of peace using more than a force. without distroying there every enemy. There's a price to pay for freedom and peace but the gun isn't the only force that's effective it seems.

Until Jesus comes back we're stuck living with a certain amount of darkness. Putting out the big fires and the ones closest to home seems to be good policy at this point.

The Bible says-
If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
Romans 12:18

[OCA]

Same dude that was recently selected as "member of the month"?

Yeah, ain't it grand?

[PostmodernProphet]

Just because the numbers are large does not OUT of HAND make them impossible.

of course it does......divide the large number by the number of days we were there and you quickly see it is impossible......at the height of the Iraq war the Arab press complained of civilian casualties of 1500 a month....for there to have been 1million civilian casualties by 2006 the death toll would have had to been closer to 1500 per DAY!......do you think no one would have noticed if the actual death toll had been 30 times higher than believed?........

[PostmodernProphet]

That's very convenient, throw out the baby with the bath water if that helps you comfirm your stance on continuing the war PMP.

your better than that I think.

dude, we aren't talking about throwing babies and bathwater....we're talking about posters lying out of their ass to score points.....I have discovered that you're worse than I thought.....

[Missileman]

If you think that AlQuida Or the Taliban are serious threat to the U.S.. AND to the degree that hey must be Exterminated. I'm Glad that neither of you is in charge of our military. Or a part of any administration Rebpub or Dem.

They didn't teach you the word "or" at your school? If they won't surrender, then yes, you blow them off the face of the planet. This notion of yours that we should fight a war for no reason or for anything less than a win is pathetic.

[revelarts]

MissileMan: "It means either the total eradication of the Taliban and Al Queda, or their surrender. Anything less than that is an incomplete job."

How does a basically leaderless organization surrender?

We've been fighting the Tailban for 9 years and we are losing. the Soviets fought them for 10 years and left. While they were fighting the soviets we found a way to be there friends. Which I thought was a bad idea personally.
In the Movie Rambo 3 the Taliban and the Mujahideen where portrayed as heroic freedom fighters dying to save their women and children and homeland. That was a overblown romanticized of version of them to say the least. But on the other hand to portray them as super villains a paramount danger to God and country and is just as bad a characterization.

Yes they are bad people but we don't need to be there to secure our borders.
We don't need to be in Iraq to protect the "homeland".

AlQuida will be an on going problem, but staying in Afghanistan and Iraq we create more enemies. not the other way around.

the leaders we support there are corrupt and not worth fighting for. Al Quida left years ago. the tailban/warlords are not going away and the Afghansn don't have the will to remove them.

I'm sorry to say but as I see it all we are doing is throwing our men and women to the fire for nothing or worse to create a new generation of enemies.

[Gaffer]

MissileMan: "It means either the total eradication of the Taliban and Al Queda, or their surrender. Anything less than that is an incomplete job."

How does a basically leaderless organization surrender?

We've been fighting the Tailban for 9 years and we are losing. the Soviets fought them for 10 years and left. While they were fighting the soviets we found a way to be there friends. Which I thought was a bad idea personally.
In the Movie Rambo 3 the Taliban and the Mujahideen where portrayed as heroic freedom fighters dying to save their women and children and homeland. That was a overblown romanticized of version of them to say the least. But on the other hand to portray them as super villains a paramount danger to God and country and is just as bad a characterization.

Yes they are bad people but we don't need to be there to secure our borders.
We don't need to be in Iraq to protect the "homeland".

AlQuida will be an on going problem, but staying in Afghanistan and Iraq we create more enemies. not the other way around.

the leaders we support there are corrupt and not worth fighting for. Al Quida left years ago. the tailban/warlords are not going away and the Afghansn don't have the will to remove them.

I'm sorry to say but as I see it all we are doing is throwing our men and women to the fire for nothing or worse to create a new generation of enemies.

They are not leaderless. They just don't have a country to use as a base of operation. They are stuck in the hills and mountains of afghan and pakistan for now. We tool away their base of operations when we invaded. Why pull out and give it back to them? We took down a major supporter of all the terrorist organizations in the middle east when we went into iraq. Why give it iran or other terror organizations?

The best defense is a good offense. Eradicate your enemy and you never have to worry about him again. Fight on his land so your own remains secure. Pulling back and letting him regroup just means you will be attacked again.

The driving force behind iran, al queda, the taliban and the rest of the middle east is islam. A theocracy. Until it is eradicated there will always be war between the west and islam. The west needs to wake up to that fact if they ever truly want peace.

[Missileman]

MissileMan: "It means either the total eradication of the Taliban and Al Queda, or their surrender. Anything less than that is an incomplete job."

How does a basically leaderless organization surrender?

Duh! They walk up to a US soldier unarmed with their hands in the air.

[revelarts]

I'm almost speechless gentlemen.

Communist are the most deadly enemy ever they must be crushed on every continent.
...no wait...
Radical Islam is the most deadly enemy ever they must be crushed on every continent. we've always been at war with Islam.

wait no... Blacks I mean Jews and Blacks are are the most deadly enemy ever they must be crushed on every continent. we've always been at war with jews .. and Blacks.
we better wake up....

On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the processions, the speeches, the shouting, the singing, the banners, the posters, the films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the grinding of the caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the booming of guns - after six days of this, when the great orgasm was quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into such delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings, they would unquestionably have torn them to pieces - at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.

There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy. Winston was taking part in a demonstration in one of the central London squares at the moment when it happened. It was night, and the white faces and the scarlet banners were luridly floodlit. The square was packed with several thousand people, including a block of about a thousand schoolchildren in the uniform of the Spies. On a scarlet-draped platform an orator of the Inner Party, a small lean man with disproportionately long arms and a large bald skull over which a few lank locks straggled, was haranguing the crowd. A little Rumpelstiltskin figure, contorted with hatred, he gripped the neck of the microphone with one hand while the other, enormous at the end of a bony arm, clawed the air menacingly above his head. His voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties. It was almost impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and then maddened. At every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats. The most savage yells of all came from the schoolchildren. The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker's hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage ! The agents of Goldstein had been at work ! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot. The Spies performed prodigies of activity in clambering over the rooftops and cutting the streamers that fluttered from the chimneys. But within two or three minutes it was all over. The orator, still gripping the neck of the microphone, his shoulders hunched forward, his free hand clawing at the air, had gone straight on with his speech. One minute more, and the feral roars of rage were again bursting from the crowd. The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed.

from Chapter 17
George Orwell 1984

[PostmodernProphet]

you can't seem to make up your mind who you want to surrender to first......

[Psychoblues]

Bullshit all you want. I still want to know how you or your family might feel if the "collateral damage" might include you or your death?



Psychoblues

[revelarts]

Bullshit all you want. I still want to know how you or your family might feel if the "collateral damage" might include you or your death?



Psychoblues

I'd be pissed at everybody, kinda like i am now.
the coalition and the taliban/insurgent/alquida

-------------
But it's interesting.
Leon Panetta has given a striat and clear answer to my question.
What is winning or finished in Afghanistan?

in june on meet the press

starting Around 4:30

..."Winning in Afghanistan is having a country that is stable enough to ensure that there is no safe haven for AlQuida or for a Militant Taliban that welcomes AlQuida. That's really the measure of success for the united states. Our Purpose our whole mission there is to make sure that Alquida never finds another safe haven from which to attack this country.
That's the fundamental goal of why the United States is there. And the measure of success for us is do you have an Afghanistan to make sure that never happens."...



that's a clear answer not as fuzzy as what you guys gave me.
Win we finish the job or they all surrender. or we kill them all.


Honestly that's one of the clearest answers I've heard in years from a public official.

having said that, based on my understanding of Afghanistan, that goal is fantasy. Or one that will take 80 to 150yrs to complete. or 5yrs and a crazy number of men to flood the country and cleanse it of anything smells like tailban and anyone that looks crosseyed at America. Either way I'm not willing to pay that price to remove just 1 safe haven. ESPECIALLY since most of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.

Others may have another opinion, it's a free country, sorta , but i don't see the cost benefit ratio making sense here. Frankly it seems to me that only if you throw pride and fear into the mix do you come out with a different answer. IMO.